Molly Tuttle

Molly Tuttle ranks among the foremost figures in today's folk, bluegrass, and Americana scenes thanks to her command of acoustic guitar and banjo alongside her songwriting and vocal work. Her flatpicking, clawhammer, and cross-picking techniques made her a sought-after session player, yet she stepped forward as a solo artist in 2017 with the Rise EP. The varied full-length album When You're Ready appeared in 2019. Two years later she made her Nonesuch debut with Crooked Tree, a Grammy-winning project that introduced her bluegrass ensemble Golden Highway. Tuttle and Golden Highway delivered their follow-up, City of Gold, in 2023 and collected another Grammy. The EP Into the Wild reached listeners in 2024.

Her father Jack, a respected multi-instrumentalist and teacher in bluegrass circles, directed the family band the Tuttles and passed his musical passion to his children. Born in 1993, Molly took up guitar at age eight and joined her father onstage three years later. At thirteen she recorded the album The Old Apple Tree with him, later adding banjo and mandolin while concentrating on flatpicking and clawhammer guitar. Recognition arrived in her late teens: 2012 brought merit scholarships to Berklee College of Music for music and composition, the Foundation for Bluegrass Music's Hazel Dickens Memorial Scholarship, victory in the Chris Austin Songwriting Competition at MerleFest, honors as Best Female Vocalist and Best Guitar Player from the Northern California Bluegrass Society, and an appearance on A Prairie Home Companion. By 2014 she had joined the all-female contemporary bluegrass outfit the Goodbye Girls and cut a duet album with fiddler John Mailander.

Although bluegrass remained her primary platform, Tuttle drew additional inspiration from the songcraft of Bob Dylan and Gillian Welch, shaping material that leaned toward modern folk. A 2015 crowdfunding effort funded her first solo recording, the seven-song Rise EP, which surfaced in 2017—the same year she joined Compass Records and became the first woman to receive the International Bluegrass Music Association's Guitar Player of the Year Award. Her widely praised debut album When You're Ready followed in 2019, succeeded in 2020 by the covers collection ...But I'd Rather Be with You. The buoyant single "Crooked Tree" preceded the full-length album of the same name in early 2022; the release marked her Nonesuch debut and first collaboration with Golden Highway. Guest contributions from Margo Price, Billy Strings, Old Crow Medicine Show, Sierra Hull, Dan Tyminski, and Gillian Welch helped the project claim Best Bluegrass Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. City of Gold, issued in 2023, again placed Golden Highway in the spotlight on a set of Western-tinged bluegrass, folk, and country numbers co-produced by Tuttle and dobro master Jerry Douglas. Songs written during the preceding year's 100-date tour included the singles "El Dorado" and "San Joaquin" plus the Dave Matthews-assisted "Yosemite," earning Tuttle her second Grammy for Bluegrass Album of the Year. In 2024 she paired with Orville Peck on a rendition of Nonesuch labelmates the Magnetic Fields' "Papa Was a Rodeo" before issuing the EP Into the Wild.