Courtesy photo.
Blending classic roots musicianship and harmonies with sounds from Western swing to Jefferson Airplane, Tuttle and her band play bluegrass for the 21st century
SUMMARY
- Fri, Dec 6 | 8:00 p.m. | UCSB Campbell Hall
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- Consecutive Grammy Winners for Best Bluegrass Album in 2022 and 2023
- Tuttle is the first woman to be named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association
- Golden Highway’s new album City of Gold celebrates the Americana roots music of Northern California
- $37.50 – $77.50 / $15 UCSB students (Current student ID required)
- VERY LIMITED TICKETS AVAILABLE!
- Tickets & Info: www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu or (805) 893-3535
“A vibrant blend of bluegrass with flashes of Old West, anchored by Tuttle’s earthy-yet-angelic vocal and the entire group’s ace musicianship.” Billboard
“Renowned for her acrobatic skill with the guitar, effortlessly moving from crosspicking to flatpicking and clawhammer strums… she plays it with the ease of meeting an old friend.” The Guardian (U.K.)
SANTA BARBARA — UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway on Friday, December 6 at 8:00 p.m. at UCSB Campbell Hall. A multi-talented songwriter and vocalist, Molly Tuttle’s spellbinding lyrics and exquisitely-crafted sound have garnered her a Best New Artist Grammy nomination and unprecedented back-to-back wins for Best Bluegrass Album in 2023 and 2024. She is lauded as “one of the world’s best guitar players” by American Songwriter and is the first woman ever named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association. Together with her band Golden Highway, Tuttle weaves modern folk, bluegrass and Americana into an eclectic yet seamless musical fabric that stretches from Del McCoury to Jefferson Airplane and beyond.
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – “Into the Wild” (Official Audio)
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway Perform “Where Did All The Wild Things Go?” (Live)
ABOUT MOLLY TUTTLE & GOLDEN HIGHWAY
On her new album City of Gold, Molly Tuttle, joined by her band Golden Highway, shares a batch of spellbinding stories that span time and place: wildly colorful fables populated by gold miners and fortune tellers, true-to-life tales of love and loss in a fast-changing world and a reimagining of Alice in Wonderland set in the backwoods of Kentucky, to name just a few. The follow-up to 2022’s Crooked Tree – a widely lauded LP that won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, with Tuttle earning a Best New Artist nomination – the Northern California-raised musician’s fourth full-length album brings those narratives to a resplendent form of bluegrass rooted in her virtuosic guitar playing.
Like Crooked Tree, whose accolades also include an International Folk Music Award for Album of the Year, City of Goldis co-produced with bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas, showcasing the extraordinary musicianship that made Tuttle the first woman ever named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association.
This time around, the Nashville-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist chose to record with her live band for the first time – a move that lends a potent new energy to her exquisitely crafted sound. “When I was a kid we took a field trip to Coloma, California, to learn about the gold rush,” says Tuttle in revealing the inspiration behind City of Gold. “I’ll never forget the dusty hills and the grizzled old miner who showed us the gold nugget around his neck – just like gold fever, music has always captivated me and driven me to great lengths to explore its depths.”
Noting that City of Gold “celebrates the music of my heart, the land where I grew up, and the stories I heard along the way,” Tuttle found her band essential to every aspect of the LP.
Throughout City of Gold, Tuttle and Golden Highway deliver the kind of high-energy and full-hearted songs primed for a joyously unified singing-along, an element that partly inspired the title to the album. “To me the words ‘City of Gold’ represent the community that the band and I have built with the people we get to play music for, and how it’s become like its own little world,” says Tuttle. “I wanted the album to celebrate that sense of community, because one of the things I love most about this music is how so much of the audience plays music as well. They inspire me to keep writing songs in the hopes that people will sing along and maybe play those songs with their friends – almost like we’re all a part of one great big family.”
ABOUT UCSB ARTS & LECTURES
Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.
Supporting Sponsors: Marilyn & Dick Mazess and Sharon & Bill Rich
Roots series Sponsors: Laura & Geof Wyatt
Tickets are $37.50 – $77.50 / $15 UCSB students (Current student ID required) – VERY LIMITED TICKETS AVAILABLE!
For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or purchase online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges 2024-2025 Season Sponsor Sara Miller McCune.
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2024-2025 season.