Grammy Award–winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist Molly Tuttle's new solo album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce, marks a sonic departure from her recent work. The album of eleven originals and one cover (Icona Pop and Charli xcx’s “I Love It”) is a hybrid of pop, country, rock, and flat-picking, plus a murder ballad. Her virtuoso guitar work takes center stage on this album more than ever, and for the first time, she introduces her banjo playing into two of her recordings.
Molly Tuttle, following back-to-back Grammy-winning albums with her band Golden Highway, along with a Best New Artist nomination, releases her new solo album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, out now on Nonesuch Records. Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Orville Peck, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson), the fifth full album from the singer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist marks a sonic departure from her recent work and features twelve new songs—eleven originals and one cover, of Icona Pop and Charli xcx’s “I Love It.”
Tuttle says, “I’ve been wanting to make this record for such a long time. Part of me was scared to do such a big departure, and that went into the album title.” Eventually she decided, “‘You know what? I’m just not going to care what people think. I’m going to do what I want.’”
Tuttle’s career has charted a course between honoring bluegrass and stretching its boundaries. One of the most decorated female guitarist alive, she was the first woman to win the prestigious International Bluegrass Music Award’s Guitar Player of the Year in 2017, at age twenty-four, and won again the following year, with nominations nearly every year since; she has also won Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award.
On her new album—a hybrid of pop, country, rock, and flat-picking, plus one murder ballad—Tuttle goes to a whole new place. Her virtuoso guitar work takes center stage on this album more than ever, and for the first time, she introduces her banjo playing into two of her recordings.“I like to be a bit of a chameleon with my music. Keep people guessing and keep it full of surprises,” she says.
So Long Little Miss Sunshine was recorded with drummer/percussionists Jay Bellerose and Fred Eltringham, bassist Byron House, and Joyce on multiple instruments. Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) also plays banjo, fiddle, and harmonica, as well as singing harmony; much of the LP was co-written with Secor, who is also Tuttle’s partner. “We spend so much time together, we live together, and anytime I have a song idea, or he has one, it’s just so easy to transition from whatever we’re doing into writing a song.”
Tuttle also conceived the artwork for So Long Little Miss Sunshine, which features multiple Mollys, each wearing a different wig except for one with nothing on her head at all. Tuttle has been bald since she was three years old due to the autoimmune condition alopecia areata; she acts as a spokesperson for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.
