Molly Tuttle is on the road, performing cuts from her latest album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine—a mixture of country and pop that marks a departure from the genre for which she’s generally known.
“It’s just kind of what I was called to do, musically, the songs I was writing,” said Tuttle, whose previous, award-winning bluegrass efforts were critically embraced. She performs at Novato’s HopMonk this July 15 and 16.
“There’s no real reason other than that’s what I wanted to do. I’ve always played lots of different styles of music, even as a kid growing up. I started off playing bluegrass but was always like listening to other genres and learning songs and different styles and writing songs that didn’t really fit into bluegrass,” she recalled.
In fact, Tuttle pointed out that she’s only made two bluegrass records, Grammy winners both, and that, unlike those records, which she made with her band Golden Highway, So Long Little Miss Sunshine is a solo effort that “felt like it wanted to be its only thing.”
Many of the songs on the new album are more personal than Tuttle’s previous work, and others show off her storytelling skills, from the murder ballad “Rosalee” to the breakup song “Easy” that is rooted in family drives through California when she was a kid. And nearly all of them feature Tuttle’s acoustic guitar that’s as rootsy, flashy and impressive as anything she’s recorded.
“What we wanted to put front and center was the guitar,” she said. “It’s kind of a singer songwriter record, but it’s also definitely my guitar record, because I’m the only one really taking solos throughout the entire album, which was kind of a fun challenge for me,” added Tuttle, who’s known for her flatpicking, clawhammer and crosspicking.
“I started off when I was eight years old,” Tuttle remembered. “My dad’s a guitar teacher, and he teaches all different instruments. He teaches all the bluegrass instruments, but I always gravitated toward the guitar. He was always showing me stuff around the house, and he would tell me, like, you know, you need to practice a lot if you want to get good at it.”
At 15, Tuttle joined her father and brothers in the family band The Tuttles, and after graduating from high school in 2011, studied at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
In 2015, she moved from Boston to Nashville, began to get noticed as a guitarist and released her debut album in 2019. After putting together her “dream band,” Golden Highway, she released her two Grammy winners.
Now, she’s on the road with her “happy surprise” all-female band.
“When I put the band together, I just kind of started reaching out to people, and it just came together in that way,” she said in Zoom conversation from a New York hotel. “It was just kind of a happy surprise. It was not intentional, but we’re having a lot of fun on the road. I’m really grateful for it.”
Tuttle’s already written a handful of songs for her next album. One burning question is will she take the next step and pick up an electric guitar?
“I feel like I freaked out people enough with my new record, so to take it even farther, who knows,” she said. “I’m not the best electric player because I’m not used to it. But it is kind of something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I have played it here and there a little bit. That would be fun.”
Molly Tuttle performs in the Cookout Concert Series at 6pm, Wednesday, July 15, HopMonk Tavern Novato, 224 Vintage Way (the July 16 show is sold out). Visit hopmonk.com/novato for tickets and more information.
