Molly Tuttle Makes Her Way to a City of Gold

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway/City of Gold/Nonesuch
Four Out Of Five Stars

Molly Tuttle was seeing born for stardom. That’s proven by the fact that since making her solo debut only seven years ago, she’s already amassed four critically individual albums and an EP. Noted for her flat picking, clawhammer, and cross-picking guitar style, she was something of a prodigy, having launched her solo career in her early 20s and amassing such prestigious honors as the International Bluegrass Association’s Guitar Player of the Year Award in  2017—the first woman to do so—before repeating the feat in 2018, when she was also named the Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year. Further accolades followed when she won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album and received a nomination for Best New Artist at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards.

That’s in addition to receiving the Foundation for Bluegrass Music’s first Hazel Dickens Memorial Scholarship, winning the Chris Austin Songwriting Competition at the Merlefest Music Festival, and gaining a merit scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music.

In all fairness, however, she got a head start early. After first picking up a guitar at age eight, joining her father, renowned bluegrass musician Jack Tuttle onstage, and subsequently joining her family band, The Tuttles, at age 15.

Nevertheless, early success has to be sustained to build a career, and with her new album, City of Gold, she proves that she’s able to maintain the momentum she’s built up until now. Or, as she states so emphatically on the track titled “When My Race Is Run”: They say the journey takes a long long while / But a thousand miles starts with one / It’s a lifetime road I’m taking…

She’s clearly committed to the task. With “El Dorado,” “Evergreen, OK,” “Where Did All the Wild Things Go” and “Alice in the Bluegrass,” she and her Golden Highway band—Bronwyn Keith-Hynes of fiddle and harmony vocals, Dominick Leslie on mandolin, Kyle Tuttle playing banjo and sharing. Harmony vocals, and Shelby Means contributing bass and harmony vocals—show their usual astute blend of bluegrass and Americana. Producer Jerry Douglas, no slouch himself, oversees the proceedings with typical insight and aplomb. The slower songs—“Stranger Things,” “Goodbye Mary,” “The First Time I Fell In Love,” “More Like a River,” and the aforementioned “When My Race Is Run” in particular—assure an emotional essence remains intact throughout.

Taken in tandem, then, this City of Gold shines bright indeed.

Photo by Chelsea Rochelle / Sacks & Co.