She performs and records as a soloist, as well as with the old-time bands Uncle Earl and Sparrow Quartet, experimental group The Wu Force,[2] and as a duo with her husband Béla Fleck.

After what became a life-changing experience, Washburn left the Center ready to pursue her musical career and was quickly offered a record deal in Nashville, Tennessee.

Washburn entered the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at the 2004 MerleFest (a bluegrass music festival in North Carolina), winning second place for her song "Rockabye Dixie",[7] and gaining the attention of the Nettwerk record label.

Her first solo album, Song of the Traveling Daughter, was produced by Béla Fleck and features Ben Sollee, a cellist, and Jordan McConnell, guitarist for the Canadian traditional and soul music fusion band The Duhks.

In 2005, Washburn returned to China with a group called the Sparrow Quartet, composed of Sollee, Fleck and Grammy Award nominated fiddler Casey Driessen.

Over the course of two weeks, Washburn and Liang recorded and produced the entire project, which features electronic mixes of student voices and sounds from the disaster zone.

[10] Washburn embarked upon "The Silk Road Tour" with her band "The Village" from Hohhot to Ürümqi,[11] stopping to perform and collaborate all along the way with only the goal of building bridges and dissolving difference by communing in good music.

Supported by the US Embassy and the Chinese International Center for Exchange, they performed extensively at schools, universities & theaters, and spontaneously on city walls and in town squares all across China's "Wild West".

[12] In September 2012, she was featured in a campaign called "30 Songs / 30 Days" to support Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a multi-platform media project inspired by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book.

[17] The band's multilingual songs feature a variety of content varying between commentary on international relations to environmental issues in China to Chinese folk and operatic reinterpretations to cheeky instrumental pieces.

The band also includes multi-instrumentalist and frequent collaborator Kai Welch, and Chinese zither (guzheng) player Wu Fei.

[23] In May 2009, the Bluegrass Intelligencer website satirized the union, with Driessen joking that the couple promised a "male heir" who will be the "Holy Banjo Emperor".