"If American old-time music is about adopting earlier, simpler ways of life and music-making, Abigail has proven herself a bracing challenge to that tradition. A singing, songwriting, Chinese-speaking, Illinois-born, Nashville-based, clawhammer banjo player, Abigail is every bit as interested in the present and the future as she is in the past, and every bit as attuned to the global as she is to the local. From the recovery zones of earthquake-shaken Sichuan to the hollers of Tennessee, she pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before. To put it another way, she changes what seems possible."

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. Two songs were recorded in the Mandarin Chinese language, which she learned while living in China.

The Sparrow Quartet

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

At the request of the U.S. government, the Sparrow Quartet toured Tibet in 2006—something no other American band had done—and performed in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics.[4] Also in 2008, Washburn was a teacher of American folk music in Sichuan University for six weeks, "where they promptly told me that I wasn't teaching folk music correctly, because, surely there would be a correct way to do hand gestures for every song."[2] Also that year, Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet recorded a full-length album, Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet. It was produced by Béla Fleck and composed and arranged by the foursome.

After the release of the album, Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet turned their attention to touring North America, with appearances at festivals including New Orleans Jazz & Heritage, MerleFest, Bonnaroo Music Festival, Vancouver Folk Festival and others. They returned to China for performances during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The quartet was later featured on National Geographic Live and, in 2009, each participated in the Clearwater Concert, a benefit concert in honor of Pete Seeger's 90th birthday that featured many of the world's most well-known musicians.

Inspired by a 2008 volunteer experience for Sichuan Quake Relief in China, Abigail joined forces with Shanghai Restoration Project's David Liang in March 2009 to create Afterquake. The benefit EP (a portion of each sale benefits Sichuan Quake Relief) was released on May 12, 2009, the first anniversary of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. Over the course of two weeks, Washburn & Liang recorded and produced the entire project, which features electronic mixes of student voices and sounds from the disaster zone, in Sichuan, China.