(light music) - [Becky] Sometimes life gives you an opportunity to reflect on what you would do with a clean slate.

Our guest on this episode is Molly Tuttle, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and musician.

♪ I've thrown away the compass, done with the chart ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ Looking for direction, northern star ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ I'll just about throw my doubt into the sea ♪ ♪ Oh what's meant to be will be ♪ - [Becky] Starting at the age of eight, Molly Tuttle has been playing guitar and entertaining audiences for decades.

Raised in Northern California, she actually got her start in her family band, but moved on to be recognized as one of the greatest in her field.

In fact, "American Songwriter" named her one of the world's best guitar players.

Molly attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, but left after two years to pursue a music career in Nashville and has endeared herself to the music industry over these past 10 years.

Tuttle has evolved her signature sound, beginning with her boundary-breaking debut album "When You're Ready," and continuing to garner many awards and accolades, including two Grammys for Best Bluegrass Album for both "Crooked Tree," and "City of Gold," as well as a Grammy Award nomination for Best New Artist.

♪ El Dorado, city of gold ♪ ♪ City of fools ♪ ♪ Has the fever got a hold on you ♪ - [Becky] Building on her amazing musical legacy, Molly has been crossing all genres and collaborating with some of the best, including Ketch Secor, Cherry Douglas, Dave Matthews, and Billy Strings.

Her latest EP, "Into The Wild," invite you on a musical journey.

Already crowned as an award-winning musician, including the first female to win the International Bluegrass Music Association's Guitarist of the Year Award, in back to back years, as well as Instrumentalist of the Year from the 2018 Americana Music Awards, Tuttle continues to perform around the world with her award-winning band, Golden Highway.

Molly Tuttle makes her home in Nashville, Tennessee, where she recently recorded the PBS special, "Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway: Live in Nashville."

♪ She comes in colors everywhere ♪ ♪ She combs her hair ♪ ♪ She's like a rainbow ♪ ♪ Coming colors in the air ♪ ♪ Oh, everywhere ♪ ♪ She comes in colors ♪ (lively music) - Molly, wow, what a great time you're having.

I'm telling you- - Oh, thank you.

- You've been winning Grammys, you're on an amazing tour.

Now you've got this great PBS show out that you taped at the Analog- - Yeah, totally.

- Here in Nashville.

How are you feeling about this time period in your life?

- I'm feeling great.

I mean, so many of the things that I've dreamed of since I was a little kid are happening, and I've lived in Nashville almost 10 years now, and so, it feels like I've just kind of been building this community in the music world here, and it's so exciting to see a lot of the hard work that we've done kind of come to fruition.

- I love that, and I had no idea, actually, that you've been here 10 years.

That's amazing.

- I know.

It feels like it's gone by so fast, it's crazy.

- So you came straight from, you went to Berklee, right?

- I did, yeah.

- School of Music in Boston.

Did you come from Boston here?

- I did come straight from Boston.

So I grew up in California, went all the way across the country to Berklee.

I was there for two years about, which is, you know, it's a college and people stay for four years and get the full degree, but a lot of people who go wanna get out on the road like me.

So yeah, it was a pretty typical thing that I did where I go for two years and then move straight to Nashville.

- You know, Nashville does feel like, I mean it's a big city, but it sometimes feels like it operates like a small town- - Definitely, yeah.

- Very relational.

- It's so true.

- Have you learned that?

- Yeah, I think I was like so surprised when I first moved here just at like, you know, how kind of like close-knit the community is here and at first I found it hard to like, you know, find my way, meet my people, make friends, but then once I found like my group of friends and people who I played music with, it was so wonderful, and now looking back I'm like, "Wow, I've been making music with some of these people for over a decade and it's just so cool to look back and I'll go to events now and I feel like I know everyone in the room and it's just wonderful to be part of that.

- Well, everyone is excited when you walk into a room, so I'm so glad to hear that.

And, you know, I think it's interesting that you grew up in the Bay Area.

I know that's an area that's really true to authentic music, but for some reason I just never thought of bluegrass being a northern California- - Yeah, it's kind of funny.

I mean, nobody really associates, especially California and like Silicon Valley don't think of bluegrass, but I kind of stumbled into playing this style of music.

Basically it goes back to my grandfather who was, he was a farmer in Illinois and he was stationed in the Air Force down south and heard Hank Williams, and through that got really into like going to the Grand Ole Opry and then fell in love with Flatt and Scruggs and got a banjo and started playing the banjo, so my dad grew up on the farm and he had a family band with his dad and my grandma and his two sisters.

So they would travel all around Illinois to different bluegrass festivals just for fun.

And I still have all these tapes my grandma would, she was like a taper, and she would tape all these bluegrass shows.

So I have a bunch of them at home that I love to kind of revisit.

They're really scratchy and crackly, but it's pretty cool.

But then when my dad finished college, he heard about all this exciting bluegrass music happening in the Bay Area, like David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, Tony Rice was out there recording some of the most important albums that we all look to, especially for bluegrass guitar.

So he just on a whim moved out to California and was gonna go into, I think finance, he had a degree in agricultural economics as a farm kid.

And then stumbled into a music store in Palo Alto and they needed a banjo teacher, like a banjo expert.

So he ended up teaching music instead, and he still does that to this day.

- Does he really?

- Yeah, you can take lessons from my dad Jack Tuttle online.

He does Zoom classes like six days a week.

- And is it all instruments?

'Cause he plays a lot of instruments, such as you.

- He does, yeah.

Yeah, so you can, he teaches fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar.

If you wanna learn bass, he can teach bass too, or he is even like taught voice lessons to people.

- Wow.

So when did you join the family band?

You started playing like at eight, but when did you join your family band?

- Yeah, I mean I'm the oldest kid so I was the first one to start playing music.

I have two younger brothers, and then after a couple years I was playing guitar and my younger brother Sully wanted to pick up the guitar.

And probably by the time I was maybe 12 or 13, both of my brothers were playing music.

And it started out just so we would get together with some of my dad's students who were around the same age as us, and we'd play shows at the little pizza parlor down the street or just kind of local shows.

And then we started playing more and more as a family and then, you know, getting booked at some Northern California festivals.

And then eventually, we even got a booking agent and we like traveled east for a couple festivals back east, which was always really exciting.

And I remember when I was about 12 years old, I was playing with one of my dad's students, this girl Frankie, and she played the banjo, and Rhonda Vincent heard her playing and singing and hired us to come out to Missouri to her family's bluegrass festival, the Sally Mountain Festival.

So that was really cool and the first time I got to meet Rhonda, and now I get to see her around Nashville, which is awesome.

- That's right.

Well, there's so many people that you've been collaborating with, and, you know, I wanna talk to you a little bit because you sort of broke out as being the first female guitar winner, right?

But champion recognized by the International Bluegrass Association and that had to be so special to you.

I know you got that award in 2017, 2018, but then there were a number of women that along that same time that also were honored in their categories.

What was that like for you to be recognized by an organization that is really true to bluegrass music?

- Yeah, well it was amazing 'cause I've been going to the IBMA since I was a little kid and we were just talking about Sierra Hull.

- Yep.

- I met her as a little kid.

We both did this Kids on Bluegrass thing when we were probably 11 or 12 years old.

And she's become one of my good friends in Nashville and we get to play music together pretty frequently.

So it just was so cool to feel the support of the community that I really grew up in.

And also, look to the other people who are nominated, who are all kind of my guitar heroes and the people who have won it in the past and be like, "Wow, I can't believe I'm getting this honor that has been given to some of the people who really influenced me to do what I do today."

And then as the first woman to have won the award, I think it was so validating 'cause I felt like as a woman coming up playing guitar, you know, at times I felt like there was this extra scrutiny on me when I was the only woman in a lot of my guitar classes at Berklee or the only woman in a jam session, or on stage in an all-male band.

And even if people weren't judging me differently from the men, I still felt this kinda like microscope on my playing, like, I can't make a mistake, or else I'm gonna, you know, I need to prove myself extra.

So it was just very validating in that way.

- Well, and I just think, you mentioned Sierra, big fan of Sierra.

I've known her also since she was about 12.

And then you started playing with a lot of those ladies, those first ladies of bluegrass.

What was that like?

- It was pretty magical.

I think there's like a special thing that happens when we're all in a room together playing music.

And I love how intergenerational the band is.

You know, Alison Brown was the first woman to win any instrumentalist award at the Bluegrass Awards.

And I don't know the exact year she won it, but she said she won it and then there were 10 years and then Missy Raines won bass player.

So she jokes on stage that she felt like Yoda or someone kinda like on this island waiting for the next one to come along.

But it's really cool, you know, we all share our experiences with each other as women playing this kind of music, and you know, we all face a lot of the same challenges, but you can also see how much progress has been made for girls now coming up playing this style of music.

They're not facing the same hurdles.

- Right, so what has been different for you living in Nashville than living on the coast?

- Well, I miss the beach.

It's a pretty long way to an ocean here in Nashville.

We're pretty landlocked.

I think it's like a different culture in a way.

I feel like California is quite different from Tennessee in a lot of ways.

But the first thing I noticed walking around when I moved to Nashville, I'm like, "Everyone is so friendly."

Like I'll go to the grocery store and I get in like a long conversation with someone.

And I'm a bit more of like a reserved person.

So it took me a while to get that kind of Southern hospitality thing going.

But now I really enjoy it, and like, especially my mom who's very, she's very outgoing and bubbly.

She comes here and she's like, "I love it here.

Like, no one in California is this friendly to me."

And she'll like get into a conversation with someone she just met for like an hour.

But yeah, I also think it goes back to what you were saying before about like the small town mentality, and everyone, I think it does take like a long time to build those relationships here because it is such a kind of like, you know, tight-knit family almost in the music scene.

- Well, it really is.

And it's just such a, but it's such a beautiful place to live, you know?

- Totally.

- Just because of the people.

One of the things I wanna talk to you about, 'cause you're having an amazing trajectory now.

I mean, it's just, you've won like Best Album of the Year, right?

The Best Bluegrass, a Grammy, you won a Grammy two years in a row.

- Yeah.

- Which is phenomenal.

And your songwriting, your songwriting is just so incredible.

- Well, thank you.

- It's very meaningful.

It feels very personal.

- [Molly] Thank you.

- Well, I just wanted to ask you a little bit about that.

In fact, I wanna ask you a couple of, about a couple of specific songs, I love, "You Didn't Call Me by My Name."

- Oh, thanks.

- And, "When You're Ready," "Good Enough."

All those seem so personal.

- Thanks!

- What is it about songwriting that just appeals to you?

- I mean, I think for me, it's like when you hear a song that someone else wrote and you feel like this is about me and my life.

And then all of a sudden you're like, "I'm not alone, because we are all experiencing these same," sometimes very specific feelings and things that happen to us.

And then you hear someone else singing about it and you're like, "Wow, that happened to them too.

That's crazy."

And you can totally relate.

And so I do try to like, you know, infuse my life and personal details into my song in hopes that someone else will hear it and be like, "Wow, I didn't know someone else felt like that too."

Or, "Now I'm not alone."

And that really helps you.

And I feel like part of the reason I moved to Nashville is 'cause it's such a songwriter town and so many of my favorite songwriters of all time have made records here and live here, yeah.

- So another song is "Million Miles."

That one's so visual.

How did you write that?

- That has a really funny story that went with it.

So I was writing songs with my friend Steve Poltz, who's a wonderful songwriter here in Nashville.

And he's a fellow Californian, he's from San Diego and moved here around the same time as me.

We got together and we're writing songs.

He's a very prolific writer.

So I think we wrote like two or three songs in one session.

And then he was telling me about how he used to write songs with Jewel and like a lot of her most well-known songs, they actually wrote together.

And he was like, "You know, there's this one song that I really love, it's called 'A Million Miles.'

And we started writing it, we wrote like a verse and a chorus and we never finished it."

He just starts playing it for me.

He's like, "Why don't I send you a demo of this and you finish it?"

So it was kind of wild.

So I finished writing the song and then we recorded it and then I was like, "Well, I never actually, I don't know how to get in touch with Jewel.

Like, how do I get her approval?

'Cause she like is a co-writer on this song."

And I sent it to him and I didn't hear back, didn't hear back, it was getting down to the wire 'cause we wanted to put the song out.

And finally, she heard it and she liked my additions luckily.

And then we actually got to sing it together at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado.

After the record came out, Jewel was kind of hanging out at the festival and her and Steve got up on stage with me and we sang it together.

- Wow!

- Which was a little crazy.

So it took, I don't know how long it took for the song to be finished, but many years.

And then finally it all came together.

- What is your process then when you write a song?

- It really depends.

Like, I feel like I can start from a chord progression, a melody line, or a lyric.

A lot of times I might brainstorm like what I want to write about, like a message or a title of the song, I feel like here in Nashville I've really learned from other songwriters to have like a hook.

Like, people are always throwing around hooks.

Like, "I got this cool hook" and that'll usually end up being the title of the song, and then you kind of build it.

You're like, "Well, here's like a cool spin we could put on this little phrase, or a cool way to kind of take a common saying and tip it on its head."

So that's a really fun way to write songs.

And I feel like I can go throughout my day and see, get little song ideas here and there and write them down on my phone.

Or sometimes I'm about to fall asleep and something will pop into my head like right before I'm about to start dreaming, and then sometimes it's cool and sometimes I wake up, and I'm like, "That made no sense."

But I do like to have a little list of ideas on my phone.

And that way when I sit down to write a song and I feel totally stumped, I have writer's block, I can go back and be like, "Well, that's what I thought of last week, and maybe that could be cool."

- I do have to just stop right now because this show is called, "Clean Slate."

So one of the premises of the idea is just what would you do with a clean slate?

And, you know, the more honest and open, and it could be about you, it could be about your community.

- Oh, interesting.

- It could be about what you hope for our world.

I mean, what would you do with a clean slate?

- A totally clean slate.

That's interesting.

- Yeah.

- Well I feel like, you know, in today's world we're all like, things feel so divided.

I feel like, you know, we're going into an election year that's been on my mind and I feel like if we all had a clean slate and could just talk together and work out our differences in like a normal way, like we're talking right now, you know, that would be really helpful I think for everyone.

- I like that.

- I feel like a lot of times we all want the same things but we've become so, we're all coming at it from different angles and have different ideas about how things should go.

- Yeah, I love that, I love that.

So, Molly, one of the things I love about the PBS special that you did at the Analog, first of all, I love that space, it just feels so intimate.

- Me too, it's so beautiful.

- And the audience was so, it was such an electric show that you did and the audience just loved it.

You did some fun covers in that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Can you share a little bit about your taking those kind of classic rock songs and turning 'em into an amazing bluegrass acoustic?

- Oh thanks.

I love taking songs from totally different genres, then kind of imagining how they would be played on bluegrass instruments.

Like, we played that song, "She's a Rainbow" and I just learned the piano parts and then everyone else is kind of filling in the other parts of The Rolling Stones, that The Rolling Stones guys are playing.

And so that's really fun.

And I feel like it's like a cool way to cover a song because it's instantly gonna sound different from the original.

And that's what I like about covers is when you hear a song, you're like, "Whoa, I didn't know it could be played in that way."

- Yeah, yeah.

I saw you in New Orleans at the Jazz Festival.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- Which was such a fun show.

- Thanks.

- But it also was, I mean, it was in front of a huge audience.

- It was wild, yeah.

They put us on the main stage right before Chris Stapleton.

So we were, we got off stage and the guy who runs the festival came up and was like, "You just played in front of 40,000 people."

And we were like, "What?"

Because when you're looking out, you know, you see all the people, but I can't like approximate how many people is that, you know, I have no idea.

And especially on like a big stage like that where it's just this kind of expansive crowd, it almost feels the same as playing in front of, you know, 4,000 people, 'cause it's like you can't, your brain can't even fathom how many people that is.

So I think we all knew it was like a very huge honor to be, to have that slot and to even be at Jazz Fest in general 'cause that's such a historic and you know, iconic festival.

- I was just so thrilled to see you, and I also had a chance to see Sierra, Sierra was playing with Bela Fleck also.

- Totally.

- And Justin Moses.

And it was just such a great weekend.

- Yes.

- But it makes me realize how important Nashville music is to our country.

- [Molly] Yeah, definitely.

- And so you're on a big tour and you're getting to be in lots of towns.

What's the best thing about performing live?

- Oh, I just love like, you know, feeling that energy from the audience, that exchange where they're giving something back to you and then you're using it to kind of feel inspired about how to talk with them, banter back and forth how to play the song with lots of energy.

And I feel like one thing that's really fun about my band is we always are doing different things, we'll be playing a song a different way, or we'll throw in a new song that goes with whatever town we're playing in, or we always just kind of mix it up, so each show feels like this unique kind of experience that we have with the audience at the same time.

And you know, touring can be hard 'cause you're doing so much travel, you get run down, but I feel like the one thing I can look forward to every day is just having that experience of being on stage for a couple hours and sharing that with the crowd.

- You know, "City of Gold" is a Grammy-winning album that has a lot of reflection back to your California roots, right?

- Yeah.

- And tell me, did you, a lot of the songs, did you co-write with Ketch Secor?

- Yeah, Ketch and I wrote I think all the songs together and on my previous record, "Crooked Tree," we had written about half the songs together.

But we just got into this flow of, I was going out with my band Golden Highway, we were touring "Crooked Tree" and I was feeling so excited.

I'm like, "I wanna just like do another record right away.

I, like, have all these new song ideas."

So we were just writing nonstop whenever we were together.

And a lot of the songs ended up being about my home state, I think, 'cause I just feel so much inspiration from the natural, it's such a beautiful part of the country.

There's so much history, was reading books that were kind of about like the California Gold Rush.

And I learned about that a lot as a kid.

So that became, you know, kind of the title track of the album is "El Dorado," which mentions the City of Gold.

El Dorado kind of means City of Gold in Spanish.

So yeah, I think some of it was feeling nostalgic for California, but also wanting to, so many bluegrass songs are about geographical parts of the country.

So many of them are about historical events that happened.

And I thought it could be fun to take those themes but make it more of like a Western album.

- Yeah, it's so fun.

- Thanks.

- I love it.

So are you and Ketch an item?

- We are.

- Okay.

Can you share a little bit about that?

- Yeah.

- We love Ketch.

- Yeah, well, so I love, you know, being in a relationship with someone who I also feel like so creatively inspired by.

We started out just as friends playing music together and writing songs together.

But now it's great 'cause we can, you know, we do the same thing.

We both tour so we can understand each other's lifestyles in that way.

But also like write a song together in our day-to-day life, which is a wonderful way to kind of like weave together those passions.

- Yeah, oh it's great, it's great.

And I love your band.

Your band is just such a talented group of musicians.

- Yeah, I love them, they're the best.

- Tell me about your band.

- Yeah, so my band is, well it's called Golden Highway, which was a name I thought of when I was making my record "Crooked Tree."

I wanted to, you know, set it apart from the work I've done before, which is always, I've recorded stuff under just my own name, Molly Tuttle.

And this, since it was a bluegrass album, I thought it would be fun to have like a band name, 'cause that's so common in the bluegrass world, going back to like Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys.

- Right.

- And I was thinking about his band name and he was kind of the father of bluegrass, he created the genre for those who aren't familiar and his band name really named the genre, that's why we call it bluegrass, 'cause he was Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys.

And his band name was a nod to his home state of Kentucky.

And I thought, "Well, it'd be fun to have my band name be kind of like, you know, linked to California, the Golden State."

So I was like, golden, something maybe gold, gold road, or gold this or that.

So finally I thought of Golden Highway, which I was like thinking about the highway that I always used to take to go to this bluegrass festival in Grass Valley, California, which is the Father's Day Bluegrass Festival.

It was my first ever time going to any kind of music festival.

I went with my dad when I was 10 years old and we would always take Highway 49, which is also called the Gold Rush Highway.

And so that's kind of how Golden Highway came about.

But as far as the band members, they're all just some of my favorite all-time favorite musicians.

And we've all been friends for a long time.

Kyle Tuttle plays banjo and he's someone I met, weirdly enough, we have the same last name.

We like to joke on stage that I'm his mom or we're married and divorced, and I let him keep my last name, or we make up all kinds of stories that I think some people actually really take to heart and believe, even if we try to make it sound like a joke.

So, but there's no relation.

I met him in, he went to Berklee as well, and I met him kind of around the Boston scene.

And then Dominick Leslie, he grew up just like me going to all these bluegrass festivals.

I don't even remember the first time I met him, but it must've been quite a long time ago.

Bronwyn and I met at Berklee, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes plays fiddle with me.

And we were at Berklee at the same time.

And then Shelby Means, we I think we met in Boston.

She was in a band based out of Boston.

So we met when I was living there, she plays bass in the band, but I think we became good friends once I moved to Nashville and she lived nearby and we used to always meet up for bike rides, go do yoga together.

And then it was like, well, it'll be fun to be in a band with all my friends and also people who I extremely admire.

They're all my heroes.

And I feel like each one of them has such a unique, distinct personality on their instruments and just their performances on stage.

And that's what I really wanted to highlight in the band, just these individual, like, brilliant musicians who each have a totally unique voice on their instruments.

- Oh, I couldn't agree more.

I'm so sad that we're out of time.

- Aw.

- But thank you.

- Thank you for having me.

- Oh my goodness.

It's been such a treasure and you are such a treasure.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for the time.

We'll keep looking for you.

- Aw, thanks, Becky.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

♪ I've thrown away the compass, done with the charm ♪ ♪ I'm tired of spinning around ♪ ♪ In one direction ♪ - Molly, what is your favorite thing to do in Nashville?

- Ooh, my favorite thing to do in Nashville, I think, I mean, I'm gonna have to go with go see live music.

That's kind of the best thing about this town.

And my favorite venues would probably be the Station Inn.

I love going there.

I love going to Dee's Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison for like a fun night out.

They always have great live music.

And then of course the Ryman.

- Do you sing karaoke?

- I do, badly.

You would think that as a professional musician, performs on stage all the time, I would be maybe proficient at karaoke.

I've literally had them turn off the song midway through because I was bombing so badly.

My problem is I pick songs that I think I know and then I get on stage and I realize I like don't really know how they go.

(both laughing) - Well, it sounds like fun.

- Yep.

(soft music)