“WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO ME IS A GUITAR THAT I CAN TAKE ON THE ROAD AND TAKE ANYWHERE”
Bluegrass belongs to a long tradition but having the weight of history on its shoulders does not preclude it from existing as a radical art form. This musical style – light on its feet, effervescent, joyous, on occasion elegiac and melancholy – has been woven together from myriad influences, a uniquely American story of many cultures and different voices all bringing something to the party in a sound that welcomes it all.
That, too, is true of the players and their abilities. There’s a virtuosic element to the bluegrass rank-and-file, among whom we’ll find latter-day phenoms in the likes of Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle – players whose technical ecstasy brings lightning into a largely acoustic space. But if you know three chords and count to four, the chances are you can play along, too. And Tuttle says you would be made to feel right at home.
Her new album, , is a thoroughly modern bluegrass record, which is to say it mines the history of the art form for its sonic vocabulary and then contextualises it in the 21st century. It is explicitly bluegrass
