Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light are a Boston-based string band making music that blends folk tradition with feminist storytelling, poetic detail, and just enough grit. At the center is Sumner’s songwriting—rooted in history, myth, and personal reckoning—carried by close harmonies, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and fiddle. The trio features Kat Wallace on fiddle and vocals and Mike Siegel on upright bass and vocals, whose playing brings both tension and tenderness to the sound.
Sumner has performed at the Library of Congress, where five of her original songs are now archived, and was a 2024 winner of the Kerrville New Folk competition. They won the Telluride Bluegrass Festival band competition, and heard on NPR’s Tiny Desk.