Molly Tuttle coming to Big Ears Festival: Can't live without love

In the last couple of years, I’ve spoken to a number of very talented musicians who have advanced the mission of the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, which is to 1) create transcendent cultural experiences, 2) defy boundaries, 3) fuel curiosity, 4) ignite the spirit, and 5) nourish the soul.

Nourish whose soul? Ignite whose spirit and curiosity?

Yours. Mine. Ours.

To help familiarize Oak Ridgers with the Big Ears mission, I’ve spoken to bluegrass prodigies and electronica pioneers, giants of jazz and poets for the ages, meticulous conductors and junkyard sculptors. Singers, composers, and instrumentalists. Punks, prophets, and puppeteers. Winners of Grammy Awards, MacArthur Grants, and Pulitzer Prizes. And I’ve shared the inspiration of their stories the best way I know how, by letting artists speak for themselves.

In the last 10 weeks, I’ve written about the Third Coast Percussion ensemble, their collaborating composer Jlin, avant-garde guitarist Elliott Sharp, writer, singer, and son of a true jazz giant, Eric Mingus, mandolin whiz kid Wyatt Ellis, East Tennessee treasure Amythyst Kiah, and the insightful pop duo Danni Lee and Caroline Shaw.

With the Festival beginning Thursday March 21, I only have time for one more preview. But this artist needs no introduction to a lot of Oak Ridgers, because she has performed twice at Summer Sessions, the ground-breaking concerts produced and sponsored by ORNL Federal Credit Union.

I’m talking about Molly Tuttle and her star-studded cohorts called Golden Highway, who just happen to own the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. And 2023’s also.

After several weeks of trying to arrange a telephone interview, Molly’s publicity helpers at Nonesuch Records, distributors of “Crooked Tree” (2023) and “City of Gold” (2024), finally found a time slot for last Thursday afternoon, and I was sort of beside myself with all the things I wanted to hear her thoughts about.

On Thursday morning, while searching through videos I hadn’t seen before, I watched a short improvised solo of Molly Tuttle’s jazz-like impressionistic take on Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” a sardonic elegy to a dying relationship. It’s always been one of my favorite songs, and watching Molly coax it out of her stunning Brazilian rosewood dreadnaught was touching in a way that swept me off my feet.

On stage, Molly Tuttle’s command of her instrument is total, instructive even to the greatest players among her peers, from Tommy Emmanuel and Steve Kauffman to Tony McManus, Billy Strings, Bryan Sutton and Beppe Gambetta. If you lined up the 100 best flatpickers in the world, Molly might be the only one who can play riffs that none of the other 99 can figure out and copy.

But the video of “A Case of You” feels like watching a very vulnerable Molly Tuttle realize for the first time that she has a truly unique gift. She almost seems to surprise herself. How often do you see that?

When was the last time you surprised yourself?

As the notes magically come together, the tune brings a smile to her soul, and it emanates through her features until her face is quietly radiant. Then she just stops halfway through the tune, leaning forward toward her camera ever so slightly, as if to say “Do you see ...?”

It’s musical intimacy of the first order, on the most personal level ... something she could never do in concert. After watching it several times, I finally felt like I knew who Molly Tuttle is. And frankly, I couldn’t believe she had posted the video. It was like a very private message mistakenly sent to everyone instead of to a very special someone.

When the interview appointment arrived, the phone rang at exactly 4 p.m., and I got completely star-struck. I was as tongue-tied and awkward as a 12-year-old boy trying to find the nerve to speak to the prettiest girl he’s ever seen. Neither one of us said anything of value to the other. All I came away with was having spoken to a genius.

“So, Molly, any surprises for the Big Ears Festival?”

“Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it.”

Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling / Still I’d be on my feet / I would still be on my feet.

The first time Molly Tuttle performed in Oak Ridge, at Summer Sessions in 2019, it was in the initial phase of her breaking out as a major force in the new wave of bluegrass. She had already been named the Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association - twice - and Instrumentalist of the Year by the Americana Music Association. And she was only 26 years old. This was after three years in Boston at the Berklee College of Music and a move to Nashville where she quickly established a reputation as a collaborator to die for.

Molly Tuttle came to Oak Ridge in September 2019, five months after releasing her first serious album, “When You’re Ready,” and good Lord was she ever. But even though Rolling Stone magazine declared Molly “a high-wattage hybrid” of Alison Krauss and Taylor Swift, “When You’re Ready” was clearly a freshman effort.

High-wattage hybrid. Boy, there’s a turn of phrase that could end a writer’s career, eh?

The band that had been assembled to back Molly Tuttle was ... well, let’s just say it was talented, competent, strong, but forced. The only name I recognized was Wesley Corbett on banjo, a professor of the instrument at Berklee, formerly in Sam Bush’s band. Molly followed the Alex Leach Band as her opening act, and Alex’s band was more comfortable on stage than the “Molly Tuttle Band,” because this really wasn’t the Molly Tuttle Band. It was the Nashville idea of a Molly Tuttle band.

I had to leave this show before it ended because I had kids to put to bed, but as I headed to the parking lot, Molly and her “band” lit into Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues.” In the years since, this song has become one that Molly owns, especially when she plays it with the inimitable Tommy Emmanuel, who actually breaks a sweat to keep up with Molly Tuttle’s breakneck reading of this timeless Texas classic.

As “Freightliner” accelerated over the heads of more than a thousand Oak Ridgers, I was time-travelling through a three-decade wormhole to a time when I knew Townes, and Blaze Foley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Don Walser, Willie, and other crucial characters in Austin’s contribution to Americana music. Molly Tuttle took me back there again, more than 20 years after Van Zandt’s death. It was stunning. And unforgettable.

Three months after this Summer Sessions concert, Molly Tuttle returned to East Tennessee with Ketch Secor, the heart and soul of the Old Crow Medicine Show. They performed at the Museum of Appalachia in a live streaming WDVX radio show. Before that night, I told Ashley Capps (producer of Big Ears) that he had to see Molly, and sure enough, he and his wife were there.

Ketch and Molly put on a show that was unknowingly prescient. This is hard to explain, but their performance was a prelude to the COVID-19 shutdown, which came less than three months later. At the Museum, Ashley Capps invited Molly Tuttle to perform at the Big Ears Festival. And three months later, Big Ears 2020 was cancelled.

Can you imagine having to tell more than 200 performing artists that your world-renowned, four-day festival has just been cancelled? Can you imagine the expenses involved with that ... the tears, the disappointment, the frustration?

In August 2022, Molly Tuttle came back to Oak Ridge, but this time she had the band of her dreams. I don’t know how it happened, and I’d love to know the process that made this band a reality. But suddenly {or so it seemed}, Molly Tuttle had a band named Golden Highway, and the name was completely prophetic.

Anyone with their eyes open could see the future. Golden Highway’s four instrumentalists were exactly what Molly Tuttle’s talent called for. They had all known each other at Berklee, and that common thread has proven to be stronger than anyone could have predicted.

As fate would have it, this 2022 Summer Sessions concert was cut short by a fast-moving lightning-imbedded thunderstorm. The huge crowd, over 2,000 people, had to run for cover after six songs from the band. But it was enough to establish what Molly and Golden Highway have demonstrated over and over in the ensuing 18 months, that they are the future of Bluegrass-Pop-Americana.

The five members of Golden Highway have done something that eludes 99% of other bands, whether their banner is rock, jazz, rap, classical, R&B, reggae, electronica, bluegrass, or ... whatever. And this “something” will reserve a place for them in the history of American music.

Quite simply, they have melded five authentic selves into one, five individual talents, five motivations, five singular impacts into one. Whenever Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway walk out onto an empty stage, it becomes a laboratory for alchemy.

Golden Highway’s bass player is Shelby Means. “Please tell me if I’m fallin’ too far.” This Wyoming native is not just the best foundational bass player any bluegrass outfit could ask for. She is the soul of the strongest band in the world at the moment. I would have loved to interview her, but everyone knows bass players don’t do interviews. You can read it when you see her on stage, because Shelby Means says it all with her music.

That’s not an exaggeration. There isn’t another band anywhere that can keep up with Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway, and Shelby is where it starts. If she’s not there, it all falls apart. The bass is the heartbeat. And when the show’s over, if you think you’ve got a question she needs to answer, you weren’t paying attention.

Next, there’s the punk soul of Golden Highway, banjo maestro Kyle Tuttle. Don’t ask me how there are two people in this band with the same last name who are unrelated, but “unrelated” is relative. (What?) If there’s no DNA relation between Molly and Kyle, there is something deeper than DNA. Far deeper. I don’t have a name for it, but there are songs for it. On YouTube, check out “Brakeman’s Blues/Back Up & Push” from the 2022 Ossipee Valley Music Festival. One viewing will explain it instantly.

I caught up with Kyle Tuttle last week while he was on a well-deserved fishing retreat, the last free time he’s going to see for the foreseeable future. I asked him what it’s like having a bluegrass legend like Jerry Douglas in the producer’s chair for Golden Highway’s two albums.

“Well, the cool thing about bluegrass is it’s kind of a small world, and it allows your heroes to become your friends. You realize pretty quickly that people like Jerry and Sam Bush ... they aren’t unapproachable, because bluegrass is sort of a family. And it’s incredibly reassuring to have their stamp of approval.”

It’s a labor of love. And in Kyle’s case, it’s also a “Labor of Lust,” which is the title of his just-released album of original songs that he recorded in fits and starts while his life was accelerating at an unbelievable rate with Molly Tuttle. It’s a highly personal piece of work, dealing with painful challenges and bitter losses, countered by post-punk resilience driven by a completely liberated banjo technique that knows no bounds. Kyle Tuttle isn’t one to think the instrument has to behave. The banjo just has to do whatever it must to keep up with him. And in 2024, that is no small task.

If Earl Scruggs had been standing next to me in 2022 when Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway played in Oak Ridge and I was in the wings of the stage behind the Civic Center, 10 feet from Kyle Tuttle, Earl would have leaned real close and said “Lordy, how’d he do that?”

Oak Ridge missed out on the virtuosity of mando player Dominick Leslie when Molly Tuttle played Summer Sessions in 2022. I don’t know why he was absent, and Molly couldn’t remember when I spoke to her, but he was AWOL. It mattered, but it wasn’t a problem, because the mandolin breaks from song to song were beautifully filled by Kyle on banjo and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on fiddle.

If you want to see what Dominick Leslie is made of, watch the video he made four months ago with East Tennessee’s own Wyatt Ellis for Wyatt’s debut solo album’s title cut “Happy Valley.” Featuring Justin Moses on guitar, who also produced the album, and bassist Mike Bub, the coolest dude in Nashville, the video shows Dominick and Wyatt sitting side by side playing their mandolins behind their heads.

That might not hit home with you, but 30 years ago I used to work on stage for shows by Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Stevie loved to pull out his favorite stage flourish of spinning a 360 in the middle of “Love Struck Baby” and playing the deepest part of the song with his guitar behind his head, or the same in the middle of “Voodoo Child” to play it with his guitar behind his back.

Can you play Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child”? Can you play it with your guitar behind your back? Can you play the guitar at all? Well, in “Happy Valley,” 14-year-old Wyatt Ellis and his incredibly generous mentor Dominick Leslie, a member of Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway, play side-by-side on a log cabin porch swing with their mandolins behind their heads.

Dominick Leslie is a very humble and unassuming dude, but don’t let that deceive you. I can prove his genius very simply. You’ll see him on the video of “Can’t Live Without Love,” the first single release from a new album by Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Golden Highway’s fiddler. The song was written by Jamie Hartford, son of the late John Hartford, and Bronwyn makes it an instant classic with her modest pick-up band that includes Dominick and his friends Bryon Sutton, Jeff Picker, Wesley Corbett, Jerry Douglas, and Sam Bush.

Dominick is the guy wearing a T-shirt with the name Sun Ra across his chest, honoring a jazz legend who many believe came from another galaxy. Right on, Dom.

The term “overachiever” was coined for Bronwyn Keith-Hynes. When Molly Tuttle and her amazing band draw close together around a single microphone in classic bluegrass style, you can see the delight in Molly’s eyes at the way Bronwyn catches fire. And then the combustion is spontaneously spread from the stage to every soul within earshot.

All I asked was “How do you do it?” And Bronwyn’s answer was as amazing as her playing.

“It’s been such an exciting time for us, and things keep happening that I would have never even dreamt of ... like winning the Grammy, sitting in with Dave Matthews at The Gorge, and putting out a solo vocal record under my own name this year. I would never have thought I’d be doing any of it a few years ago, but I feel like events inspire other events. I’ve just been trying to enjoy where the current of life is taking me and stay in tune with what I feel passionate about.”

One thing Bronwyn Keith-Hynes embodies is the roots-deep connection everyone in Molly Tuttle’s band has to both the past and the future of bluegrass. Whatever else Golden Highway may be about, they are bringing something to Big Ears no one else in the entire Festival can deliver, something wrapped in that connection of the future and the past.

On Bronwyn’s up-coming new album is a song by an enigmatic and largely unknown writer named Reed Gulick-Stutz called “Will You Ever Be Mine?” Her singing is as new as can be, and she is joined on the recording by Bryon Sutton, Jeff Picker, Dominick Leslie, and Scott Vestal, who played banjo with Doyle Lawson and the late Phil Leadbetter. And Bronwyn’s choice for harmonizing vocal accompaniment is the bluegrass legend Dudley Connell, an absolute national treasure.

“Dudley is a huge hero to me. I grew up listening to his old band the Johnson Mountain Boys, and when I was thinking of who my dream traditional singing partner would be, he was the first person to come to mind. Even cooler, when I got to know him over the last year, he’s the nicest guy you’d ever meet.” He’s also the smoothest singer you’d ever meet.

Molly Tuttle, Golden Highway, and the Big Ears Festival. They were made for each other.

This is the Golden Age of American music.

John Job is a longtime Oak Ridger and frequent contributor to The Oak Ridger.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Molly Tuttle coming to Big Ears Festival: Can't live without love