How Molly Tuttle is breaking the bluegrass mould with her custom dreadnought guitars
Though one of the most well respected names in modern-day bluegrass, Molly Tuttle is embarking on something of a stylistic departure with her new album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine.
Still deeply rooted in the mesmerising flatpicking prowess with which the California native has earned herself two Grammys, the album sees Tuttle venturing more into the realm of pop country, swapping solos with a “constant stream of notes” for more melodic bluegrass-inspired leads – ones that are more singable.
And in a new episode of Guitar.com Originals series My Guitars & Me – the first of season three, no less – Tuttle shows off her custom dreadnought and collection of Pre-War Martins which you’ll hear on the record.
“We were talking about this for a whole year, planning this guitar,” Tuttle says as she proudly shows off her custom Martin “Crooked Tree” D-28, inspired by her third studio album, Crooked Tree. The guitar sports a set of tree branch-inspired inlays on the fretboard, culminating in a Crooked Tree logo at the end of the ‘board with Tuttle’s initials ‘MT’.
“I sent that to them as one potential inlay idea,” she explains, “and then they had this idea to make the fret markers out of branches, and make it get more and more crooked.”
Elsewhere, Tuttle showcases her Herringbone dreadnought acoustic, made by North Carolina’s Pre-War Guitars Co., which specialises in aged recreations of pre-war guitars from the ‘30s and ‘40s.
“I played a show in Ohio, and this guy came up to me and said he had all this beautiful Brazilian rosewood,” Tuttle recalls. “And he knew I liked Pre-War guitars, so he offered to send the wood to the guitar company for free, and have them build me this guitar. So it was kind of out of the blue.”
“The thing that’s interesting about the Pre-War Guitars Co. is that they age all the wood, and they also have different levels of distress that you can order, so some of their guitars they scratch up and make them look crazy. They’ve even put a bullet hole in the guitar before. They’ll chain them to a car and drag them [along].”
On the stylistic direction of her new album – which arrived earlier this month – Tuttle explains that it was her vision to stay grounded in her bluegrass roots, while experimenting with more “general” sound.
“There was a little bit of both, making sure my identity and my roots with bluegrass and American roots music still stayed a through line on the new album,” she says. “And a lot of how we did that was with the guitar playing.
“But at the same time I wanted to stretch my playing as well… I wanted to make the style a little more general, and more uniquely mine – not trying to fit into any certain mould.”
Watch the latest episode of My Guitars & Me with Molly Tuttle above.
The post How Molly Tuttle is breaking the bluegrass mould with her custom dreadnought guitars appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
