Molly Tuttle has received much acclaim for her guitar chops, including winning the International Bluegrass Music Award’s Guitar Player of the Year twice, and also the Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award. Her fretwork, singing, and songwriting was also recognized with two Grammy Awards for Best Bluegrass Album with her previous band Golden Highway.

In addition to being a superstar of the bluegrass genre, Tuttle’s wonderful new album So Long Little Miss Sunshine shows that she can also bring engaging pop sensibilities to her music without compromising her virtuosity. In fact, her guitar playing on the album is arguably even more prominent than on her previous recordings.

This interview was for a preview article for Noozhawk.com for Molly Tuttle’s concert at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on December 7, 2025. It was done by phone on November 19, 2025. (Ebru Yildiz photo)

Jeff Moehlis: What can people look forward to at your upcoming concert in Santa Barbara?

Molly Tuttle: It’s going to be a really fun show. We have Kaitlin Butts opening up for us as well as the great artist Meels, and they’re both absolutely amazing. Then we’re gonna play songs off all my different records, but we are on tour supporting my new record So Long Little Miss Sunshine. It’s been really fun working up the new songs and playing them out there on the road, as well as reimagining some of the older material as well.

So, we’re putting on a show that really spans lots of different genres and styles, from rocking out on certain songs to stripping it down and doing some fully acoustic segments of the show as well. So, there’s just a lot of different fun and exciting moments, and it’s going to be a great night.

JM: I enjoyed listening to your new album that you mentioned, and I’m curious how did that come together?

MT: We recorded it last year in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce. We recorded it basically exactly a year ago. It’s been kind of in the works, with songs I’ve been writing for a few years and I finally felt like I had a record that I was really excited about, and material that I really loved. We went in and worked on the pre-production for few weeks and we tracked it in about a week in this cool studio called Neon Cross. Then it just all sort of came together. We finished all the music, and it was all done by last January, I guess.

JM: I know the new album is being described as a bit of a departure from your previous recordings. What inspired you to kind of explore a new direction, or do you see it as a new direction? Do you see it more as kind of a continuum of what you’ve been doing?

MT: Yeah, I mean for me it’s kind of on a continuum of my solo work that I’ve done in the past. In my mind I have my records that are Molly Tuttle, and that’s
where I’m free to explore and just try on different styles and genres.

Over the last couple years, I’ve made two records under the name Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway. When I came up with that name, it was just really like I wanted to honor the bluegrass music that I grew up with, and I wanted to differentiate it from my solo stuff as well, to create this new project where I could almost make this art that was paying tribute to my family history with my grandfather playing the banjo and my dad being a bluegrass musician. I just wanted to make music that you could play around a campfire or a bluegrass jam. So, my last couple records were that.

But this feels like more of a solo record, in that I’m just exploring sounds that feel uniquely my own, and just kind of not thinking about genre as much.

JM: I first heard of you when I saw a video on Facebook where you did a cover of “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane, which I absolutely loved. And I’ve seen on social media and elsewhere that you do a lot of other cool cover songs, many of which are before your time. Then on your new album you cover Icona Pop’s “I Love You”, which is a great song as well. I’m curious, how do you decide which songs to cover?

MT: It just comes about in different ways. Like “White Rabbit”, I worked it up for a show I was doing of songs from the Bay Area where I grew up. That’s such an iconic Bay Area song that I worked it up for that show, and just liked it so much that we kept doing it.

As far as Icona Pop, that one came about one day in the studio. We were working on some of my songs and at the end of the day Jay was like, I think it’d be so fun to cover this song “I Love It”, and just make a really slowed down kind of trippy version of it where you don’t even really recognize what song it is at first. I was like, yeah, let’s try it. We can do it tomorrow. So, I went home and learned it.

I don’t always set out to be like, I have to cover a song, or I don’t hear a song and think, “Okay, that’s one I’m going to cover.” They just kind of come about in different ways. I’ve even had songs that fans have requested me to learn, and then they’ve become some of my favorite songs to cover. So, I just kind of am open to learning new songs, especially on tour. It’s fun to mix in a few covers and songs that people have heard before.

JM: Clearly from the songs you cover and also the styles that you make music in, you have broad musical interests. What do you listen to for fun?

MT: It’s kind of all over the place. I don’t have any specific genre or band that I’m always listening to. It just depends on my mood. Like sometimes I’ll be going back and putting on some folk type music, or some of my favorite songwriters like Kate Wolf or Gordon Lightfoot. I listen to them around the house a lot. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve loved indie rock bands. The one I’ve been listening to recently is the band Geese. I really like their new record. I’ve Been checking that out recently. I think just all over the place, there’s no real rhyme or reason.

JM: I think it’s very cool that you recorded with Ringo Starr for his new country album. What was that experience like?

MT: It was so much fun. I worked with T Bone [Burnett], and we were in Nashville recording our parts, and Ringo was in LA so we’d get his vocal parts and his drum parts and then I would try playing over them and singing some harmonies each day. We worked on it for a couple weeks, and it was just a huge honor to be involved in that kind of project. Also to get to work with T Bone Burnett for the first time was something I’d dreamed of for a long time. I’ve been a fan for almost my whole life.

I think the coolest part was one where Ringo came to Nashville and did the Ryman [Auditorium] shows, and we got to play with him and I got to meet him for the first time.

JM: How has your approach to the guitar evolved over the years?

MT: When I went to college – I went to Berklee for a couple years – that’s when I really had the time to focus on the guitar, and I learned how to play up the neck and where the notes were, and I learned the theory behind it. So, that was a really big change for me because I always learned to play by ear when I was a kid. That was also when I started messing around with open tunings and finger style stuff a little bit more. So those couple years were when I really focused on the guitar, and then I guess it sort of evolved slowly since then. Just getting more confident.

I remember when I moved to Nashville, over the next couple years after that I felt like I gained confidence in my playing, and I had so much more experience performing. When you’re on stage, you kind of have to be confident or at least act confident. So, that was helpful for me, developing my own style and feeling self-assured in what I was playing. I feel like over the years I’ve just kind of gradually started to develop more of my own style with my playing.

With this last record, I feel like we really kind of pushed my guitar playing into some new territory. I’ve always kind of struggled with knowing how my guitar playing fit in with my songwriting. I’ll write a song where I don’t really know what to add on the guitar sometimes [laughs]. So, it was fun to spend a lot of time on that with this record and come up with guitar parts that were part of the songs.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

MT: I think for any aspiring musician, you’re just going to have to work hard [laughs]. It’s not the easiest lifestyle, especially if you’re a touring musician. But I think if you love it enough and if you’re like me, it’s just what I was always going to do. There was never really another Plan B. And I think that’s sort of how it has to be in a way. You have to just fully commit. And, yeah, it’s definitely super rewarding. So I think as long as you just stick with it and work hard and find your own voice, then you’ll be doing great.

JM: Thanksgiving is just a week away. Do you have any interesting Thanksgiving memories you’re willing to share, you know, maybe from growing up or maybe gigs you did around that time of year, or anything that sticks out to you?

MT: Yeah, I think for me Thanksgiving is usually the one time when I’m not doing gigs, which is really nice. I have a big family in California, and I usually go out there nowadays. A lot of times it was at my house growing up, and since I grew up in California, it’s sort of unique that we’d get to have it outside. So we always sit outside at a big table. Now that I live in the East, people are like, “Wow, you have Thanksgiving outside.” But I’m sure, you know, in Santa Barbara people can relate to that.

I don’t know if I have any specific memories except that it’s just one of my favorite holidays, and I’m going out there after this tour I’m currently on. I’m going to fly out there and see everyone again and we’ll be hosting it, so that’s going to be super fun. I definitely love celebrating Thanksgiving, and it’s really nice for me because I always feel like I get super busy in the Fall, and then it’s nice to feel grounded by seeing family and getting everyone together and just having fun together.

JM: You’re touring for this new album that came out, but I’m sure you’re also looking ahead a little bit. Do you have anything in the works that you’d like to mention that we should keep an eye out for?

MT: Yeah, we’ve been recording some fun extra versions of some of the songs on the new record that people can look forward to. I don’t know when they’re coming out yet. Other than that, just more tour dates. We announced some February tours, but they’re not really coming anywhere near Santa Barbara [laughs]. Other than that, the record is just so new that it’s all I’m really doing at the moment. But yeah, we’ll probably release some bonus tracks or something sometime soon.