Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway

One of the most compelling new voices in the roots music world, Molly Tuttle is a virtuosic multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter with a lifelong love of bluegrass. The Northern-California-bred artist first discovered this genre thanks to her father, a music teacher and multi-instrumentalist, and grandfather, a banjo player whose Illinois farm she visited often throughout her childhood. On her new album Crooked Tree, Tuttle joyfully explores that rich history with bluegrass, bringing her imagination to tales of free spirits and outlaws, weed farmers and cowgirls, resulting in a record that is both forward-thinking and steeped in bluegrass heritage.

Her debut release for Nonesuch Records, Crooked Tree is co-produced by Tuttle and bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas, who also plays Dobro throughout the album. Her studio band also includes esteemed musicians like Ron Block (banjo, guitar, harmony vocals), Mike Bub (upright bass), Jason Carter (fiddle), Tina Adair (harmony vocals), and Dominick Leslie, a mandolinist who also performs in Tuttle’s live band, Golden Highway, along with banjo player Kyle Tuttle, fiddle player Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and bassist Shelby Means. The album features such illustrious guests as Gillian Welch, Margo Price, Billy Strings, Old Crow Medicine Show, Dan Tyminski, and Sierra Hull. Crooked Tree marks a departure from the eclecticism of Tuttle’s critically lauded 2019 full-length debut When You’re Ready and 2020’s …but i’d rather be with you, a covers album that masterfully reinterprets everyone from FKA Twigs to Karen Dalton. Each track showcases Tuttle’s guitar technique, for which she was the first women ever named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association. It also showcases her voice—an instrument that shifts from warmly understated to fiercely soulful with equal parts precision and abandon, occasionally treating the listener to some high-spirited yodeling.