Kristin Scott Benson is the four-time International Bluegrass Music Association’s Banjo Player of the Year (www.ibma.org). Since 2008, she has been a member of Grammy-nominated and two-time IBMA Entertainers of the Year, The Grascals (www.grascals.com), making an indelible mark on the bluegrass music industry.

Kristin has attained a national identity as one of the top bluegrass banjo players on the scene, exhibiting impeccable taste, timing, and tone. With an attentive ear to back-up, she is known and respected as a true team player among her peers. Many consider her to be one of the first females to successfully be a side-musician in a top-tiered bluegrass band:

“There was one grass ceiling no woman could cut through—until Kristin Scott Benson came along, that is. Almost two years ago, she joined The Grascals. Not to front the band, not to sing, not to be eye candy, but instead to drive the group with her fivestring banjo. Until then, no woman had ever been hired to play one of the most defining of the bluegrass instruments in an Alist, festival-headlining, all-male band….It’s a high profile gig, as Kristin takes the banjo where no woman has taken it before.”

Larry Nager – “Kristin Scott Benson – Cutting the Grass Ceiling” Bluegrass Unlimited: Oct, 2010

Look for Kristin’s upcoming solo album, entitled Stringworks, on Mountain Home Records, set for release in the Fall of 2016. Her previous solo endeavor, Second Season, received stellar reviews and an IBMA nomination for Instrumental of the Year for the self-penned, Don’t Tread on Me. Stringworks features many original instrumentals, as well as pristine performances from some of today’s top players and singers.

Kristin plays a 1933 Gibson TB-3 banjo. She endorses GHS Strings, Blue Chip picks, Takamine guitars, Doc Fossey Guitars, Fishman pickups and Robin Smith at Heartland Guitar and Banjo.

After 13 years in Nashville, Kristin has relocated back near her original home, in the Carolinas, where she lives with her husband and son.