Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Molly Tuttle - Home Concerts, Volume 1, Nashville, TN, 1-6-2020 to 9-3-2020

Here's an artist I only recently discovered and am jazzed about. I was wanting to learn the Rolling Stones song "She's a Rainbow" on guitar, and I happened to stumble across a YouTube video of her playing the song in a solo acoustic format. I was so impressed that I went looking for other songs she did, and found myself even more impressed. She's a guitar playing virtuoso, to the point that she won the IMBA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Guitar Player of the Year award two years in a row, in 2017 and 2018. But that's not all. She's an excellent vocalist, and a talented songwriter too. What's not to like?

Here's the "She's a Rainbow" video that I mentioned above. It's a good place to start if you want to get into her music. It starts out relatively normally, but wait until she starts soloing on her guitar. Damn, I wish I could play like that!

Molly Tuttle performs "She's A Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones from home - YouTube

By the way, if you don't like bluegrass, don't be turned off by my mention of the word "bluegrass" in that first paragraph. As I write this in 2021, Tuttle is 28 years old. She started out mostly doing bluegrass, but her musical style has evolved and diversified. Her latest album, "...but I'd rather be with you," released in 2020, is an all-covers album. On that, she does songs by the punk band Rancid, the alt rock bands the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Nationals, as well as the Grateful Dead, Cat Stevens, and more. There's very little overt bluegrass on it at all, but more of an indirect influence in her guitar playing style.

I plan on posting a few albums from her. But I'm a lover of acoustic music in general, and I'm most impressed by her solo acoustic playing, so I'm starting with a collection of her playing in that solo acoustic style. I missed her home concert material from the height of the 2020 pandemic, but I retroactively went back and found two albums worth of songs she did from that year. All of them were recorded at home from this or that Internet channel or benefit concert or the like. All of them are officially unreleased, but I only selected the ones that have very good to excellent sound quality.

You'll find a few songs here that are bluegrass-based instrumentals, but only a few. I like those, because she impresses with her guitar playing speed and melodicism. But most are songs she sings that cover a range of styles. I'd guesstimate about half are covers and half are originals. 

As an aside, if you checked out the "She's a Rainbow" video linked to above, you may have noticed she's completely bald in that. That puzzled me (since she wasn't bald in most other videos I saw of her) until I found she has a rare condition that has left her completely hairless. She wears a variety of wigs nearly all the time, causing her hair style to drastically change with each different wig, but I guess occasionally she doesn't bother. You can learn more about her here at her Wikipedia page:

Molly Tuttle - Wikipedia

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Lost Girl [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle & Tristan Scroggins)
02 The Greatest (Molly Tuttle)
03 Love Never Fails (Molly Tuttle)
04 talk (Molly Tuttle)
05 Over the Line (Molly Tuttle)
06 talk (Molly Tuttle)
07 Little Annie (Molly Tuttle)
08 talk (Molly Tuttle)
09 Keeping the Cats Happy [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle)
10 talk (Molly Tuttle)
11 When You're Ready (Molly Tuttle)
12 talk (Molly Tuttle)
13 White Freight Liner Blues (Molly Tuttle)
14 Beaumont Rag [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle & Billy Strings)
15 talk (Molly Tuttle)
16 Angeline the Baker [Instrumental] (Molly Tuttle)
17 talk (Molly Tuttle)
18 Olympia, WA (Molly Tuttle)
19 talk (Molly Tuttle)
20 Take the Journey (Molly Tuttle)
21 talk (Molly Tuttle)
22 Mess with My Mind (Molly Tuttle)
23 talk (Molly Tuttle)
24 Fake Empire (Molly Tuttle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266691/MollyT_2020_HmeConcrtsVol1NshvilleTN__1-6-2020_to_9-3-2020_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure when or where the cover photo is from, but I've found it with some articles about her that date to the early part of 2020.

1 comment:

  1. I'm really enjoying these Molly Tuttle tunes, I wasn't aware of her before. She can really play that guitar. And I know you're going on vacation but you might want to know that many of the "talk" clips introduce songs that are somewhere else in the playlist. "23 talk (Molly Tuttle)" on volume 1, for instance, introduces "Good Enough" which is #2 on the 2nd volume. That doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the music, it's just weird to hear her say the next song is a Rancid cover and then hear an instrumental that might have sprung from Stephen Foster.

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