Molly Tuttle shocked the bluegrass and roots music community when she announced that the next chapter in her musical career will not include her bluegrass band, Golden Highway. She also recently announced a new album coming in August, and released a catchy new pop-influenced single, That’s Gonna Leave A Mark from the forthcoming album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine.
Last week, Daniel Mullins welcomed Molly Tuttle as a special guest on Real Roots Radio, and she cleared the air about what’s on the horizon in her musical journey. (Spoiler: She’s not completely abandoning bluegrass, despite the rumors swirling on social media since her bombshell announcement.)
We are glad to present Daniel and Molly’s conversation here, as we look forward to what’s next for this talented roots music star.
Daniel Mullins: It’s been a wild first half of 2025 for you. You have a lot of new chapters on the horizon and brand new music. First off, why don’t you tell us about That’s Gonna Leave A Mark?
Molly Tuttle: Yeah, so That’s Gonna Leave A Mark is the first single off my upcoming record. I recorded this album last fall. It’s called So Long Little Miss Sunshine. I worked with the producer, Jay Joyce, and we decided that we were gonna put out That’s Gonna Leave A Mark first; it’s kind of like the most “poppy” song on the record. It’s the one that’s gonna be going to radio. I wrote it with my friend Kevin Griffin, actually, during the pandemic. A lot of these songs are kind of, you know, songs I’ve been working on for the past maybe five or so years. As you know, I made two bluegrass records in the last few years, but I’ve been kind of working on this other project on the side. I knew I wanted to make it more kind of contemporary, Americana, or like I don’t even know how to describe the genre at times – kind of like folk rock with acoustic guitar —
DM: —Adult contemporary — tie in a little of everything!
MT: Yeah, a little everything! And there’s some bluegrass in there still. Finally, I felt like I had this strong collection of songs to go into the studio with last fall, and it was really fun. It felt like a long time coming.
DM: You mentioned your two previous bluegrass albums with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. Life has different phases and stages. That was an exciting one, especially for bluegrass fans, and for your bluegrass heart as well. What does the music that you made with Golden Highway over the last few years mean to you in the totality of your career?
MT: Yeah, it was just such an exciting chapter for me. I think starting off with my record Crooked Tree, I didn’t know like what it was going to turn into at all. I knew that I had these bluegrass songs that I wanted to go in and record. Then, putting the band together, I just felt like there was such an exciting chemistry, and especially going out and playing live shows, that made me want to make another record with them. When I first started the band, I told everyone, “Let’s do this for a year. I don’t know what I’m gonna do next, like I have this other album I’m working on.”
But after the first year I think we were all like, “We don’t want to stop now!”, so we made another record, City of Gold. It’s been such an exciting and fun ride, but I think everyone had other projects they’re working on. Shelby and Bronwyn have solo records that are incredible. Kyle has a solo record and just had a baby, and Dominic always has a bunch of exciting musical projects, and also had a baby last fall. I know we’re gonna play shows again, like this isn’t “the end” of the era for good, but it’s something we know that we all can come back to when the time is right.
DM: I think fans were hoping it would be kind of like how Alison Krauss will bring Union Station together. They’ll do records and tours — make that their top priority, and then, she’ll do Robert Plant, Jerry Douglas will do all of his musical ventures as well, etc, and then, when the time is right, come back together for more exciting stuff.
MT: That’s exactly what we talked about.
DM: Glad this is “so long, for now.”
MT: Yeah, “so long for now, but not forever!” We talked about that exact thing with Alison Krauss, and you know Jerry produced our records — we even talked about it with him where he was like, “When it’s time to go, like we all set aside all this time, but we all need to do other stuff, too,” and I think that’s how all of us feel. But yeah, I’m sure we’ll be doing stuff. We’re playing our last show at RockyGrass for now. Then, I’m sure we’ll all want to make music again together at some point.
DM: With this eclectic album coming out, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, you mentioned that there are some bluegrass elements, so for a bluegrass Molly Tuttle fans that might be screaming, “The sky is falling!”, you can never abandon your bluegrass roots. They’re always going to weave their way in there, even in different contexts; it sounds like this album is going to be a good example of that.
MT: It is. Yeah, actually for the first time ever, I played bluegrass banjo on this record. I used to play it with my family band on our albums, but then I kind of stopped because I always had such great banjo players in the studio with me, but this time it was just me, so I was like, “I’m going to play some bluegrass banjo.” It’s the first time I’ve done it on one of my records. There’s fiddle, mandolin… Ketch [Secor] played a lot of the instruments, and then we included a song that I feel like could have easily been on either of my last two records. This one, Rosalee, is probably the most bluegrassy song on there, and we felt like it was important to weave in those elements as well, just to kind of bring people along, you know?
I’m not abandoning that side of what I do, especially in the live show. We’re still playing so many of the older songs. We have a little like a stripped down, totally acoustic set in the middle of the show. Yeah, I like understand the bluegrass fans’ concern, because we definitely kicked off with like the most pop song on the record. But don’t worry! Just wait and see.
DM: The music that you made before Golden Highway was more eclectic and brought in all sorts of cool influences. You mentioned that it’s kind of a more poppy song, and maybe not indicative of the whole album that’s coming out, but it does have your clawhammer guitar stylings!
MT: It does. Yeah!
DM: It still brings in a unique flair.
MT: Yeah, that’s kind of like, one of my favorite things about the new track is just that that was really unexpected for me. We were working on that one in pre-production before going in to record. One day Jay Joyce was like, “I think this one should have clawhammer guitar,” and I was like, “what are you talking about? I can’t even imagine how that would sound.” But I was like, “Okay, I’ll try it.”
So I went home and found the right tuning. I always play in the open tunings with the clawhammer style, and that even took me a while. I was like, “I don’t even know what tuning to play this in,” but in the end it came together, and it kind of like made the track for me. I was like, “that’s cool!” I like playing pop-clawhammer crossover. Haha!
DM: You mentioned being on the road and playing these new songs, as well as favorites that folks have known and loved over the last several years of your career. Talk about this new band that you have on the road. I know it’s created quite the stir. You have to have a unique and versatile group to be able to tackle all these sounds that are going to be on this new project.
MT: Totally. Yeah, that was something. I was totally like trying to figure out how this would work, because I know I still want to, you know, play my older material that works best with a bluegrass lineup. At the same time, the new record was calling for keys and drums and some electric guitar. So I was like, “How am I gonna find these people who can do both?”, and it just kind of magically came together.
Vanessa McGowan helped me put the band together. She’s bass, and so she is an amazing upright bass player as well as electric. She’s playing a little of both and singing harmonies. Megan Jane, I actually toured with back in 2021, and we did these pandemic live streams together, so I knew that she could kind of play all these different styles, and she can strip down to just the washboard on some songs. She even made like a little drum out of an old suitcase that just kind of keeps the beat going, but it’s not like a full kit. But on other songs, she is just kind of like rocking out on a full drum kit.
Ellen Angelico is someone I’ve known for a long time. She’s like one of the sweetest people I’ve met here in Nashville, but she can play basically everything. She’s playing dobro on a lot of the songs, but also plays electric guitar; we’ve started with that, but I’m hoping to get her playing pedal steel because she’s amazing at that, too and also plays banjo.
And then Mary Meyer, who some of you might know, because she was playing with Sister Sadie for a while. She’s obviously an amazing mandolin player and plays just about everything as well, so she’s kind of switching back and forth from fiddle to mandolin to keys, even like in the span of one song she’ll be using like two different instruments, which is really fun! She’s a great singer.
It’s been exciting, and it’s such a versatile lineup that I’m just excited to see how it evolves, and where we take the music and the performances.
DM: And a whole lot of girl power is always great too!
MT: Yeah! My favorite thing is that that was like, not intentional at all, but it just so happened that way. So I’m like, “This is great!” I feel like all of us get that feeling where we don’t want to be hired just because we’re women, but when it happens organically, it’s like, “Yay, this is cool.”
DM: That’s awesome. It sounds like with the versatility of all the musicians in your band, thematically, it also kind of goes hand-in-hand with the album that covers so many different things. It sounds like they’re probably in the same boat that you are, where you have so many different passions and musical interests and influences, that for all of you to be able to share those across the broad spectrum of what we call “American music” will be fantastic.
MT: Totally. Yeah, I’m so excited. We played our first show over the weekend, and it was a little nerve-wracking. We’ve been rehearsing for a couple of months now. But yeah, I think, as we, you know, settle in and just kind of start to add more material to the set, it’s going to be really exciting, because everyone is kind of into all these different styles and can play in so many different genres, so I’m excited for that.
DM: The album cover and the album teaser both kind of highlight how with you being such an advocate and spokesperson for alopecia [awareness], your use of wigs, which is awesome.
MT: Thanks!
DM: The wigs on the album cover and in the video are so cool. Why was that such a great metaphor or symbol for all the different musical hats that you’re wearing on this project?
MT: Yeah, I think. Well, the idea first came to me because I was thinking, you know, this is kind of a new chapter for me — I want to do something totally different for the cover than I’ve done for my last couple records. And then I started thinking since some of the songs are a bit more personal, maybe this is finally time to not wear a wig on my album cover. I was thinking about it more and more, and I’m like, “Well, I don’t know if I want to be not wearing the wig in all of the pictures, because I do still will wear wigs all the time, and I have fun with them.”
That’s kind of a way I’ve evolved; it used to be this thing that I would sort of hide behind and used to blend in. Now, it’s like a fun expression of my style and who I am. So I thought, “Maybe there’s a way to show that on the cover?” There’s a line in one of the songs on the album, on the song where I actually got the album title from (So Long Little Miss Sunshine), and the song is called Old Me, and it says, “I got a new wig to get you out of my hair,” so I was like, “Maybe I could do something like that!”
From there it just turned into sort of a metaphor about the music and all the different styles, because we took different songs from the album, and thought, “If this song was a hairstyle, what would it be like?” There’s kind of a hippie wig that we thought of, because there’s a song called Summer of Love that’s kind of about the sixties. There’s some country-tinged songs on the record, so you see the Dolly Parton hair. The first song is kind of this intense, moody track, so at the bottom there’s like this kind of Goth-like black hair, and I’m look really like “freaked out” in the picture.
It was fun, and I think in the end, it did kind of reflect the different styles and different colors you hear on the album.
DM: It’s so funny you mentioned that, because I know we’ve all seen the books or the collages of “Country Music Hairstyles.” It’ll just be the hair and you have to identify. “Oh, well, that’s Joe Diffie. That’s Keith Whitley. That’s Dolly Parton…”
MT: Yeah, totally! Haha
DM: You get to be all of ’em!
MT: Yeah, you won’t be able to identify me by my hair! Haha.
DM: The title, So Long Little Miss Sunshine — you mentioned trying to use your wigs to blend in when you were younger. Being a woman, do you feel that even if you didn’t have alopecia and wearing wigs, that that would be kind of a “box” that maybe you felt you need to fit in is the “Little Miss Sunshine” box?
MT: Yeah.
DM: Because that’s something that I can’t talk about as a male, but I don’t know, the Little Miss Sunshine kinda “fit women in this nice little box,” and you’ve kind of had to experience that in a different way with alopecia and with the wigs.
MT: Yeah, true.
DM: So to kind of be able to have to experience that with your hair, experience that as a woman, and then experience that as a musician, it seems like this album is kind of freeing in a lot of different ways?
MT: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I almost feel it more just like, not even thinking about the hair, but that’s like a really good point. It’s just like in my life, I’m a huge people pleaser, and I think part of that does come from being a woman, being in kind of like a male-dominated genre and industry, I think so many of us feel like we have to be nice all the time; we have to, you know, take care of everyone else’s needs and wants before our own.
I guess for this record, I liked that for the title, just because I’m kind of stepping out and doing something different that I wanted to do for a while. That’s not to say that my last couple of records weren’t authentic to who I was, or weren’t what I wanted to do in the moment, but with this one, I just felt like I was kind of stepping into a different side of who I was. It’s also just been something I’ve written about in some of the songs is just being true to who you are, and that’s a big message in a lot of my music going back for the past few years. It felt like it was just a continuation of themes that I’ve kind of explored in the past.
There is the specific song, Old Me, that’s kind of all about like letting go of this stuff that doesn’t serve you anymore, and doing what’s best for you. I’m hoping that whether you’re a woman or a man, or whoever you are, you can kind of resonate with that, but I do feel like that is something that women experience maybe to a higher degree.
DM: You mentioned that the musical aspect of being able to say, “Hey! This is something that was true to me, but this is something that I like as well and it’s okay.” You can walk and chew gum at the same time, as the expression says, and I know that’s something that is really exciting to see you tackle, because that’s something that a lot of musicians do face: people will be like, “Hey, this sounds just like what you did before?”
MT: Right.
DM: And then you’re like, “Well, I tried something different, and you gave me a lot of grief about it,” you know?
MT: Exactly. Yeah, I feel like my favorite musicians, my biggest heroes, they’re always doing something different, even in the bluegrass world. People like Béla Fleck and Alison Krauss — they just kind of follow their muse, and I tried to do that as well. With my last couple of records, Crooked Tree and City of Gold, those were a departure for me, because what I’d done before, like you mentioned, was kind of more eclectic, and just experimenting with all these different styles, but I felt really called to do that. Now, suddenly the time feels right to do this, and it’s exciting.
DM: Yeah, and even when we look at even other traditional artists in bluegrass, like Doyle Lawson—
MT: Yeah!
DM: Doyle Lawson’s music evolved all the time! More secular bluegrass, then he did the gospel, he did a capella, and then he would do like the country grass thing where he had drums on the road.
MT: Yeah, totally!
DM: Or even Rhonda Vincent, where she’ll do bluegrass and then straight country, and then do something a little different.
MT: Yeah, I love her country stuff.
DM: It’s so fun. I feel like it’s unfortunate that the way that we’re wired sometimes where we want to put people in boxes musically. That’s like, man, when you give people criticism about that, it discourages people that may want to explore those other sides as well.
MT: That’s true. Yeah.
DM: And there’s some great music folks could be missing out on, so I’m excited that you’re being bold and confident—
MT: Thank you. Haha.
DM: And you’re scratching all your musical itches. Let’s put it that way! Haha
MT: Thanks. Hahaha. Yeah, I’m excited for everyone to hear the record.
DM: When does the record drop?
MT: It comes out August 15.
DM: August 15, so we got a couple more months to wait. In the meantime, we can enjoy That’s Gonna Leave A Mark, the latest from Molly Tuttle.
MT: Yeah, and we’ll have a new single coming out very soon, so keep an eye out.
Daniel Mullins can be heard weekdays from 10:00 a.m. to noon on Real Roots Radio for the Midday Music Spectacular. The signal is available in southern Ohio on three separate AM and FM stations, and online worldwide.
Like most of his interviews, this one with Molly Tuttle can also be seen on YouTube.
