Molly Tuttle is a flatpicker, singer, and songwriter from Palo Alto, California, now based in Nashville. In 2017 she became the first woman to win IBMA Guitar Player of the Year, and she won it again in 2018. Her band Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album two years in a row, for Crooked Tree in 2023 and City of Gold in 2024. She has released five studio albums.
Why Tuttle matters
Tuttle changed who gets to be the guitar hero in a bluegrass band. She did it with a right hand that can crosspick at speed, switch to clawhammer, and then play a straight Tony Rice break. She also writes songs that jams have picked up fast. A new picker in 2026 may learn a Tuttle crosspicking pattern before a Rice one, and that shift happened in under ten years.
Life and career
Tuttle was born on January 14, 1993, in Santa Clara, California, and grew up in Palo Alto. Her father, Jack Tuttle, taught bluegrass instruments at Gryphon Stringed Instruments for thirty years. She started guitar at age 8 and played on stage with her father at age 11. At 13 she recorded The Old Apple Tree, a duet album with him, in 2006.
At 15 she joined the family band, The Tuttles with AJ Lee, with her brothers Sullivan and Michael. The band released Introducing the Tuttles in 2011 and Endless Ocean in 2013. She entered Berklee College of Music in 2012 on merit scholarships and received the first Hazel Dickens Memorial Scholarship from the Foundation for Bluegrass Music. From 2014 to 2016 she played in the Goodbye Girls.
Tuttle moved to Nashville in 2015. In 2016 the IBMA gave her the Momentum Award for Instrumentalist of the Year. Her EP Rise came out on Compass in 2017. That fall she won IBMA Guitar Player of the Year, the first woman to do so. She won it again in 2018, the same year the Americana Music Association named her Instrumentalist of the Year. Her first full album, When You’re Ready, came out on Compass in 2019. A covers album, But I’d Rather Be with You, followed in 2020.
In 2021 she formed Golden Highway with Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on fiddle, Dominick Leslie on mandolin, Shelby Means on bass, and Kyle Tuttle on banjo. Their first album, Crooked Tree, came out on Nonesuch in April 2022. Jerry Douglas and Tuttle co-produced it. Guests included Billy Strings, Gillian Welch, Sierra Hull, Margo Price, and Dan Tyminski. It won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2023, and Tuttle was nominated for Best New Artist. The IBMA named the title track Song of the Year in 2023. City of Gold (Nonesuch, 2023) won the same Grammy in 2024. Golden Highway ended in May 2025.
Her fifth album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, came out on Nonesuch in August 2025 with Jay Joyce as producer. It mixes pop, country, rock, and bluegrass, with solo guitar throughout. An acoustic EP from the album followed in September 2026.
Playing style
Tuttle’s crosspicking is the sound most pickers know her for. She rolls a flatpick across three strings, most often the fourth, third, and second, to get a banjo-like ring. She uses two patterns. Down-up-down-up gives a more defined sound. Down-down-up gives a smoother one. Each pattern repeats twice in a bar of 4/4, which makes eight eighth notes. She plays with rest strokes, where the pick comes to rest on the next string instead of bouncing off. That gives her a big, full tone at low volume.
Her second trick is clawhammer guitar. She found it through old-time music and Gillian Welch. She holds her hand in a loose claw, strikes down with the index fingernail (sometimes the middle), and catches the low strings with the thumb. For those tunes she uses a modified open G tuning, D G D G C D, which gives a modal sound. Take the Journey is one of her clawhammer pieces, and she has taught it on video.
She uses a Dunlop JD JazzTone 20 pick. Her main guitars have been a Pre-War Guitars dreadnought in torrefied spruce and Honduran mahogany, and a Thompson D-BA custom with an Adirondack top and Brazilian rosewood. One reviewer called it a “free-range right hand” that moves from clawhammer to Clarence White syncopation to crosspicking within one song.
Influences and legacy
Tuttle learned from her father first. Her biggest guitar influence is Tony Rice. She has taught Rice’s style for Acoustic Guitar magazine and calls Church Street Blues her favorite Rice record. Clarence White shows up in her syncopated lines, and Gillian Welch led her to clawhammer.
She has played beside Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Sierra Hull, Jerry Douglas, and Billy Strings, who played on Crooked Tree and who names her among the guitarists he admires. She sang on Strings’s Turmoil & Tinfoil and Home. As the first woman to win the IBMA guitar award, she opened a door that had stayed shut since the awards began.
Signature tunes and songs
Crooked Tree Take the Journey She’ll Change Dooley’s Farm Super Moon White Freightliner Blues Wildwood Flower.
Essential recordings
Rise (Compass, 2017) When You’re Ready (Compass, 2019) Crooked Tree, with Golden Highway (Nonesuch, 2022) City of Gold, with Golden Highway (Nonesuch, 2023) So Long Little Miss Sunshine (Nonesuch, 2025)
Awards and honors
IBMA Momentum Award, Instrumentalist of the Year (2016) IBMA Guitar Player of the Year (2017, 2018) Americana Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year (2018) IBMA Collaborative Recording of the Year, Swept Away (2018) IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year (2022, 2023) Grammy Award, Best Bluegrass Album, with Golden Highway, Crooked Tree (2023) Grammy nomination, Best New Artist (2023) IBMA Song of the Year, Crooked Tree (2023) Grammy Award, Best Bluegrass Album, with Golden Highway, City of Gold (2024)
Watch and listen
Tuttle explains and demonstrates crosspicking. Watch the pick roll across three strings and listen for the two different patterns.
Tuttle plays White Freightliner Blues and talks about switching between rhythm and lead. Listen for the rest strokes in her lead lines.
What to learn from Tuttle
Learn White Freightliner Blues from the video above. It is a jam standard, and her version shows how rhythm and lead fit together. The technique to steal is her three-string crosspicking roll. Hold a G chord. Pick the fourth, third, and second strings with down-up-down-up strokes at a slow tempo. Let the pick rest on the next string after each stroke. When it feels even, try the down-down-up pattern and hear the difference. Then move the roll to C and D. That roll works as a fill, a backup pattern, and the base of a break.
Sources
Molly Tuttle, IBMA award recipients Molly Tuttle, Wikipedia Crooked Tree (album), Wikipedia Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, Wikipedia About, Molly Tuttle Molly Tuttle, Nonesuch Records Molly Tuttle, Compass Records Video Lesson: Molly Tuttle Breaks Down Her Deft Right-Hand Techniques, Acoustic Guitar Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway’s Crooked Tree Is an Important Bluegrass Touchstone, Acoustic Guitar Molly Tuttle’s Essential Tony Rice Albums, Acoustic Guitar Molly Tuttle Always Leaves a Mark, The Bluegrass Situation Turmoil & Tinfoil, Wikipedia Home (Billy Strings album), Wikipedia
Related players
See the guitar players hub and the guitar guide for more flatpickers. Tuttle learned from Tony Rice and Clarence White. Billy Strings is her closest peer, and the two have recorded on each other’s albums. Courtney Hartman and Rebecca Frazier are two other women leading bands from the guitar chair. Her Golden Highway fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes has her own page.