Bluegrass, though it is scarcely older than rock-and-roll, has been bound by tradition — more than most music genres — for most of its history. Purists, devoted wholly to the strand of string music pioneered by the likes of Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers, have definite ideas on what constitutes real bluegrass and little stomach for anything that doesn’t meet those standards.

Missy Raines and The New Hip

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“Back in the days when people were at festivals, they used to call it the ‘lawn chair snap,’” says bassist Missy Raines of the ’60s and ’70s, when artists like Sam Bush, the Dillards, and one of Raines’ mentors, Eddie Adcock, were pushing and stretching the genre’s borders. “The more progressive bands would come out and there would be small section of the audience that would snap their lawn chairs together and head back to the camp site because it wasn’t ‘traditional.’ But those people are still thriving today and have made significant contributions to the music. And lo and behold the traditional element is still there and didn’t die because of it.”

Though the slight takes on more subtle forms today, Raines has had to endure her own version of “lawn chair snap” ever since the bluegrass veteran — who is the most decorated bassist in the history of the International Bluegrass Music Association with seven awards from the organization — formed her group The New Hip in 2007. Raines, who performs Saturday with The New Hip at Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center, caused a stir when she started her group with the express purpose of exploring new forms of acoustic music by more explicitly putting pop, jazz and other genres into the mix.

“It’s not strictly speaking bluegrass. I never meant for it to be,” says Raines, adding that experiments like The New Hip are responsible for slowly expanding the music’s reach and vocabulary. “I feel like bluegrass by definition is about exploration and innovation. We’re just being influenced by the music around us now and what has happened before and trying to put our own spin on it. That’s what everyone has done, and hopefully it has some meaning to somebody at some point.”

The results of Raines’ experiment can be heard on Inside Out, the band’s first full-length record released earlier this year. Though Raines, who maintains her traditional bluegrass credentials by gigging with the likes of Mike Compton and David Grier, has been dreaming of this project for years, in materialized form it has become something quite different. In true bluegrass style, Raines says, The New Hip’s sound is shaped by the assemblage of young talent in the band, including Dobro player Michael Witcher, mandolin and guitar player Ethan Ballinger, teenage mandolin wunderkind Dominick Leslie, and (an easy target for bluegrass purists) drummer Rob Crawford.

“I knew I always wanted to have a band with drums,” says Raines of the group she envisioned. “I always knew I wanted to have a band that had a strong mandolin vibe to it. I always knew I wanted to have Dobro. But there are elements of the sound I couldn’t have guessed because they come out of the chemistry we all create together.”

As Raines and the New Hip tour the country, it is that interaction — a key component to any good music — that is winning even the most recalcitrant fans, including one man who came up to Raines after a recent concert

“He was an older gentleman, somebody who fits the mold of a hardcore ‘bluegrasser.’ He came up to me at the end of the night and said, ‘I came here tonight because I’ve been such a fan of your’s. I knew I wasn’t going to like this, but I’m such a fan of your’s I had to come and see,” Raines recalls.

“Here it was at the end of the night. We’d played two whole sets, and he’s still there. And before I could say anything he said, ‘But I loved it.’ And when we came back to the same venue another time, he was there again.”

Missy Raines & The New Hip

8 p.m. Saturday at the Bartlett Performing Arts and Conference Center, 3663 Appling, Bartlett. Tickets: $20, available at the box office and by phone at (901) 385-6440. For more information, visit bpacc.org.