Molly Tuttle: Girl Wonder of Bluegrass

Molly Tuttle

Bluegrass music has an honorable history of women taking our music by storm. Back in the day Sally Ann Forester played bass and sang with Bill Monroe in the 1940s. Hazel Dickens, Rose Maddox, and others stand proudly among the founders of our music. The next generation of bluegrass brought us Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, Alison Krauss, Claire Lynch, and many more (whom Molly Tuttle credits as role models). This generation was followed by Sierra Hull, Sara Watkins, Sarah Girosz, and other female standouts who ratcheted everything up another notch. Now, it’s Molly’s turn to take the spotlight.

Molly has it all. Top guitar, banjo, songwriting, vocal skills, and the awards to prove it.

• Two Grammy Awards including Best Bluegrass Album Crooked Tree in 2023
• Best new Artist Nominee 2023
• IBMA Guitar Player of the Year 2017 and 2018—first woman winner ever
• IBMA Instrumental of the Year 2018
• IBMA Album of the Year 2023 for Crooked Tree
• IBMA Song of the Year 2023
• IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year 2023
• International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year 2023
• Grammy nomination for the all-genre Best New Artist at the 65^th Grammy Awards
• Chris Austin Song Writing Award winner

At age 32, Molly is just getting started! Beginning with her family band at age eight, she first performed on stage when she was 11 with father Jack Tuttle. At age 15, she joined the family band, The Tuttles with AJ Lee. She then attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music on a merit scholarship in music and composition as the first ever winner of the Foundation for Bluegrass Music’s Hazel Dickens Scholarship Award. In her spare time, she appeared on A Prairie Home Companion with her dad.

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway.

While in school at the Berklee College of Music she met and joined the all-female bluegrass group, called the Goodbye Girls, which combined bluegrass, jazz, and Swedish folk music. In 2018, she joined Alison Brown, Missy Raines, Sierra Hull, and Becky Buller in a supergroup. Initially known as the Julia Belles, the group became known as the First Ladies of Bluegrass. In 2021, Tuttle assembled her new “dream” band, Golden Highway, including Shelby Means on bass, Kyle Tuttle on banjo, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on fiddle, and Dominick Leslie on mandolin, with everyone sharing or supporting vocals. Their award-winning hit, Crooked Tree, was released in 2022, with a follow up album release in 2023.

Tuttle announced the dissolution of Golden Highway in May 2025, with many band members pursuing solo careers, while she revealed a new, all-female band that would begin touring with her in July.

See Molly Tuttle in concert on Saturday, December 6 at the House of Blues, 1055 5th Ave., 7pm.