I had the chance to talk with 2-time Grammy Award winner Molly Tuttle ahead of her performance at The Englert on November 16th. We spoke about her 2026 Grammy nominations for her most latest album “So Long Little Miss Sunshine“, covering The Pogues “Fairytale of New York” with Ketch Secor, and everyone’s new favorite indie band Geese.
Logan Melia: How are you doing?
Molly Tuttle: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
Logan: Thank you so much for taking time for me. You’ve had an incredibly busy week. Congratulations on the two Grammy nominations.
Molly: Oh, thank you. So exciting.
Logan: Best Americana Performance, “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark”, Best Americana Album, “So Long Lone with Sunshine”, and you’re touring that record. It’s a phenomenal, phenomenal piece of work there. How long was that process for you, writing the songs, putting it together, staying in the studio?
Molly: I started writing some of the songs like four or five years ago. That’s where the seeds of this album started. And then I just kind of kept working on it. And then in the last year, I kind of felt like I had this burst of writing a bunch of songs that ended up on the record and then going back to some older ones and kind of, you know, rewriting sections, editing them a little bit to get them all to where I was really happy with them. And then we went into the studio last fall. spent about a month from the pre-production process to actually tracking all the songs. Went in with Jay Joyce who produced the record and we got together whenever I was off the road and then we had about a week of tracking and then mixed it. I think we got everything finished in last January. So it’s been a long time coming and it was really an exciting and fun process, I worked a lot on this record. I probably spent more time on it than any other record I’ve ever made, so that was just a fun process. I just love being in the studio. I’m just excited for what’s next and certainly excited to be going to the Grammys.
Logan: Oh, absolutely. Now, when you’re writing these songs, are there any that just fall out of the sky? Is it a really laborious process for you?
Molly: It really varies song by song, some you kind of have to work more to get them to a good place and then some of them just kind of happen all in one sitting. One of the songs on the record, “Old Me New Wig”, which is where we got the title for the album from, a line in that song. That one just kind of happened in one sitting, but some of the others spent, I like came back to them years later and just kind of kept working at it.
Logan: You’re touring this new album and You’re still playing some songs from The Golden Highway. How do you create these set lists where you balance the old with the new?
Molly: Yeah, we’re kind of playing about half the new record and mixing in different ones. There are certain songs off the new record that we still haven’t played live and we’re kind of workshopping them. At soundcheck, we’ll be working on a new song and getting it ready for the stage and so that leaves a lot of room in the set to work in stuff from all my other albums, last two Golden Highway records. Those had kind of become staples of my live shows the last few years so it was fun kind of reworking a bunch of those songs with the new band. And we always do like an acoustic portion of the set as well. So a lot of the set will be with drums and sometimes Ellen Angelico, who’s playing multiple different instruments. She’s playing Dobro, electric guitar, and pedal steel. Mary Meyer is another multi-instrumentalist, she plays mandolin, fiddle, and keys. And then we have Vanessa McGowan who plays upright and electric bass and Megan Jane will be on a full drum kit. And then for the acoustic portion, well, it’s all kind of acoustic because I’m always playing acoustic guitar and Mary’s off and on mandolin or you’ll have the Dobro, but we strip down to do a little one mic portion of the set. And that’s when Megan might go to a washboard or maybe we’ll just do like an acoustic trio portion of the set some nights. And so it’s really fun, it’s like a varied set list each night. I feel like it just allows for so many dynamics within the show to kind of, have some of the bluegrass tunes and then some of them we’ve reworked. And then there’s the new album stuff as well.
Logan: You mentioned your band, a phenomenal, phenomenal collection of musicians. I’m sure there’s so many incredible ones in your circles, but these are all the best of the best. How did you pick these specific artists?
Molly: Yeah, I reached out first to Vanessa, who’s the bassist. I reached out to her first, I’ve known her for years. And she’s had experiences being a band leader, which is often times in bands, they’ll be like the front person. And then there might be one of the other musicians who is kind of helping orchestrate all the music and putting it all together. And so she’s just knows everyone in Nashville and has all these connections. So I kind of worked with her to figure out the rest of the band, but I told her like that I would need people who are very versatile because I want to still be able to go from playing a bluegrass tune to playing like a more rockin arrangement of one of the newer songs on the record that might have a need like pedal steel or like keys and drums and this and that. So I really wanted to be able to kind of slide between different genres throughout the night when we’re playing the show. We talked about who would really work with that kind of format, and I think the next person we reached out to was Megan Jane, who’s the drummer, and I’ve actually toured with her before I toured with her in 2022 a little bit. Actually, maybe 2021. I can’t remember now. It was whenever we were coming out of the pandemic, we toured together. And so I knew I would love playing with her because I’d already played with her a bunch. And Ellen is someone I’ve known, Ellen Angelico, plays Dobro and guitar and steel. I’ve known her for many years here in Nashville, she’s worked at all these different guitar shops around town and she’s just a great multi-instrumentalist as well. And then Mary Meyer, who strangely enough, like I actually didn’t really know her before we ended up playing together, but she grew up in a bluegrass family band just like me, but she also kind of has like me branched out into all these different genres. So I feel like it’s just a perfect fit musically for her and I to play together since we both love bluegrass, but we do other stuff too. And it just makes for a really fun show because I feel like we’re all kind of on the same wavelength.
Logan: You are kind of leading the charge for this new generation of bluegrass. I mean, my 17 year old little sister is like listening to Merle Haggard now because of you and Sierra Hull and Billy Strings and all this new wave of it. Can you kind of feel the excitement about your scene coming up?
Molly: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I think bluegrass music and roots music in general or Americana or whatever you want to call it, it goes through these waves and different generations that push it into new territories. People I looked up to like Alison Krauss and Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, people who are really pioneering new ways of playing this music. It just feels like a huge honor to maybe be part of that next wave coming along, that someone might look to kind of figure out where it could go next in the next generation after this. So yeah, it just feels kind of like it’s so important to keep this music alive and keep letting it evolve.
Logan: Your artistry mixed with your phenomenal guitar playing has always put me in mind of Glen Campbell. Do you remember your first time ever hearing Glen Campbell?
Molly: Yeah, I learned about Glen Campbell when I was a kid because I loved the song “Gentle on My Mind”, but I knew it as a John Hartford song. And then of course, Glen Campbell kind of made it famous. So I listened to his version and that was the first song I ever heard Glen Campbell do. So big fan. And that was kind of how I discovered him through being a big John Hartford fan.
Logan: You just played that with Sierra Farrell, I think, right, “Gentle On My Mind”? That was a phenomenal video. You had a busy week last week. In addition to the Grammys, you released a cover of a personal favorite of mine, “Fairytale of New York”.
Molly: Yes, yeah, that was a cover I’ve been doing for a couple years now. Ketch and I, Ketch Secore is the one who I recorded it with, and we’ve sung it together for a few years. I’ve been doing these holiday shows in Menlo Park near where I grew up, and we worked it up for those shows after Shane McGowan passed, who sang the song originally with Kirstie McColl and The Pogues. We’re both big fans of the song and of Shane and The Pogues and everything, so we worked that one up after he passed away. And then it just became kind of my favorite, one of my favorites to bring back around the holidays. And we ended up recording it last year after performing it a couple times. And I’m just happy it’s out in the world to get people in the holiday spirit, even though it is kind of like a depressing holiday song. It’s not your typical cheery Christmas song, but I think that’s what I kind of liked about it.
Logan: Do you start listening to Christmas music after Halloween? After Thanksgiving? What’s your threshold?
Molly: I don’t usually listen to it very early. I feel like I wait until after Thanksgiving is probably when I can pivot on to Christmas. I don’t have that many Christmas decorations, I feel like we put up a tree and stuff, but I’m, my house isn’t like the place where you walk in and it’s like, Christmas vomit of the ornaments and everything everywhere. Ketch and I live together and he is kind of the opposite. He has a million Christmas ornaments, so we find our balance of maybe we just put it in certain rooms. I feel like it makes me feel crazy when everywhere I look there’s Christmas stuff. I think he kind of brings out the Christmas spirit in me, but we listen and put on a lot of Christmas music in the weeks leading up to it. So far we haven’t really been playing it around the house, but we did release the cover. So that’s my first contribution.
Logan: It’s quite the good contribution. It’s all a balancing act, you know?
Molly: Yes, totally.
Logan: Are you a big physical media collector? Are you a big like vinyls person or CDs person?
Molly: I have a fair amount of vinyl that I’ve just kind of acquired through the years. Most of it is people will give me vinyl or I get it from my friends. I have a lot of vinyl from friends of mine who put out records and then some of my favorites I have on vinyl. So I don’t have a massive collection, but I do love spinning records when I’m just around the house, you know, kind of puttering around. It’s just so fun to have a record on. I feel like I miss the days when we all would just sit and listen to one full record back-to-back. So that’s what it kind of brings me back to, is just appreciating a full album that someone put out. Whereas when I’m kind of like out and about, I might just be listening to music still, but kind of picking my favorite songs here and there, maybe not listening to a full record. So that’s what I like to do around the house is just pull out a record, maybe a classic one that I haven’t listened to in a while. I have Joni Mitchell‘s “Blue” is one of my favorites that I have on vinyl and Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” is another one I have, and a bunch of older ones like that, just kind of classics. I like just rifling through and picking out one that I haven’t listened to in a while.
Logan: Yeah, I mean, those are some great picks right there. What is on your playlist nowadays?
Molly: I’ve been kind of listening to… A couple different things like my playlist is always all over the place. I just found out about this band that I’ve been listening to recently called Geese, they’re like an indie rock band.
Logan: So good.
Molly: Yeah, they’re awesome. I only figured out who they were because I kept seeing their name on festival lineups and I thought it was Goose because we’ve been playing a bunch of festivals this year that Goose is on the bill. And then I kept seeing Geese and I was like, ‘What’s Geese?’. Like I’ve heard of Goose, but I haven’t heard of Geese. So I started listening to their music and I became obsessed. So I was listening to them a bunch this last week.
Logan: Oh, they are great. This is going back to kind of your beginnings a little bit here. You’re a phenomenal clawhammer player. Do you remember like the first song you really got down on clawhammer?
Molly: Yeah, the first song I ever learned on clawhammer was one called “Little Sadie”, and it’s like this old murder ballad. It’s a really creepy song so sometimes I don’t even like to sing it anymore because it’s like in the first line, he’s shooting someone. And I’m just like, it’s a creepy song. But there’s so many songs like that, the old kind of traditional songs, you don’t know who wrote them, but they tell these kind of disturbing stories a lot of the time. And some of them are really more inappropriate than others in our current day and age but that one is that one is fairly mild by comparison to some others. But that was the first song I learned on clawhammer guitar. That’s one that you can hear it. Like the Grateful Dead did it, Jerry Garcia would sing it and so many people have done it through the years. Doc Watson is another version I really like. So yeah, that was my first clawhammer guitar piece and I learned it from a guy out in the Bay Area, Michael Stadler. I had been playing clawhammer banjo but I’d never heard of clawhammer guitar and he kind of showed me that song and the tuning that I use for it.
Logan: You mentioned these storytelling songs. The storytelling songs, and you write a lot of songs about the road, it’s kind of Springsteen-y in a way. Are you a Springsteen fan at all?
Molly: A little bit. He’s actually someone I need to listen to more. I’ve been thinking about that recently. I’m like, dang, especially with like the Springsteen movie coming out. I’m like, I actually don’t know his music as well as I should. I know a few of the hits, obviously, but I’ve never really taken the time to dive in. But I’m sure once I did, it would be like a rabbit hole that I would love going down. Maybe that’s next on my agenda. There’s certain artists like that where they’re like, such iconic artists and I feel like I’ve missed them. Maybe that’s due to growing up just listening to bluegrass and then slowly figuring out like popular music when I was a little older.
Logan: Are there any other artists on that list that you can think of off the top of your head that you’re like, I need to get into these guys?
Molly: Yeah, other kind of classic artists that I feel like I haven’t fully, maybe I’ve just listened to like one or two of their records. Like Paul Simon, I feel is someone that, of course, I’ve listened to “Graceland”, but I don’t know that much of his other solo stuff. I’ve been thinking recently that I need to dig into his stuff as well.
Logan: Thank you so much for taking time with me. You can see Molly at the Englert on the 16th, later this week. I’m looking forward to a great show.
Molly: Thank you so much. It’s going to be great.
Molly Tuttle will play The Englert Theatre on Sunday, November 16th at 7:30. Tuttle will be supported by Joshua Ray Walker and Cecilia Castleman for her Iowa City debut. You can listen to “So Long Little Miss Sunshine” now, and can find tickets for her performance here.