The Grammy-winning artist Molly Tuttle and her band Golden Highway released their new record City of Gold on July 21 on Nonesuch Records. This is a terrific new work that showcases the versatility of the band and the expansiveness of Tuttle’s musical interests. Tuttle and Golden Highway were also nominated in seven categories at the 34th Annual IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards just days before the album’s release.

A musical adventurer who plays a killer flatpick guitar, sings with the confidence of someone with many more years of experience, and writes some of the best Americana and roots music tunes coming out today, Tuttle has gathered a group of friends around her into a tight musical unit. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo), have been a part of Tuttle’s musical life for years, and the closeness of their relationship shows time and time again.

The band told BGS that the writing of the songs on the new album came out of a partnership primarily between Tuttle and modern roots music icon Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. With the tune Yosemite, featuring vocals by Dave Matthews, Tuttle and Secor show they know how to pitch a great story as two people falling out of love with each other hit the road to try and patch things up.

I’m riding shotgun through prairies and plains /You say how pretty I’m thinking how strange / It feels to follow this sinking ship down / Maybe the mountains will turn us around

When all that remains is the gas in the tank / The tread on the tires and what’s left in the bank / Sometimes the road is the best remedy / For a love that’s grown old try some new scenery / So how many more miles to Yosemite

San Joaquin has a great modern bluegrass feel. The band’s energy and drive pushes it forward while the lyrics, for a roots music tune, are both modern and timeless.

Riding on the San Joaquin / Bringing in some Humboldt green / I’m just rolling down the line / Looking for the next high time / Riding on the San Joaquin

Police banging on the boxcar door / Brakeman threw me overboard / Hit the ground and I clicked my heels / Hopped back on in Bakersfield

Tuttle told BGS that there’s a definite Old Crow influence on the tracklist…

…which makes sense given “Down Home Dispensary” is a tune on the record originally written for the group best known for hits like “Wagon Wheel.” Tuttle said she initially worried the song was “too Old Crow” for Golden Highway but is glad it ended up on the record. She and Secor got “into a good groove,” as she puts it, and churned out the tunes for City of Gold in about six months, often while driving in the car or passing around instruments during jam sessions. 

Here’s a live version of Down Home Dispensary, where Tuttle makes it clear in the intro who she is lobbying with the plea for more “modern” crops, shall we say, in the state’s agricultural program.

And it contains this great line directed at the Tennessee legislature:

Hello legislators the voters have spoken / there’s too much politicking and not enough tokin’

El Dorado is told in the first person by “Gold Rush Kate” who sings her way through the characters she has seen in her life.

Better stay away from Snake Oil Jake / He’ll fool you with a fountain pen / One look in his eyes you’ll be hypnotized / He’s got that slight of hand / He’s sleek and fat like an old tom cat / They say he has nine lives / But Snake Oil Jake sure met his fate / When they shot him down ten times . . .

I’ve seen it all the rise and fall and now I take my rest / I’m Gold Rush Kate from the Golden State / And I’m the last one left

The First Time I Fell in Love and Where the Wild Things Are also come from the City of Gold album.

Tuttle is an artist who speaks openly about her beliefs and life’s challenges. Her allyship with the LGBTQ+ community is well known in bluegrass and roots music circles as is her journey with Alopecia Areata. She was diagnosed with the common autoimmune skin disease causing hair loss on the scalp, face and sometimes on other areas of the body when she was three years old. Her website has a full page on her journey with the disease that affects as many as 6.8 million people in the U.S.

Then there is the tune on City of Gold that has a bit of a backstory. As you start listening to Alice in the Bluegrass, those of us of a certain age begin to hear cultural references you don’t really expect in roots music.

But it all becomes clear when you hear Golden Highway perform the 60s rock anthem White Rabbit, a concert favorite for the band. Here’s a live version performed by Tuttle and Golden Highway during Levitate Flannel Jam at Maine Craft Distilling in Portland, ME. The “Flannel Jam” moniker is important, because as one online commentator noted, “The flannels are jarringly awesome.” Another said he never dreamed he “would hear White Rabbit sound like a mixture of Bluegrass and Middle Eastern Folk music.” It does, and it works.

Just so we don’t go down the rabbit hole with Grace Slick, let’s wrap up this appreciation of Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway by watching them perform the old folk tune Sleepy Eyed John.

Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

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Other MTC posts featuring Molly Tuttle:

• The inventive guitar stylings of Molly Tuttle (2019)
• Molly and Flux play bluegrass like the founders intended (2022)

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Photos of Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway from the artist and record company websites.