Molly Tuttle knows a good thing when she hears it. The new album “City of Gold” by Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway is a quick follow-up to last year’s “Crooked Tree” which won the grammy award for bluegrass album of the year. For the new album she returns with the same crew, her crack backing band, producer and dobro whiz, Jerry Douglas and she’s co-written all the songs with Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show, all of which makes for an even better album than last year.

Paired with a keen ear for writing provocative songs, her band’s great fiddle, banjo and mandolin picking shines on songs about the gold rush, legalizing weed and, with Dave Matthews adding his vocals, a heartbreaking song about the end of a relationship.

Recasting Alice in Wonderland into a bluegrass ballad is just one of the innovative ways Tuttle brings her Americana music into the mainstream. Her vocals have the confidence of a band that has been touring constantly.

Tuttle’s virtuoso flat picking guitar style drew attention early on when, as a twentysomething, she was the first woman to win the Bluegrass Association’s Guitar Player of the Year award and now with two stellar albums in a row she has truly discovered gold.

  

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