Bio:
A virtuosic, award-winning guitarist with a gift for insightful songwriting, Molly Tuttle established herself as a new artist to watch with her boundary-breaking debut album, WHEN YOU’RE READY. What followed were dates at Telluride, Newport Folk Fest, an appearance on CBS Saturday Morning, and an enthusiastic reception both by critics and her fellow musicians.
In March 2020, the Nashville-based artist experienced the devastating tornado that tore through much of East Nashville, followed by the global pandemic. Tuttle, who grew up in California and has toured as a solo artist for years, suddenly found herself – along with the rest of the musician community – sheltering at home. She found solace in revisiting favorite songs from throughout her life in an attempt to “remind myself why I love music.” She conceptualized an idea for a record with renowned LA producer Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Andrew Bird) to be recorded over 2,000 miles apart.
Tuttle taught herself how to use ProTools, recorded and engineered all of her parts alone before sending them to Berg in Los Angeles. Berg proceeded to enlist legendary session musicians including drummer, Matt Chamberlain and keys player, Patrick Warren to add instrumentation in their respective home studios. Guest vocalists include Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor.. “This is how the astronauts do it!” she recalls Berg saying as they sent the files back and forth.
The result is 10 tracks that cross the musical spectrum and the decades, from FKA Twigs to Cat Stevens, from Rancid to Karen Dalton, that will be released as …but i'd rather be with you on Compass Records.
The songs range from a shimmering version of The National’s “Fake Empire,” to her version of the Rolling Stones “She’s a Rainbow,” all united by Tuttle’s clear, true voice, astonishing range and incredible musicianship.
“I love so many types of music, and it’s exciting to be a part of different musical worlds,” she says, “but when I’m creating, I don’t think about genres or how it will fit into any particular format – it’s just music.”
Since moving to Nashville in 2015, the native Californian has been welcomed into the Americana, folk and bluegrass communities, winning “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the 2018 Americana Music Awards. Her debut, the Ryan Hewitt-produced WHEN YOU’RE READY, stretched the boundaries of those genres and introduced her to a wider audience both here and abroad. Tuttle has continued to accumulate accolades, winning Folk Alliance International’s honor for Song of the Year for “You Didn’t Call My Name” and taking home consecutive trophies for the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year (the first woman in the history of the IBMA to win that honor).
By the age of 11, Tuttle was attending jam sessions, and as she matured, her musical tastes soon ranged from Bob Dylan and Gillian Welch to The Smiths and Neko Case. Nowadays Tuttle is influencing and inspiring her own legion of young fans.
“I love seeing any young person trying to play one of my songs or just learning something from me,” she says. “One of my goals is to inspire the next generation, especially young girls, to play guitar. I think if girls see a woman doing something, it helps them think, ‘I can do that, too.’”
But something she’s quick to point out is that it all has to come from a lot of hard work and focus.
“I still concentrate on getting a better understanding of the fingerboard, so that I have
the freedom to play more of what I hear in my head. There are endless possibilities for learning and growth on the instrument.”
That pursuit of freedom and accomplishment continues to be explored and developed on …but i'd rather be with you, which conveys a further progression of her distinctive talent and musical ambition and gives an indication of the broad scope of her talent.
“I have been working on writing for another original album and am still planning to record that this year,” Tuttle says, “but in the meantime I wanted to share these covers that have lifted my spirits, in hopes that you’ll find some much-needed joy as well.”
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“Between her expressive, crystalline voice and astounding flat picking guitar skills, Tuttle has made history…”
— Rolling Stone Country
“The person that I’m interested in is what Molly Tuttle is doing. I think she has a tremendous sensitivity for the music and there’s something about her spirit, it has a gentleness and strength in it. I like her vibe and her musicality. I performed with her and got to hear her perform at the IBMAs in Raleigh just last month. She did my favorite thing of the night. She did a version of “Rain And Snow” that was really lovely.”
— Gillian Welch
“[Molly Tuttle] sings with the gentle authority of Gillian Welch, yet plays astoundingly fleet flat-picking guitar like Chet Atkins on superdrive.”
— American Songwriter Magazine
“Her songs, singing and solos, much like her demeanor, tend to have an inward-looking elegance to them; they’re the outward expressions of a searching mind and a longtime dedication to cultivating her craft”
— Jewly Hight, NPR
“Among the most brilliant guitarists in this new generation is Molly Tuttle, who seems as effortlessly conversant when flatpicking as when playing in the clawhammer style, and who is equally gifted as a singer-songwriter.”
— Premier Guitar
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).