Plant City’s local coffee shop Krazy Kup played host to a Special Night of Bluegrass last Thursday night, featuring two incredibly accomplished fiddle players known throughout the bluegrass scene in Jason Carter and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes.
A long-time member of the Del McCoury Band and a member the Travelin’ McCourys since their formation in 2009, Carter has been named Fiddle Player of the Year five times (‘97, ‘98, ‘03, ‘13, ‘14) by the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA.) And a member of Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, along with her solo work at home in Nashville, Keith-Hynes was named IBMA New Artist of the Year in 2020 while touring with her co-founded band Mile Twelve before earning two consecutive IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year awards in 2021 and 2022. While also members of their own respective bands, Thursday’s event was part of a five-day tour the couple held throughout the state of Florida this month that included other appearances in Odessa, Cedar Key, Sarasota and Gainesville. For the couple, the shows combine a chance to make their way to Florida and see friends, enjoy the warm December weather and make a few stops to play music together all while taking in a vacation before returning home to Nashville where their regularly hectic work schedule continues.
“It’s nice that we’re here doing this because chances are, if we were home and we had time off together, we would just be hanging out together and doing the same thing that we did tonight, we would be playing music,” Carter said. “But here we’re getting to play for people and that’s what we love to do, we love to play music first and foremost, but we also got to walk on the beach this morning and that’s just an added bonus.”
At Krazy Kup the duo performed a string of original music along with classic covers, with both artists taking turns leading the way with their own vocal stylings as they showed off the fiddle skills that have brought them both such acclaim, met with cheers from the sold out audience. As the night drew to a close, Carter and Keith-Hynes welcomed local bluegrass artist Morgan Brake to the stage where she performed a song alongside the fiddlers and her bassist Mike Maravilla. At just 17-years-old, Brake plays guitar with and serves as the lead vocalist for the Plant City-based bluegrass band Morgan Brake and Duck Wallow Lane.
“It was so much fun,” Brake said. “I’ve always heard lots of great things about them, I’ve watched them play, so to get to perform with them was really inspiring.”
In what can only be described as a blessing by Krazy Kup owner Frank Trunzo, the local coffee shop has become a destination for central Florida bluegrass fans and performers as they hold open bluegrass jams on the first Saturday of each month and regularly play host to bluegrass bands coming from near and far to perform in the business’ unique second floor loft. In fact, Krazy Kup’s bluegrass jams are where Brake found her musical beginnings five years ago, ultimately learning to play the guitar and joining Duck Wallow Lane through first meeting Maravilla as separate performers at the event.
“Tonight was a blessing, a true blessing,” Trunzo said. “It’s about community and this place has kind of evolved into a real bluegrass venue. We never set out to do that but it was just happenstance, serendipity and great talent. For me personally, I really enjoy the atmosphere that’s created and it’s something special. We’ve found that the audience is almost always a very faith-based, very solid, very polite group of people, its just a real pleasure to be in the whole situation with everyone and being a host is something that I’ve always been. This is just special, it’s something that we didn’t know would happen but we’ve been blessed that it did.”