More than half her set came from the debut album of the band that came out this year, “Crooked Tree.” And like a traditional bluegrass group, the quintet lined up across the stage and burned through the material while each took their own impressive solos.
Most of the players also have their own bands but were likely lured to Tuttle because of the high quality of the operation. Boston-based Bronwyn Keith-Hines, originally from Charlottesville, Va., was last year’s IBMA fiddler of the year, is a solo artist who quit her band Mile Twelve last fall.
Glamorous standup bassist Shelby Means, a member of the Grammy-nominated bluegrass band Della Mae (who also plays in three other outfits) was just nominated instrumentalist of the year by the Americana Music Awards.
Fiery banjoist Kyle Tuttle (not related to Molly) has led his own bands, won awards and played with a number of others including Billy Strings and Greensky Bluegrass.
Lightning-fingered mandolinist Dominick Leslie is from the band Hawktail and, like the bandleader, won awards as a youngster and studied at Berklee.
So it’s a brainy, ambitious, hard-charging unit all around, which could at times call for some balance (in volume if not presentation). Every time one electrified soloist stepped up, it dominated the sound in a way that Tuttle’s remarkable style did not. That may be the nature of the higher pitched fiddle, mandolin or even banjo that reliably cuts through the collaborations, but each of those instrumentalists also got applause for solos while the band leader did not.
That may be because Tuttle is such a team player, she’s happy to step back and have her bandmates show their stuff (and turn her volume up not quite as loudly when she steps up). But for all her talent on guitar, there should be more of it on display (and better amplified) to reflect its full glory.
Tuttle at 29 has even more to offer than her fingerpicking. An engaging personality on stage, she is also an able songwriter and better than average vocalist. A shot of show biz confidence could help her lead the band more dynamically. On the other hand, it might detract from the modest, almost shy personality that makes her so appealing — and human — on stage.
Her strongest songs were personal — the roads to her first bluegrass fests as a child in “Grass Valley,” her anthem to the innate strength of those who are different in “Crooked Tree”; her lament of her changing home city in “San Francisco Blues.”
This was a band that could supercharge and deconstruct classics from Bill Monroe (“Wheel Hoss”) to John Hartford (“Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie”). And throwing in a couple of songs from her pandemic-era album of covers, she slowed down and made sparkle The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” and, more surprisingly, Rancid’s “Olympia, WA.”
Her all inclusive anthem “Big Backyard,” with which she closed her encore, deserves to be widely known. But she started the encore with something from the locals, Seldom Scene, with their lovely “Wait a Minute” that she knew as a child.
And for the encore instead of the individual amplification, they gathered around a single microphone to harmonize and step up for solos — which seemed to instantly solve any issues of volume equity as well.
It must have been daunting for the opening act, DownRiver Collective of Nashville, to perform before such mastery. But the five-piece collective of Belmont College students and dropouts acquitted themselves fine with their own originals and the requisite bluegrass cover of a rock song — in their case, Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”
The setlist for Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway at the Birchmere was:
- “She’ll Change”
- Nashville Mess Around”
- Wheel Hoss”
- Castilleja”
- The River Knows”
- She’s a Rainbow”
- San Francisco Blues”
- Side Saddle”
- Sleepy-Eyed John”
- Super Moon”
- Dooley’s Farm”
- Over the Line”
- Grass Valley”
- Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie”
- Olympia, WA”
- Crooked Tree”
- White Freight Liner Blues”
- Take the Journey”
- “Wait a Minute”
- “Angeline the Baker”
- “Big Backyard”