Molly Tuttle is best known as a bluegrass virtuoso. She was the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s (IBMA) Guitar Player of the Year award back in 2017, and since then has received many more accolades from the organization. She also won a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album for Crooked Tree (2023) as well as a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist from all musical categories.
Molly began her musical career as a child in a family band called the Tuttles formed by her father, a well-respected bluegrass fiddler. The Tuttles included her two brothers, Sullivan (guitar) and Michael (mandolin), and neighbor AJ Lee (vocals and mandolin). But as a California girl growing up in the 2000s, she was exposed to a variety of music and loved it all.
Her 2020 album of cover songs, …but I’d rather be with you, recorded during the COVID pandemic, revealed her diverse roots and multiple talents. Her renditions of songs originally by artists as different as Arthur Russell (“A Little Lost”), the National (“Fake Empire”), Karen Dalton (“Something on Your Mind”), the Rolling Stones (“She’s a Rainbow”), Rancid (“Olympia, WA”) and FKA Twigs (“Mirrored Heart”) showcased her roots in everything from alt-rock and folk to pop and punk.
“I’ve always experimented with different styles,” Molly said over Zoom from her Nashville home. The transplanted Californian has lived in Music City for the past ten years. As a kid from the San Francisco Bay Area, she was exposed to lots of different kinds of music and spent time jamming with friends. While her recent success revealed her bluegrass skills, she still found herself drawn to many genres. She purposely goes outside bluegrass music boundaries on her latest disc, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, which has a more country-pop vibe.
She chose to work with producer Jay Joyce, known for his work with Eric Church, Miranda Lambert, and Orville Peck. “The songs don’t fit into one genre,” she said. “We tried to push the sonics into new territory while weaving in sounds from the past. Still, we were concerned with making something cohesive that flowed from song to song even when they were stylistically different.” The tunes work together thematically to tell a story about Tuttle and the changing world in which we live.
“Some of the songs on my new record aren’t exactly new,” she said. “Some are songs I was working on even when I was making records with my bluegrass band, Golden Highway. The songs didn’t fit in stylistically then, but they were marinating in the back of my mind.”
All 12 songs are between two and five minutes long, and all but one are originals. The songs are intentionally short to keep things lively without the long guitar interludes of Tuttle’s previous works. While Tuttle has long been celebrated for her instrumental talents, she also has a supple, clear voice that adds depth to her material. The album’s one cover track is “I Love It,” originally a high-energy synth pop song from more than a decade ago by Icona Pop and Charli XCX. The new rendition is more acoustic and performed with a wink for fun.
The album cover features nine different photos of Tuttle, all of them with her wearing a wig, except for the central image of her bald head. She has alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss. She was first diagnosed when she was three, and it has since developed into total body hair loss. Tuttle says she uses her musical platform to raise awareness about the disease and to make people feel comfortable being themselves.
Tuttle brags that her current band is made up of gifted multi-instrumentalists. When they perform at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City on November 16, they’ll play a variety of songs and styles in various combinations—acoustic and electronic, separately in small groups, and together as an ensemble. Expect a bluegrass segment and a set of tunes from the new record, as well as old favorites.
“We also take requests,” Tuttle gushed. She urged anyone reading this to put their wishes on a cardboard sign and hold it up to be read, because voices sometimes get lost in the noise of the crowd. “Any song is fair game,” she said.
She also noted that she will probably be joined in performance by her two opening acts, Cecilia Castleman and Joshua Ray Walker. Singer-songwriter Castleman is known for her emotive vocals and fingerpicking guitar style. The critically acclaimed Texas artist Walker pens hauntingly bright and imaginative songs with dark edges, like a cloud about to burst into rain, complete with thunder and lightning. He is also a dynamic live performer. Tuttle mentioned that she recently worked out a duet with Walker on her song “Yosemite.” Dave Matthews sang with her on the recorded version, but as anyone who has seen and heard Walker can tell you, he is certainly capable of kicking the song’s butt.
Tuttle said the best thing about touring with a new band and talented openers is that they are constantly learning from each other. “We want to keep things dynamic, keep changing things up, and make things exciting for us as well as for the audiences,” she said. The current tour is three months long. She expects lots of changes to occur along the way and looks forward to seeing what comes next.