Tag: molly tuttle

You Gotta Hear This: Molly Tuttle, Sister Sadie, and More Women in Bluegrass

Posted on by Editor

In this week’s edition of You Gotta Hear This, we shine a light on women in bluegrass!

We begin with “Come Alive,” from Darin and Brooke Aldridge. An four-time IBMA Award-winning vocalist, Brooke beautifully delivers this love letter to the mountain life. Meanwhile, Amanda Cook explores a complicated heartbreak in “Let You Go.” Although she’s an understated singer, all of the emotions are evident in her vocal performance. You don’t have to belt it out in bluegrass to get your point across!

Rising talent Farayi joins with Sister Sadie on “May a Love Like This Find Me,” which is a twist on the social media meme: “May a love like this never find me.” If you find ordinary love to be an extraordinary blessing, you’ll enjoy this one. In addition, Heather Mabe of Red Camel Collective is putting thoughts of love into a gospel song in “My Point of View,” a wonderfully encouraging song at a time we need it more than ever.

Meanwhile, few pop songs from the ’80s capture feelings of frustration better than Men at Work’s “Overkill.” It’s equally compelling as sung by Rosine’s Meredith Lane O’Connor with a vocal assist from the songwriter himself, Men at Work’s Colin Hay. We also have a pretty cool, true-to-life road trip song from Sister Sadie called “Marlboros in Muskogee.” And speaking of traveling, the Travelin’ McCourys offer “She Did Break” with harmonies from one of our favorite female vocalists, Garnet Bowman. And finally, you can’t talk about women in bluegrass without mentioning Molly Tuttle, who reimagines “The Highway Knows” acoustically.

As we say every week, You Gotta Hear This!

Darin and Brooke Aldridge, “Come Alive”

Artist: Darin and Brooke Aldridge
Hometown: Cherryville, North Carolina
Song: “Come Alive”
Release Date: September 25, 2026
Label: Billy Blue Records

In Their Words: “With ‘Come Alive,’ we wanted to capture what the mountains we call home have always meant to us and the deep connection we feel to the place, the people and the traditions that shaped who we are. It’s about the music that has been ingrained in our hearts and souls since childhood, the precious time spent with family, the memories made around a kitchen table or on a front porch, and the songs passed down from one generation to the next. Those are the things that become part of your story and stay with you wherever life takes you. The mountains have a way of reminding us what matters most, and music has always been at the center of that for us. It brings people together, carries our history forward and gives a voice to feelings that sometimes words alone can’t express.

“We hope this song takes people back to a special place, brings a familiar memory to the surface or reminds them of the people and moments that have made their lives meaningful. To us, that’s the beauty of this music. It’s more than a sound or a song. It’s a part of who we are, a connection to where we come from and a tradition worth keeping alive. It’s the kind of music that doesn’t just fill the air. It reaches your heart, stirs your soul and makes you come alive.” — Darin and Brooke Aldridge

Amanda Cook, “Let You Go”

Artist: Amanda Cook
Hometown: Fancy Gap, Virginia
Song: “Let You Go”
Album: Love Through Time
Release Date: October 16, 2026
Label: Mountain Fever Records

In Their Words: “Jeff Partin has written songs for several of my records, and once again, he brought us a beautifully written heartbreak song. There’s something really special about the way Jeff tells a story, and I think this one captures that complicated place of knowing a love has run its course but still having a hard time letting go. The band took Jeff’s song and made it our own, giving it our sound and our style. It expresses another side of love that fits perfectly with the theme of Love Through Time. Love isn’t always about the happy endings. Sometimes it’s about the hurt, the letting go, and finding the strength to move forward.” – Amanda Cook

Farayi, “May a Love Like This Find Me” (Ft. Sister Sadie)

Artist: Farayi
Hometown: Rural Idaho
Song: “May a Love Like This Find Me” (Ft. Sister Sadie)
Release Date: October 13, 2026
Label: Down the Road Records

In Their Words: “When I thought of the concept for this song, I initially thought about how daunting and demoralizing it can feel to try and fail at finding that true, romantic love, but once Deanie, Dani, and I got in the room together, it became apparent that the song was more about gratitude. We chose to explore how love manifests within our ordinary lives in ways that are simple, yet so profound, and in relationships that can easily be taken for granted. Sometimes we already have the profound love we’re seeking.” – Farayi

“Writing this one with Farayi was one of my favorite days in a room in a long time. The idea underneath it is that being well loved is usually pretty unremarkable. It doesn’t announce itself, but it’s everything. That’s a harder thing to write than heartbreak, because there’s no drama in it. But we kept chasing it until it felt true. There’s a lot of real life in this song.” — Dani Flowers, Sister Sadie

Red Camel Collective, “My Point of View”

Artist: Red Camel Collective
Hometowns: Walnut Cove, N.C. (Tony and Heather Mabe); Wirtz, Va. (Johnathan Dillon); Oakboro, N.C. (Curt Love)
Song: “My Point of View”
Release Date: October 14, 2026
Album: Finding Your Way Home
Label: Pinecastle Records

In Their Words: “We needed a gospel song for our upcoming record, so I was thumbing through ideas I had saved on my phone. I ran across the lines ‘you’re doing better than you think, and you’re stronger than you know.’ Those words just hit me right in the heart and I instantly knew, this is a gospel song. It came together so quickly. It flowed right from my heart. We are so excited for folks to hear this tune and our upcoming album, Finding Your Way Home, coming early 2027!” – Heather Berry Mabe, Red Camel Collective

Rosine Feat. Colin Hay, “Overkill”

Artist: Rosine Feat. Colin Hay
Hometowns: Nashville, Tennessee (Rosine); Topanga, California (Colin Hay)
Song: “Overkill”
Release Date: October 23, 2026
Label: Compass Records

In Their Words: “Colin has said that when he wrote ‘Overkill’ in the early ’80s, he was trying to make sense of how fast everything was changing around him during the ascent of Men at Work. At a different scale, that feeling hits home for us too: starting Rosine, getting married, and building a life and a band at the same time has been incredibly rewarding and beautiful, but it’s also brought sleepless nights and long stretches of introspection and self-questioning. Having Colin join us on this song reminds us that most of the people we look up to have faced fears similar to ours and have led lives where each day feels like a new adventure.” — Forrest O’Connor and Meredith Lane O’Connor, Rosine

“When I came up with the song ‘Overkill’ some 46 years ago, I had personal struggles. Whenever I sang the song, it helped me. Soothed my soul, so to speak. It lives inside me and has been my constant friend all this time. When I hear Rosine play the song and Meredith sing it, it lifts my spirits, makes me feel useful. It’s become their friend too. It connects us, like an electric current. That’s what music does, there’s nothing like it.” — Colin Hay

Sister Sadie, “Marlboros in Muskogee”

Artist: Sister Sadie
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Marlboros in Muskogee”
Release Date: October 6, 2026
Label: Down the Road Records/Exceleration Music

In Their Words: “We left Nashville for a tour through Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona honestly kind of dreading it. We knew we were about to drive thousands of miles in three days, and that part of this job feels a little ridiculous sometimes because the travel is most of the work. Then you get up there and play for an hour, maybe 75 minutes, and that’s the part everybody sees. But somewhere along the way, that trip turned into one of those experiences none of us would have missed for the world. We didn’t sit down and decide we were going to write a road song. We went on the road, lived all of these little moments together, and a song came out of it. ‘Marlboros in Muskogee’ feels less like we were trying to make up some glamorous story about life on the road and more like we just paid attention to what was actually happening while we were in it.” — Dani Flowers

“We told our co-writers [Jon Randall Stewart and Jessi Alexander] about the entire trip, and then wrote the song with them. And they got exactly what we were looking for. When we played it for the girls, we were all sobbing because it is exactly what it’s like on the road with us. This song is the story of this band.” — Deanie Richardson

The Travelin’ McCourys, “She Did Break” (Ft. Garnet Bowman)

Artist: The Travelin’ McCourys
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “She Did Break”
Release Date: October 13, 2026
Label: McCoury Music

In Their Words: “I had the idea and title for the song ‘She Did Break.’ I wrote it with Adam Hood and Donnie and Chris Davisson. It was so great to hear where we took the idea and went with it. It’s an age old topic of the wandering of a man in a relationship and the heartbreak it leaves behind. I’m proud of how it turned out and the ‘icing on the cake’ was adding Garnet Bowman’s beautiful voice on it.” — Ronnie McCoury

Molly Tuttle, “The Highway Knows” (Acoustic)

Artist: Molly Tuttle
Hometown: Palo Alto, California; Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “The Highway Knows” (Acoustic)
Album: So Long Little Miss Sunshine (Acoustic EP)
Release Date: September 4, 2026
Label: Nonesuch Records

In Their Words: “I recorded this acoustic version of ‘The Highway Knows’ last fall after having so much fun reworking it with an acoustic trio for a couple shows we did last year. On my album version from So Long Little Miss Sunshine, there are drums, keys and all sorts of other textures which we stripped away for this version. People seemed to respond to hearing these songs done acoustically so I wanted to put out these versions that were a little truer to how the songs first sounded when I wrote them and played them around the house. This version features Mair on mandolin and vocals and Vanessa McGowan on bass and vocals.” — Molly Tuttle

Photo Credit: Joshua Black Wilkins (Sister Sadie); Ebru Yildiz (Molly Tuttle)

Bronwyn: In Her Own Words

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Editor’s Note: Our exclusive Artist of the Month interview with Bronwyn, conducted by BGS contributor Alison Richter, included many more lovely excerpts and conversations than could be included in that article. For our BGS Bandwagon members, we’re returning to our conversation for bonus content with Bronwyn!

Below, enjoy a few excerpts from our interview about her new album, Rattlin’ Bones, about inspiration, songwriting, and the stories behind a few of the brand new songs.

This post is an exclusive for members of the BGS Bandwagon

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Lindsay Lou’s Bluegrass Women Features These Twenty Talents

Posted on by Editor

Lindsay Lou’s Bluegrass Women arrived in August 2026 as a true gift to the genre.

Nascent for over a decade, this project took root back in 2015 when Lou started a list containing two titles — “I Only Exist” and “All I Ever Loved Was You.” Though primarily associated with the men who popularized them, both bluegrass standards were written or co-written by women. Thus marked the start of an impassioned cataloguing as Lou realized, “If these two songs have surfaced for me, then there have got to be so many more. I would keep this list somewhere I could see it in my office, wherever I lived,” she relayed recently in an interview with Live for Live Music.

Ten years later, ten traditional songs had made their way to the forefront of her list, all of which were written, co-written, or first performed by women. While forging her own career in this male-dominated sphere, she found encouragement in her continuous unearthing of women among the forebears.

Women have always been essential to the architecture of the bluegrass, however quieted their contributions may have been. With more women in the spotlight than ever before, Lindsay Lou felt inspired to weave a throughline between contemporary “bluegrass women” and their ancestors. In March 2025, she partnered with co-producer Shani Gandhi to round up an intergenerational cast of twenty women defining the genre today. A Tetris of tour schedules, this star-studded cast managed to complete the compilation in only four days of recording, with Lou masterminding ensembles and arrangements.

Together, this collection of women celebrates their musical predecessors, shedding new light upon many of the women woven throughout bluegrass history. Join us as we explore, in no particular order, the tremendous trove of talent responsible for the masterpiece that is Bluegrass Women.

Laurie Lewis

Truly a singular talent, Laurie Lewis remains an unwavering pillar of the bluegrass scene and beyond. A hero to every participant on Bluegrass Women, Lewis’s singing, songwriting, and fiddling continue to inspire across generations.

Among her inordinate accolades includes co-founding The Good Ol’ Persons in the ‘70s, one of the first prominent all-women bluegrass groups. Her musings traverse across genres, slinging folk, Americana, and country influences to boot. She is heralded in the music scene as an avid collaborator, producer, teacher, and mentor, in addition to actively tending to her own projects. Her most recent record, O California! arrived in January 2026, released by her band, Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands.

The inaugural notes of Bluegrass Women are played by Laurie Lewis and Tatiana Hargreaves in a glorious twin fiddle kick on the opening track “All I Ever Loved Was You” (though recorded and popularized Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, its lyrics were penned by Skagg’s mother, Dorothy). Hargreaves has said of her fiddling counterpart, “I wouldn’t be playing the music I play if it weren’t for Laurie Lewis,” a sentiment that echoes the interconnectedness of musicianship at the project’s core.

Tatiana Hargreaves

Of her fiddling counterpart, Laurie Lewis boasts, “Tatiana Hargreaves is a versatile, powerful, and deep musician. Not just a damn good fiddler.” Having recorded her debut album at age 14 and winning first prize at the Clifftop Appalachian Fiddle Contest the same year, Tatiana Hargreaves has truly packed a punch in the decade and a half (and change) since. With a range of styles under her belt, Hargreaves’ fluency in both bluegrass and old-time grants her a dextrous dynamism. At present, she teaches improvisation and bluegrass fiddle at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and primarily records and performs in a duo with prolific banjo player Allison de Groot (also featured on Bluegrass Women), and with her four-piece old time band, Hard Drive.

On Bluegrass Women, Hargreaves lends her fearsome fiddling to three tracks — “All I Ever Loved Was You,” “Jubilee,” and “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me.”

Allison de Groot

A clawhammer banjo player from Winnipeg, Canada, Allison de Groot became familiar with the scene by way of The Duhks, a renowned Canadian folk-fusion band likewise out of Winnipeg. As she traced the lineage of the clawhammer banjo, she became enamored with its prominence in the American South and became a teacher and performer. Between lessons and many trips to the southeastern United States, a love affair with old-time took root. Her duo with Tatiana Hargreaves continues the centuries-long conversation between fiddle and banjo; their creative alchemy doulas the dialogue to new depths.

De Groot lends her banjo playing to the tracks “I’ve Endured” and “High on a Mountain” on Bluegrass Women.

Maddie Witler

While primarily known for her virtuosic mandolin playing, Maddie Witler began her musical journey at age 9 on the fiddle. If those skills weren’t enough, in the time since, Witler has made her acquaintance with most stringed instruments, adeptly fluent in each language. After growing up in the greater LA area and moving to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music, she became a founding member of the illustrious Lonely Heartstring Band. In 2019, Witler joined Della Mae, one of the most prominent all-women groups of the contemporary bluegrass landscape, parting ways with them in 2022. In 2021, Witler released her first solo album, Astronaut, debuting her skills as a songwriter, singer, and arranger.

On Bluegrass Women, Witler edifies the tracks “All I Ever Loved Was You,” “Jubilee,” and “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me” with her apt mandolin contributions.

Alison Brown

Alison Brown, too, is a widely influential instrumentalist whose work has permeated across generations. She reunited with her love of bluegrass banjo playing when, after receiving an MBA from UCLA, she quit her job on Wall Street to tour with Alison Krauss & Union Station. She also toured with Michelle Shocked before forming her own group in 1993, The Alison Brown Quartet. With 12 solo albums, a Grammy, and multiple Grammy nominations under her belt, Brown is largely regarded as one of the most accomplished banjo players of our time.

Of recording with Alison Brown and Laurie Lewis for Bluegrass Women, Lindsay Lou speaks to the experience’s profoundness in her four-part YouTube series documenting the album’s recording.

She reflects, “We’ve seen mentorship and cross-generational connection and collaboration happen on stage with men plenty, but you haven’t seen it as much with women historically. To be a part of a session with Laurie and Alison, who have been doing this for so many more years than anybody else on the session, you instantly have this reverence.”

Alison Brown lends her banjo playing to the tracks “All I Ever Loved Was You,” “Jubilee,” and “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me.”

Hasee Ciaccio

Hasee Ciaccio is a musician and educator residing in North Carolina. Her upright bass playing has earned high praise in the bluegrass circuit, with Ciaccio having recorded and toured among the likes of Laurie Lewis, Alice Gerrard, and bluegrass powerhouse group Sister Sadie. Ciaccio is also on the board of Bluegrass Pride, an organization working to uplift LGBTQ+ bluegrass musicians of all levels.

Ciaccio’s bass playing lays the foundation for much of Bluegrass Women. She’s featured on seven of the ten tracks — “All I Ever Loved Was You,” “Like a River,” “I Only Exist,” “Jubilee,” ”Won’t You Come and Sing for Me,” “Freight Train,” “Your Lone Journey,” and “CC Rider.”

Courtney Hartman

A champion flat-picker, Courtney Hartman grew up in Colorado with nine siblings, four of whom she played music with. Because they needed one to play guitar, and inspired by her mother taking lessons, Hartman gravitated to the instrument following stints with piano, fiddle, and violin.

After attending Berklee College of Music, Hartman spent seven years recording and touring with Della Mae. Her newest solo album, With You, began during an isolated, heavy moment. Shortly after discovering that she was pregnant, a string of tumultuous events (her husband falling off a ladder and rendered immobile for months, a totaled car, being dropped from her booking agency) ravaged her life in quick succession. Following the birth of her daughter, Hartman forged her own list of women to draw inspiration from — ones who had continued their creative practice in the midst of becoming mothers. Their navigation of caregiving and musicianship imbued faith that she, too, could straddle both. With You features many of the mothers that inspired Hartman, both as co-writers and musical guests.

In a full-circle moment, Hartman joined Lindsay Lou’s project, the entirety of which was recorded while Lou was pregnant with her first child. Hartman is credited on the tracks “I Only Exist,” “Like a River,” and “Freight Train.”

Gena Britt

Gena Britt, a connoisseur of both bluegrass banjo and bass, is no stranger to a project like Bluegrass Women. In 2001, Britt co-founded Daughters of Bluegrass, a collective of over 40 women in bluegrass who have recorded four albums to date. In addition to being a highly sought-after studio vocalist and instrumentalist, with solo projects also under her belt, Gena is currently a member of the dynamic Sister Sadie.

Gena is featured on six tracks on Bluegrass Women — “Your Lone Journey,” “Freight Train,” “Like a River,” “High on a Mountain,” “I Only Exist,” and “CC Rider.”

AJ Lee

A prominent presence in today’s bluegrass scene, AJ Lee is lauded for her acute mandolin skills, unparalleled vocals, and sharp songwriting. Hailing from the Bay Area, at age 7 she was asked to join The Tuttles, a family band consisting of bluegrass educator Jack Tuttle and his two children, (you guessed it) Molly and Sully. Around the time she graduated high school in 2015, AJ sewed the seeds culminating in her own band, AJ Lee and Blue Summit. The group just released their fourth full-length album, Cover to Cover, earlier this month.

On Bluegrass Women, AJ’s artistry can be found on the tracks “Freight Train,” “Like a River,” and “I Only Exist.”

Wila Frank

Wila Frank is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer based out of Nashville. One half of the emergent folk duo Paper Wings, and fiddler/electric guitarist for Lindsay Lou, Frank also champions her own stirring solo repertoire. Her debut album, Black Cloud (2023), received critical acclaim, and a 2026 single release, “Emergency Contact,” hints towards more in the works (we hope!).

Frank appears on half of Bluegrass Woman, credited on the tracks “Like a River,” “High on a Mountain,” “I Only Exist,” “CC Rider,” and “Your Lone Journey.”

Brittany Haas

Widely regarded as one of the most prolific fiddlers of her generation, Brittany Haas is an absolute flurry of talent. Her playing is sensitive, inspired, and expansive. Her current projects include her duo with her cellist sister (Natalie Haas), the innovative instrumental project, Hawktail, and as the newest member of the Grammy-winning Punch Brothers. A teacher and performer, Haas’s playing is infectiously inspiring to all who listen.

Haas joins Bluegrass Women on the tracks “High on a Mountain” and “I’ve Endured.”

Sally Van Meter

Another former member of the Good Ol’ Persons alongside Laurie Lewis, Sally Van Meter is a musical giant in her own right. Though primarily recognized for her dobro playing, Van Meter is dextrous on an assortment of string instruments. With a professional music career that began in 1976, Sally Van Meter’s past five decades have been an impressive spread of performance, teaching, touring, and recording.

Van Meter plays on “CC Rider,” a traditional 12-bar blues song first written and recorded by Ma Rainey, the “Mother of Blues.” The song was later covered by a vast assortment of artists, at one point becoming a mainstay opening number for Elvis Presely.

Sierra Hull

Legendary mandolinist, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Sierra Hull could fill a dictionary with the accomplishments of her career, despite being just 34 years old. A six-time Grammy nominee and the first woman to receive the IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year honor (having now won seven times), Sierra Hull is a groundbreaking artist in the bluegrass scene. She released her fifth studio album, A Tip Toe High Wire, last year.

Hull’s talent enriches two tracks on Bluegrass Women — “High on a Mountain” and “I’ve Endured.” Of the songs, Sierra remarks, “These are songs that seep into your DNA. When you can step out of your own original lane for a minute and go back to what feels like the source, there’s something really powerful about that. It takes me back to who I am in a really grounding kind of way.”

Bronwyn

As anyone who’s heard a Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway record knows, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is an astonishing fiddler, with brilliance and fire emanating through her every performance. Recently, though, she’s exposed even more of her talents to the world — she’s begun a solo project as simply Bronwyn, playing, singing, recording, and touring original material. Her third album, Rattlin’ Bones, was released on the same day as Bluegrass Women.

The amicable dissolution of Golden Highway allowed for Bronwyn to open up the floodgates of self-discovery; in fact, she cites bandmates Molly Tuttle and Shelby Means as chief proponents of Bronwyn exploring her voice. She says, “There was a large part of my life where I didn’t sing and was only interested in playing the fiddle, but being on tour with Golden Highway and around Molly and Shelby, these great female bluegrass vocalists, it shifted everything.”

Bronwyn’s fiddling appears on the tracks “Freight Train,” “Like a River” and “I Only Exist” on Bluegrass Women.

Molly Tuttle

Molly Tuttle herself, too, joins the record — yet another nod to the interweavings present among this group of women. Tuttle’s reputation precedes her, as the first woman to win IBMA’s Guitar Player of the Year (an award she earned two years in a row). Likewise, her albums Crooked Tree (2022) and City of Gold (2023) with her band, Golden Highway, each took home the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. For her new solo album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine (2025), Tuttle shifts into new stretches and shapes, tackling elements of pop, rock, flat-picking, and country in one fell swoop.

Tuttle joins for the song “Freight Train,” penned by the superlative Elizabeth Cotten, a self-taught, left-handed guitarist who wrote the song around the age of 11 in the early 20th century.

Emma Rose

Yet another multi-hyphenate talent, Emma Rose is a groundbreaking singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and sought-after upright bass player. She was a founding member of the juggernaut all-women outfit, Big Richard, and she currently tours with Lindsay Lou, while also nurturing a solo project, under the names Emma Rose or Sounds of Honey.

Emma Rose lends bass playing to Bluegrass Women on “I Only Exist,” “High on a Mountain” and “I’ve Endured.”

Sarah Jarosz

Sarah Jarosz’s sublime vocals, instrumental prowess, and narrative-driven songwriting render her an unsurpassed talent. With seven full-length solo albums to her name, three albums with supergroup I’m With Her (alongside Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins), and a sprawling inventory of collaborations, Jarosz’s contributions to the roots scene have been nothing short of magnificent.

Jarosz is featured on the track “I’ve Endured,” written by the brilliant Appalachian singer, songwriter, and banjo player Ola Belle Read.

Phoebe Hunt

A fiddler of dynamic abundance, Phoebe Hunt has explored for decades the multiplicity of sound her instrument can produce. She’s spent years touring for various projects and for her own solo work, all the while founding a non-profit called Fuel Our Fire, garnering transformational songwriting experiences for at-risk communities. She’s also a gifted educator, and she began an initiative to help parents teach their children how to play the ukulele during the pandemic. Her most recent album, Nothing Else Matters (2023) features only the voice and fiddle, a peeled back honoring of her musicality in its most vulnerable form.

Hunt joins on Bluegrass Women for an awe-inspiring rendition of Hazel Dickens’s “Won’t You Come and Sing For Me.”

Jenni Lyn Gardner

Jenni Lyn Gardner is a robust singer, songwriter, producer, and mandolinist. She rose to prominence in the bluegrass scene when she joined Della Mae in 2010, and remained in the band for nearly a decade-long stretch. She’s also fronted her own solo project, and has served as a producer on countless albums and tracks across the roots music landscape.

Jenni Lyn Gardner joins Bluegrass Women for two tracks — “CC Rider” and “Your Lone Journey,” a song co-written by Doc Watson and his wife, Rosa Lee.

Aoife O’Donovan

One of the most treasured voices in bluegrass, Aoife O’Donovan is a Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and guitar player. She’s widely known for her lead vocals as a founding member of the unparalleled Crooked Still (which fellow Bluegrass Women musician Brittany Haas later joined) and for her role as one-third of I’m With Her. O’Donovan has a penchant for evocative lyrics, textured storytelling, and hypnotic vocals. In addition to her many collaborations and features, O’Donovan has released four critically acclaimed albums of solo work.

On Bluegrass Women, Aoife is featured on the track “Your Lone Journey.”

Find out more about Lindsay Lou’s project with an episode of her mini-doc on BGS.

Lead image: Tatiana Hargreaves, Laurie Lewis, and Lindsay Lou by Sawyer Gieseke

Americana Music Honors and Awards 2026: Winners and Recipients

Posted on by Editor

Now firmly established as one of roots music’s most compelling performers, Molly Tuttle accepted the trophy for Artist of the Year at the 2026 Americana Honors & Awards ceremony at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Wednesday night (September 16).

Tyler Childers, though not in attendance, was the recipient of the Album of the Year award for Snipe Hunter, produced by Rick Rubin and Nick Sanborn. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings were named Duo/Group of the Year, Ken Pomeroy accepted the award for Emerging Act of the Year, Brandi Carlile collected the Song of the Year award for “Returning to Myself,” and guitarist Mandy Fer was bestowed Instrumentalist of the Year honors.

Dolly Parton, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Robert Plant all received Americana Lifetime Achievement honors, which were accompanied with powerful performances.

The Heartbreakers reunited with special guest Chris Stapleton; Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan & Sara Watkins comprising I’m With Her teamed up with Brandi Carlile to deliver a moving tribute to Dolly Parton with “Coat of Many Colors”; and Robert Plant returned to the Ryman stage at the Americana Honors & Awards for the first time in 15 years with a performance of “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” and “Angel Dance.” A touching video message from Dolly Parton was aired during the ceremony.

Other highlights from the evening include songwriter Bernie Taupin presenting Brandi Carlile with the Song of the Year award; a moving tribute to the late Todd Snider by Hayes Carll with Elizabeth Cook; and the finale ensemble delivering a special performance honoring the legacy of Raul Malo with “Dance the Night Away” by The Mavericks.

Throughout the night, attendees were treated to additional performances by Boy Golden, Crowe Boys, Flatland Cavalry, Jesse Welles, Kashus Culpepper, Kathleen Edwards, Ken Pomeroy, Margo Price, Molly Tuttle, Mon Rovîa and S.G. Goodman. Buddy Miller returned as musical director for the Americana All-Star Band, featuring Larry Campbell, Fred Eltringham, Jen Gunderman, Jim Hoke, The McCrary Sisters, and Don Was.

Photo Credit: Getty Images for Americana Music Association

Award-Winning Fiddler Bronwyn Drives a Different Highway on Rattlin’ Bones

Posted on by Editor

Playing the fiddle has been part of Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ life since discovering the instrument when she was 3 years old. By age 10, she had become serious about music. She attended fiddle camps, joined her first band at 13, and took lessons, but always gravitated toward ear training.

This approach changed when she attended Berklee and enrolled in their American Roots Music program, where she met, studied, lived with and jammed with a collective of musicians, many of whom would later settle in Nashville as part of a new bluegrass generation. Those personal connections from Berklee led to her becoming an integral part of the bluegrass group Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway until the ensemble parted ways last year. (Read our BGS interview with her Golden Highway bandmates Molly Tuttle, Kyle Tuttle and Shelby Means.)

Now professionally just known as Bronwyn, the two-time IBMA Award-winning fiddle player has stepped out on her own as a full-time solo artist, front and center as a musician, vocalist, and bandleader. While her two prior albums established her first as a virtuoso player and then also as a talented vocalist, her new album Rattlin’ Bones takes her to the next level. Co-produced with Brent Truitt, the collection explores the musical territory within bluegrass while incorporating flavors from her Celtic and jazz roots.

On a July afternoon in Nashville, Bronwyn – our BGS Artist of the Month for September – discussed her dedication to practicing, the throughline between jazz and bluegrass jams, and who’s most likely behind the wheel of her tour van.

BGS: With Rattlin’ Bones ready for release, are you feeling a sense of relief that it’s done? Anticipation for the world to hear it? Satisfaction of goals accomplished? All of the above?

Everything. I’ve been playing some of these songs live [since the spring], I’ve been teasing some of them at some shows, and so I’m excited for people to hear the whole thing. I feel like I’ve been hanging on to this for a little while now.

Was the album complete when you began performing the songs?

No, it was still getting mixed. It all got recorded last year, and I feel like I’ve been building the plane as it’s taking off. Last year was my transition year. Golden Highway was wrapping up, and I was starting to do my own shows in the second half of the year. I was writing as much as I could for this record and recording as I wrote it. As soon as I wrote a couple songs I liked, I would go into the studio, record them, and then try them out after I recorded them or I came up with an arrangement. So it’s been this process over the last year.

Does playing them live sometimes change the arrangements?

Yes. Playing them in the studio is one thing, but as soon as you play it live, you’re like, “It has to be faster when we do it live,” or “This section should be longer,” or whatever. It’s a different experience when you’re listening to an album versus at a live show. So I think they’re all right for the studio, but then there are some moments … and that was part of the intention of coming up with these arrangements. I wanted places that could stretch and contract, based on the night and the audience. I wanted to deliberately have places that could breathe and we could do different things, because different things will feel good on different nights.

You mentioned stretching and changing the songs and the improvisational moments. Talk about that a little bit — working those out within the structure of the studio and keeping that balance of instrumental breaks and vocals.

That was definitely a consideration. We want the songs to be first and foremost. I feel like everything serves the song. If there needs to be a big solo to make the song feel complete, then that’s what should happen on the record. But it also comes down to who you have in the studio.
I was able to get some of the best musicians out there, and when you’ve got people like that, they all intuitively are able to create magic. We all know when it’s right, when the arrangement is right, and when the take is right. Brent is definitely the overarching ears, but oftentimes the whole band is going to come to a consensus on what the best take was. It’s a feeling. When you’ve got people like that in the studio, they just make the magic.

Your early love was ear training, rather than theory, but your formal education at Berklee was, in fact, theory. Did that require any undoing of what we’ll call “bad habits”?

It was a real challenge. I’ve always been an ear learner. That’s always been easy for me, and visually has always been harder. In the Berklee environment, there were ear-training classes, of course, but the majority of stuff was eye-based and that was really tough. I had to work extra hard to develop that at all, but learning theory does really help make stuff make sense and makes me able to make faster connections. Once you actually learn how those sound, then you have the complete picture, and so I was able to put together a lot of the pieces while I was at school, and connect some dots that I hadn’t really understood before.

Now I’m back to being an ear person. I never read music. I’ll look at a chart if I need to, but as soon as I can get it in my head, I’m able to play better than if I’m staring at the chart. In the studio you do have the charts, but it feels like everybody uses the charts as a very rough guide just to make sure they’re on track. But they’ve got it in their minds more intuitively, and so they are really playing by ear after the second take.

True or false: When you went to Berklee, you were on track to study jazz.

True. That was my idea — I thought I was going to be a Celtic jazz fiddler. I was going to blend the two somehow together. I got to Berklee and jazz was really hard. There was this whole American Roots Music program that had just started, and they’d brought all these great bluegrass players there that year. I met them all and was at jams with them and I got really inspired to play bluegrass.

Do you see a throughline in those two genres, which on the surface may seem completely different, but at the core are about improvisation and jamming?

Oh, totally. And they’re both authentic American forms of music, which is super cool. I think what made bluegrass easier to get into, rather than jazz, is because I’m coming from a fiddle background. I had this fiddle vocabulary. I had to learn the bluegrass idiom to some degree, but it all was a lot closer to what I was used to than learning a whole jazz language, so it felt like an easier way to express myself and be able to improvise in a genre that was closer to home.

Do you still feel some of that jazz influence in your playing?

I’m always going to be inspired by it. Honestly, the further I get with bluegrass, and the more comfortable I get with bluegrass, I feel like I can stretch out and try for some extended notes or weird-sounding stuff or some more jazz vocabulary. I feel like you never stop learning, and hopefully you never stop growing, as a musician, so that does feel like something I would love to get more and more into.

You are the outlier who loves to practice. What does your practice consist of? How do you keep it enjoyable as opposed to becoming a chore?

Oh, man. I wish I had more time to practice. I don’t have enough time these days and it’s a bummer, actually. There are times when it’s a chore, but that’s when there’s a certain thing I have to do, something I have to learn. Usually what makes it fun is visualizing where it’s going, visualizing that I’m going to play this onstage, and so I’m going to come up with all these cool ideas. Thinking about playing for a crowd or playing for somebody makes it fun. I love learning new stuff. The challenge of learning somebody’s solo or learning a new tune or song is fun.

A learning experience versus scales or finger exercises.

Definitely. But I go through periods of time recognizing some technique issue that needs to be resolved and trying to work on that in particular, and that is very satisfying too. It’s almost like going to the gym and working on abs, or arm day, and the satisfaction when you’re in it or when you’ve done it. You’re like, “I did something for myself today.”

Keeping with the gym analogy, how much of the live performance is muscle memory?

That’s what you’re relying on. That’s the thing that, first of all, helps you out in a high-pressure situation. Anytime I’m on a television show or something, I’ve made sure I’ve played that song so many times that if I’m going to have to play it one more time, hopefully there’s almost no way I can mess it up.

It also gives you this bedrock for improvisation and trying new things, because you have this thing that you can fall back on. You have this comfort with the song or with a certain solo, and then you’re like, “I know how this goes, so I can step away from it and always feel like I have something to come back to.”

What makes you a good bandleader? What did you learn as a band member that you apply to now being in charge?

I feel a lot of responsibility to the band on so many levels. I want to make sure there’s enough shows for them to make enough money, I want to make sure the travel is good, their accommodations are comfortable, that the schedule is clear, that they have enough time to have breakfast, all these little things. I think a good bandleader genuinely cares about their band and puts their band first in terms of comfort.
I do all the driving, and I try to make everybody’s life as comfortable as possible, because it’s a big sacrifice on their end. They’re going out for a whole year, or however long, to play my music, and it’s a real honor that such great musicians would do that, so I try to put them first as much as I can.

You do all the driving?

When we’re in a van, I do. Sometimes they help. They’re always offering to help, but there’s a stubborn part of me that feels like that’s not their job and they shouldn’t have to do that. It’s my burden to bear. Hopefully, at some point, I’ll be able to hire a tour manager to do that, but for now I try to do it. It’s just the five of us on the road, no extra help, so it’s all hands on deck and they are all super helpful. It really feels like a team effort, which is awesome.

Do you still teach?

I do occasionally. I’ve got a couple students, one kid and a couple adults, over Zoom, and occasionally I do group classes over Zoom, which has been really fun and a nice way to reach more people. I love teaching. I used to do a lot of it, and I feel like I have a lot to share and a lot of insight. I didn’t grow up playing bluegrass. I came to it when I was a late teenager and in college, so I feel like I had to analyze it more to make it make sense to me, and maybe some of the ways I approached it at that time have helped a lot of my students.

What do students want to learn and what do they need to learn?

Sometimes they want to learn flashy licks, and what they need is better timing and fundamentals. I think that’s the classic teacher-student push and pull — the student wants to learn something fun, and the teacher sees fundamental issues that are going to prevent them from moving forward until they deal with them. So it’s trying to balance that as a teacher and make sure the lesson is fun, but that they can still improve these fundamental things.

What do you hope people take from Rattlin’ Bones, and what do you hope to bring to the stage as a group when you perform this music?

I hope it’s a fun album for people to listen to. I hope it’s one they want to come back to. I hope it’s one they want to turn up loud and blast on a road trip. I wanted to make a fun album, and I wanted to make an album of songs that would be fun to play live. So I hope that translates into the show.

We have been playing some of these songs live, but I’m so excited for people to have heard the record and then recognize the songs when we play them. It’s always a rush when you’ve heard a song on the record and the band is playing the song you’ve been listening to live. I’m excited to have those moments.

Editor’s Note: Our interview with Bronwyn included many more lovely excerpts and conversations than could be included in this one article. We’ve gathered a few excerpts from our interview about inspiration, songwriting, and the stories behind a few of the brand new songs, in an exclusive for BGS Bandwagon members.

Photo Credit: Alexa King Stone

Artist of the Month: Bronwyn

Posted on by Editor

Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor once cited Walt Whitman to me during an interview to explain how he is “a container of multitudes.” While that can be said about everyone to an extent, the one artist that’s come to mind for me the most when thinking on it lately has been the fiery fiddler Bronwyn.

After mostly performing Celtic fiddle tunes early in her career, Bronwyn began immersing herself in bluegrass music more after enrolling at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the late aughts. While there she also met the likes of Molly and Kyle Tuttle, who she’d eventually go on to perform with a decade later in the Grammy Award-winning group Golden Highway. Alongside those future nods from The Recording Academy came a pair of Fiddle Player of the Year awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) in 2021 and 2022 that cemented her picking prowess even more.

According to Molly Tuttle, Bronwyn’s proficiency and exceptional work ethic was evident from the moment they first met.

“It felt like she was evolving right before my eyes,” exclaims Molly. “Every time I heard her play she was getting better and better, then within a couple years she was named Fiddle Player of the Year by the IBMA. It was one of the most rapid growth spurts I’ve ever seen.”

“When it came to putting Golden Highway together I was looking for people who had a unique voice on their instrument that would really stand out in a band. By that point she already had such a strong stage presence that made me feel like we could really grow together.”

After a handful of years of finding success with groups like Golden Highway and Mile Twelve, Bronwyn’s persistent approach musically is now paying off with her solo endeavors as well. Following a 2020 album of fiddle tunes and the feature-heavy Trip Around The Sun from 2024 (the latter of which earned a Grammy nomination), she’s making another leap forward on her new album Rattlin’ Bones by penning two tracks (“The Wishing Well”, “Virginia Gal”) on her own and co-writing the other 11 for the first time in her career.

Per Kyle Tuttle, he witnessed Bronwyn’s staggering transformation not only during their shared time in Golden Highway, but also through observing her throw down with Nashville’s best at honky tonks throughout the city.

“She’s so driven. That’s what sticks out to me the most,” asserts Kyle, referencing a weekly residency she once hosted in Nashville at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge while also playing in Golden Highway. “For at least the last year of the band she was doing that gig every week, no matter what. There were many times where we’d land at the Nashville airport after a weekend run with Golden Highway at 11 a.m. on a Monday and she’d still be there at 6 p.m. with her band. I was always so impressed by that.”

All that experience on stage contributed to Rattlin’ Bones feeling more like Bronwyn’s live show than any of her previous work. The mix of hard-driving bluegrass and Music City twang leaves ample room for interpretation and ensures that, much like her, these tunes are constantly evolving.

That self-assurance is something that’s always stood out to her Golden Highway bandmate, Shelby Means, who says that Bronwyn’s grand vision for her career inspired her to launch her own independent journey after Golden Highway disbanded in 2025.

“While together in Golden Highway I really noticed Bronwyn coming into her power as a performer,” explains Means. “Her confidence really shines when she steps into a solo, and I only see that continuing to grow as she spearheads her own band. Seeing her dream big has also pushed me to do the same as a new solo artist — it’s so inspiring.”

As if her past credentials weren’t convincing enough, Rattlin’ Bones also boasts appearances from Darrell Scott, Jerry Douglas, Lindsay Lou, Harry Clark (East Nash Grass), Brent Truitt (The Steeldrivers), Miles Miller (Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies), Pat McLaughlin, Melody Walker, and Golden Highway bandmate Dominick Leslie, giving Bronwyn a band of world-class pickers to match her otherworldly talent. It all leads to this album poised to make her bluegrass music’s next big power player, something that people who’ve worked with her like Molly Tuttle are adamant is recognition that’s long overdue.

“She’s so ambitious, so it comes as no surprise that she’s getting out there and leading her own band,” says Molly. “It’s a daring step for her to get into songwriting too. I’m just really impressed and proud of her for taking that step on this record and thinking about what she wants to say, not just musically, but with her lyrics too.”

To commemorate Bronwyn’s third solo record, we’ve named her our BGS Artist of the Month for September. Over the next 30 days we’ll reflect on the fiddler by digging through our archives for all things Bronwyn. Meanwhile, revisit our Winter Wondergrass session in the round with Bronwyn and enjoy The Essential Bronwyn playlist below.

Photo Credit: Alexa King Stone

A Jamgrass Chronology

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Dichotomy. The essence of jamgrass is the intersection of traditional and progressive ideals, techniques, and tones when it comes to the musical hot potato that is bluegrass – past, present, and future.

Throughout the generations, and within the structured lines of bluegrass, there’s a constant segment of the genre that remains eternally curious about what lies just beyond the horizon. It’s this sonic landscape of unlimited possibilities and creative fulfillment, one where the whirlwind attitudes of psychedelic rock, freeform jazz, classical music, and country gold were injected into the “high, lonesome sound,” ultimately conjuring this new melodic avenue to duck down.

The First Generation

When looking at the origins of jamgrass, the “Big Bang of Progressive Bluegrass” arguably occurred with the formation of New Grass Revival in 1971 in Louisville, Kentucky. Led by fiddler/mandolinist Sam Bush and banjoist Courtney Johnson, the outfit emerged from the ashes of another group, Bluegrass Alliance. This revolutionary quartet combined traditional bluegrass with contemporary influences from the popular rock, country and jazz of the period, the result being their self-titled debut album in 1972. In later years, bassist John Cowan and banjoist Béla Fleck would be added to the lineup.

By the early 1970s, the Earl Scruggs Revue was already well-established on the national touring circuit. With the Western North Carolina banjo great himself at the helm, Scruggs and his two sons, guitarist Randy and bassist Gary, embraced the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Scruggs not only was outspoken in his support of the anti-Vietnam movement, he also happily and genuinely welcomed those from other musical circles, including playing gigs alongside rock acts The Byrds and Steppenwolf.

Although not necessarily considered jamgrass, the Revue – with Scruggs being a vital pillar of the first generation of bluegrass as a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys – opened doors into an often-heavily guarded realm of traditional bluegrass. One where the fear of outsiders taking over the scene without “proper knowledge or respect” to the unspoken rules and traditions of the genre could be seen as misguided intent versus building a bigger space for more folks to tap into the history of the music and evolve their own craft, the end result being the survival and perpetuation of bluegrass.

In April 1972, the Revue’s album I Saw the Light with Some Help from My Friends featured guest appearances by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Arlo Guthrie, and Linda Ronstadt. The sessions would inspire Nitty Gritty to eventually pursue its own collaborative project, which became the seminal album Will the Circle be Unbroken – the record now regarded as a pillar of the bluegrass and country music scenes in the decades since its release in November 1972.

That winter of 1972/1973 conjured the happenstance formation of acoustic supergroup Old & In The Way. Guitarist Peter Rowan and mandolinist David Grisman, longtime friends and collaborators, found themselves at the home of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia in Stinson Beach, California. As expected, impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions ensued.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan told BGS in a 2022 interview. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

By the early 1970s, the Dead had become one of the premier rock bands in America. Even though he was now a bonafide rock star with a massive legion of diehard fans, Garcia yearned for a simpler time in his life, which was his existence before the band itself, when he was a young, hungry bluegrass musician in the San Francisco folk scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Soon after, the trio tapped bassist John Kahn and a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements) and booked a handful of gigs around the Bay Area in 1973. There were no expectations set or boundaries drawn. The gatherings were more about honoring musicianship and friendship, where all present could play joyously in the sandbox together.

Old & In The Way only lasted a little more than a year, disappearing in the spring of 1974 without any fanfare or real notice of its demise. The group was kind of like a comet flying by in the night sky — bright and stunning, and yet all too fleeting, but you counted your lucky stars you were able to see and appreciate it in real time, onstage and in the audience.

And that special time and place that was Old & In The Way would be forever captured in recordings of the live shows. In 1975, the self-titled debut album was released and became the biggest selling bluegrass album of all-time until it was overtaken by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2000.

“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan says. “But you could hear us in the band going, ‘go, man, go.’ Go for it, that’s where we came from. That’s what Old and In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”

The final piece to the puzzle that is the first generation of jamgrass was filled when Hot Rize emerged in the late 1970s in Boulder, Colorado. Coming together while all being employed at the Denver Folklore Center, fiddler/mandolinist Tim O’Brien, banjoist Pete Wernick, guitarist Charles Sawtelle and bassist Nick Forster would become the pioneers of the Colorado jamgrass scene – ultimately launching countless bands in The Centennial State with their unique blend of traditional tones and innovative styles.

The Second Generation

Just like O’Brien, Leftover Salmon guitarist Vince Herman was also a West Virginia native who headed west to the Rocky Mountains in search of his musical destiny. In 1985, Herman dropped out of West Virginia University and decided to “go to Colorado and find like-minded players.” This single decision by Herman ushered in the second generation of jamgrass.

“And I knew there was a progressive bluegrass scene based around the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Hot Rize was in Boulder, which was a major influence on me,” Herman told BGS in a 2025 interview. “So, I figured Boulder would have a good progressive bluegrass scene. And it sure did, proven by pulling up and seeing a ‘Live Bluegrass Music Tonight’ sign [at a bar].”

That night in Boulder in 1985, Herman wandered in and crossed paths with multi-instrumentalist Drew Emmitt. The two were kindred spirits and immediately hit it off, with Herman eventually joining Emmitt’s Left Hand String Band. A year later, Herman launched his own band, The Salmon Heads. But, it would be New Year’s Eve 1989 when Leftover Salmon came to fruition, the ensemble being a combination of the duo’s respective band members.

“We stuck with Leftover Salmon for the first night, never knowing it would be any more than one night of a gig [in Crested Butte],” Herman says of the NYE show. “The older the tune, the more the bluegrass stomp kind of thing would go on, people would slam dance. We were like, ‘Something’s good about this.’”

By 1993, another Colorado band came rolling down the ski slopes of Crested Butte and Telluride. Formed as a casual gathering of acoustic musicians and a percussionist looking to get together during après-ski and play some tunes for free lift tickets and cold beer, the String Cheese Incident took bluegrass and pushed it more into the jamband world than any other group who came before them. Nowadays, the sextet is a glorious kitchen sink of sound and scope – bluegrass to blues, rock to reggae, jazz to jam-tronica – especially through their highly popular annual festivals, Electric Forest and Hulaween.

Heading towards the end of the century, Yonder Mountain String Band appeared on the scene in Nederland, Colorado, in 1998. The quartet originally featured a mesmerizing frontman in the late Jeff Austin, an ambitious and endlessly curious mandolin player. The core of the band was based more in traditional bluegrass, but with a heavy focus on improvisation and just seeing where the night took them. The culmination of which led to Yonder finding itself in this unique position, one that allowed the group to be booked at both lawnchair bluegrass festivals and wild-n-out jamband gatherings across America.

The Third Generation

The new millennium signaled the third generation of jamgrass. On Oct. 31, 2000, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a casual Halloween gig consisting of college buddies (who played the local bluegrass open mic night at the Blue Dolphin) would parlay itself into the creation of Greensky Bluegrass – an ensemble equally obsessed with Tony Rice and David Grisman as they were the Grateful Dead and Phish.

A few years ago, when I was interviewing frontman Paul Hoffman about the initial intent of Greensky, he replied, “To play heavy metal music on acoustic instruments.” And in the quarter-century since its inception, Greensky has become a marquee act. They blurred the lines between bluegrass and jambands, ultimately setting the stage for every band who came thereafter with ambitions to rock big venues, all in the name of jamgrass exploration.

“I think that we just have a spirit to not be limited,” Hoffman told BGS in a 2025 interview. “So, if we want to emulate all the things we love – and we’d love a diverse amount of things, musical things – we honor the acoustic nature of our heritage as a band, but we want so much more. We want [things] to keep us interested and engaged. We’ve allowed ourselves that creative freedom to try anything.”

On the other side of the Great Lakes, in Duluth, Minnesota, Trampled by Turtles formed by happenstance in 2003 on a tiny stage at Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake. A hearty blend of bluegrass, indie-folk and alt-country influences, Trampled’s sound has been described as “Midwestern Gothic” – a musical signature ultimately straddling the barriers between genres of distinct sounds and approaches.

The third generation is rounded out by the Infamous Stringdusters, coming together in 2006 in Nashville. Consisting of longtime road musicians and recent graduates of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the group is a meticulous balance of tradgrass and jamgrass. With their core soaked in the principles of traditional bluegrass, the Dusters have never wavered from chasing their artistic muse towards the unknown horizon of Americana and rock influences that run deep in their sound.

“That’s what’s so beautiful about bluegrass music, in particular,” fiddler Jeremy Garrett told BGS in a 2026 interview. “You pass it on to the next generation and they take it and they do their thing with it. Luckily for us, we were around at a time that [that] was very important, and a transitional time in the industry.”

The Fourth & Fifth Generations

That transitional time in jamgrass of the early 2000s and 2010s sparked what is currently being considered the highwater mark of the genre – and also regarded as the fourth generation of jamgrass – as seen by guitar phenom Billy Strings bursting into the arena level, with Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull right in the mix when it comes to bluegrass spilling into the mainstream.

Also emerging from the same Michigan scene as Greensky Bluegrass, Strings’ rocketship ride from hardscrabble beginnings to selling out any size of venue from coast to coast is the stuff of legend. Only in the summer years of his career, Strings’ playful flexibility around “bluegrass rules” is mirrored by his genuine respect for those who came before him. His knowledge of the genre is as profound as the unknown depths of his skillset and ambition, something witnessed each night he performs for an endless sea of faces.

For Hull and Tuttle, they became the first female musicians to be given the IBMA award for Mandolin Player of the Year (Hull) and Guitar Player of the Year (Tuttle). To note, Hull has now been given the honor seven times in the last 10 years. Both artists are becoming well-known for genre-bending collaborations with a fearlessness in entering new artistic realms – Hull jamming alongside Slash and Cory Wong, with Tuttle shifting into the indie-folk and alt-country scenes as of late.

Where we stand at this exact juncture is considered the fifth generation of jamgrass – a level represented by young, hungry and immensely-talented bands eager to learn, eager to rise to the occasion on the live stage – with the likes of Mountain Grass Unit, Clay Street Unit, Shadowgrass, and Magoo putting down quickly-growing roots in the scene due to impressive appearances in front of massive crowds on the festival circuit in recent years.

“We’re a live band. It’s where we really shine through, and you can just feel the energy up there. We always try to say, ‘There are only so many Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights,’ and we want to elevate that and bring the energy and the emotion and let [the audience] loose,” Clay Street Unit guitarist Sam Walker told BGS in a 2026 interview. “We want to make sure at every show we’re bringing that to the table, our full attention to the energy and making sure that everyone’s having as good a time as they can.”

In the last 55 years or so of the jamgrass movement, the sheer beauty of the genre is the mere fact that many of the architects and torchbearers are still walking this earth, still touring and proudly collaborating with the younger generations, and always offering a real sense of encouragement to happily take risks and not be afraid of what could be, onstage and in the studio – for true gratitude resides in the ancient desire to find one’s truth and purpose.

Continue exploring our Jamgrass in July coverage here. This content brought to you in partnership with Preston Thompson Guitars.

Photo Credit: Leftover Salmon by Tobin Voggesser.

Watch Carly Pearce Sing With Molly Tuttle and Dan Tyminski on Harmonies

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Award-winning and critically acclaimed country star Carly Pearce has unveiled the latest single from her upcoming album, Honest Woman, and the track should be of special interest not just to country fans, but bluegrass lovers, too. “What If You Loved Me,” available today on streaming platforms and via an accompanying performance video (watch above) features Dan Tyminski and Molly Tuttle on harmony vocals and mandolin and clawhammer banjo, respectively. It’s a lovely song of longing daydreaming and Pearce’s lead vocal shines bolstered by such talented and artful harmony singers.

“What If You Loved Me” is built on an absolutely classic country trope, the “opposite day” paradigm, asking seemingly simple but actually huge and daunting questions. It immediately recalls songs like Dolly Parton’s “The Grass Is Blue,” Zach Top’s “I Never Lie,” George Jones’ “She Thinks I Still Care” or “Just Someone I Used to Know” written by Cowboy Jack Clement, wherein the speaker says exactly what they want, dream of, hope for, and love – but by pointing out the opposite of each. Pearce’s incisive song is a lovely iteration on this age-old country theme, singing:

What if up was down and down was up
And you were the sad one
And I already found somebody?
What if I didn’t love you
And what if you loved me? 

It’s a heart-wrenching plea, the lonesome pining in the lyrics ratcheted to extremes by delicious, buttery three-part harmony. With Pearce on rhythm guitar, Tuttle picks up an open-back old-time banjo and frails along while Tyminski pulls limitless emotion from his mandolin with tremolos and tender licks. Both of these bluegrass pickers are accomplished multi-instrumentalists, serving any and every song and context in whatever way they need.

“Bluegrass is such a cherished part of who I am as it’s where I got my start,” says Pearce via press release. “To record a song that honors my roots with two artists that I have deep respect and admiration for is not only a special moment, but very emotional. 10-year-old Carly who grew up singing in bluegrass bands would be over the moon to know she has a song with Dan and Molly (as is present-day Carly!). This is the perfect moment in my career to show fans this side of my heart.”

It’s easy to trace the bluegrass influences through Carly Pearce’s country career, as the genre has been an important part of the Kentucky native’s creative life all along. But it’s especially apparent lately, with this collaboration with Tyminski and Tuttle, another track on Honest Woman featuring Tyminski as well, and Pearce’s recent CMA Fest appearance that featured Tuttle, Ricky Skaggs, young mandolinist Shay Morgan, and members of Skaggs’ band, Kentucky Thunder. Their performance of “From Now On” was a hit at Nissan Stadium and on the CMA Fest broadcast on ABC, too.

Bluegrass and country have always gone hand-in-hand, but with excellent songs such as these, artists like Carly Pearce help remind of their inseparable connection. Pearce’s brand new album, Honest Woman, will be out August 28 and her Honest Woman: Up Close Tour beings in September.

Photo Credit: John Shearer

The Origins and Evolution of Jamgrass – And Where It Goes From Here

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Whether it’s Bill Monroe, Sam Bush, Sister Sadie, or Billy Strings, bluegrass has always pushed boundaries. At the forefront of that movement sits jamgrass, which brings together a barrage of influences performed with grassy, stringed arrangements and an improvisational sensibility that makes each song and show feel like a living organism – and results in each performance having its own qualities and quirks.

However, despite many tying the origins of jamgrass to ’90s upstarts like Leftover Salmon and Yonder Mountain String Band, its roots actually go back at least a half-century – and in some cases to the very origins of bluegrass music itself.

“When Bill Monroe started the Blue Grass Boys and they came on the Grand Ole Opry with that band, they were so far removed and different from other string bands of that same era even though they had the same instrumentation,” says Bush. “They were light years ahead of all the rest of the music on the Grand Ole Opry in terms of progressiveness and innovation, so in his own way Bill Monroe was a rebel. The Opry audience was just astounded with the way they played, and then when Bill introduced a great fiddler like Chubby Wise and the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs, that’s what kicked what we call bluegrass into gear.”

That same trailblazing spirit of Monroe could also be found in Bush himself several decades later, with the formation of the Bluegrass Alliance and, shortly after, New Grass Revival. The latter went against the grain of traditional bluegrass in nearly every way imaginable, from covers of Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Marley, and The Beatles to their long hair and the tie-dye they dressed themselves in. All more akin to Deadheads and the hippie movement than bluegrass at the time. Per Bush, the group was inspired by bands that had already deviated from the old-time ways of bluegrass like the Osborne Brothers, Jim & Jesse, the Country Gentlemen, the Dillards, the Greenbriar Boys, Area Code 615, and even John Hartford – who he’d later pay tribute to with his 2022 album Radio John.

That being said, New Grass Revival and the movement they helped spark also held the tradition of bluegrass in as high regard as anyone, even as the band pushed the music in a direction it had never been before. “We always said that if you want to play newgrass, you first have to know how to play bluegrass,” recalls Bush.

The band’s rise gave way to the progressive leaning newgrass movement that saw an influx of outside influences and experimentation flood into the music that Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys made famous, with one of the most notable being Leftover Salmon. Formed in 1989 – the same year New Grass Revival first broke up – in Boulder, Colorado, Salmon brought together acoustic and electric arrangements with percussion to create an offshoot of newgrass they coined “Cajun slamgrass.” The outfit’s hybrid sound was an instant hit, and by the early ’90s the band found itself on the H.O.R.D.E tour with rock and jam bands like Phish, Widespread Panic, Spin Doctors, and Blues Traveler. This further connected the worlds of bluegrass and jam, resulting in what many refer to as the official launch of the jamgrass movement later in the decade when Yonder Mountain String Band burst onto the scene.

In fact, Yonder’s bassist, Ben Kaufmann, recalls attending that H.O.R.D.E tour and credits it for sending him down the rabbit hole of bluegrass. But being from Boston and growing up a Deadhead, he knew that any music he’d go on to create would be radically different from what had come before it.

“We didn’t grow up in the rural South,” explains Kaufmann. “We were suburban kids, which was critical to whatever Yonder ended up achieving. If we weren’t, the band likely would’ve leaned much more traditional. We thought the music of Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and the Stanley Brothers were the coolest things ever, even though it was born out of an environment that’s not ours.

“That, combined with the influences of our formative years, helped to mold our own little version of what a bluegrass band could be, even though not everyone thought it was the ‘right’ way to play it. For a while the bluegrass community didn’t want any part of us, which made me realize that if people weren’t going to invite us to their party that we’d create our own, which is exactly what we did.”

From there, Yonder integrated their high-strung and energetic live show even more than the jam band circuit, piecing together the foundations of what would soon become the jamgrass scene in the process. That momentum reached a fever pitch for the band in the late 2000s when the band was headlining bigger rooms than it ever had before and landing opening slots on arena tours with the Dave Matthews Band and Widespread Panic, similar to the gigs New Grass Revival had opening similar venues for Leon Russell in 1979.

Thinking back on that era of the band, Kaufmann says it made him understand the full potential of what jamgrass and bluegrass could achieve if given the opportunity, which he says is now being realized with artists like Billy Strings, Mountain Grass Unit, and others.

“Even in the late aughts when Yonder was at max room capacity and opening these arena shows, we wondered if bluegrass would ever work in rooms this big. And, to our amusement, it did – you just needed to fill the venue with the right people. We didn’t know if that would be us headlining those places one day, but playing those gigs showed us it was something that could happen.

“With that in mind, it’s no surprise to see a young gun like Billy Strings come along and set the world on fire. In the little amount of time we’ve spent together it was obvious that he is a special talent, so observing his rise and all he’s done for this kind of music has been mind-blowing.”

Yonder’s success lit a spark for the jamgrass movement that’s been burning ever since, with countless performers crediting the band for the influence they’ve bestowed upon them. One of those people is Kyle Tuttle, who grew up following the band around on tour in the early 2000s before eventually landing a spot playing in founding member Jeff Austin’s band after Austin departed Yonder in 2014.

“I was just starting to see real bluegrass and already loved the Grateful Dead, so when Yonder Mountain String Band came along and overlapped with those two worlds, it was like a dream come true,” Tuttle explains. “I’d been seeing all these suit-and-tie bands playing straight bluegrass and loved it, but at the same time I was also wondering where I fit into it. Then Yonder pops up and it feels like what I’d been waiting my whole life to discover.”

Tuttle played his first gig with the Jeff Austin Band in 2016 and remained in the group up until the singer’s untimely death in 2019. He went on to perform with the GRAMMY Award-winning Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway from 2021 to early 2025. Now he leads his own collective, the Kyle Tuttle Band, where he intertwines original compositions with traditional bluegrass covers and other off-the-wall influences as he puts his own spin on what jamgrass is.

“It’s a common perspective for people to not want you to mess with their bluegrass and tradition, whereas the jamgrass world tends to be more wide open,” admits Tuttle. “Fans nowadays are ready to hear whatever interesting mashup you create, which makes for a really nice union.”

With how wide open the jamgrass has become, even bands outside its periphery have found their way into the community from time to time. Take Fruition for example, a band that began busking on the streets of Portland over 15 years ago with a mix of string instruments and a poppy folk sound that sits on the far outer reaches of the jamgrass spectrum. Similar to how Yonder struggled to be embraced by the bluegrass community in its early days, Fruition’s Kellen Asebroek said it was the jamgrass community that first embraced and welcomed the band when nobody else would. “There’s no telling where we’d be if they hadn’t welcomed us into their family.”

“I was introduced to [jamgrass] in 2002 before I even knew what it was,” recollects Asebroek. “My uncle was a big Leftover Salmon fan and gave me an audience recording from the ’90s to listen to that left me in awe wondering what the hell it was they were doing. I grew up in more of a punk, reggae and classic rock world, so that was the first time I heard something remotely grassy. It wasn’t until we started Fruition and were busking on the street that people began referring to us as a jamgrass band. That being said, Fruition tends to be on the more structured side, so much so that I wouldn’t even call ourselves a jam band. We’ve always been in a unique place in that world in the sense that the jamgrass community is who took us in as babies and showed us around even though we were on the fringes of it.”

Also on the fringes of jamgrass is Daniel Donato, who began picking country and bluegrass tunes on Nashville’s Broadway strip as a teenager before launching his own project, Cosmic Country, in 2015 after seeing shapeshifting country singer Sturgill Simpson at the Ryman. The sound that grew out of that moment is equal parts Simpson and the Dead, but Donato says that bluegrass legends like Bill Monroe are also critical to what he creates as well, even though he utilizes mostly electric instrumentation.

“Jerry Garcia also had a really sophisticated understanding and appreciation for bluegrass music,” compares Donato. “The arrangements of the Dead were not succinctly bluegrass, but there was a ton of bluegrass influence that went into the way he played, especially with Old & In The Way and the Jerry Garcia Band. My goal has been to tap into a similar feeling, but with a slightly more prominent country twang.”

Someone else who’s spent plenty of time in the jamgrass scene despite not always producing music that would be categorized as such is Sierra Hull. The mandolin prodigy grew up on a heavy dose of traditional bluegrass in East Tennessee, with acts like Blue Highway, the Seldom Scene, and Lonesome River Band being the soundtrack of her youth. While she’s tended to lean more towards “chambergrass” and singer-songwriter styles in her adult life, she also takes plenty of time to let loose and jam, whether it’s stretching out her own material or joining artists like Cory Wong, the String Cheese Incident, Greensky Bluegrass, Béla Fleck, and Sam Bush on stage. The latter of whom she credits – along with luminaries like Peter Rowan and David Grisman – for planting the seeds that later grew to become jamgrass.

“For people like me, [Sam] was such a huge gateway to a lot of these other musicians who were really open-minded about what they played and who they collaborated with,” confides Hull. “Coming from a more traditional background, what I’ve enjoyed most about getting out to these bluegrass and jam festivals [is] mixing it up with folks. I’ve become a fan of jamgrass from seeing it all happen up close, rather than having grown up on albums – which I feel is the case for a lot of fans of jam music. The recorded music is still awesome, but the live shows are where the spirit and energy of jamgrass truly live.”

Hull continued, stressing how despite the current momentum behind jamgrass it’s still a very niche genre that nobody gets into expecting to become famous from it, which makes the heights Billy Strings and others are taking it to that much more mesmerizing.

“There’s something really cool about seeing folks who maybe don’t know who Bill Monroe or Doc Watson is, but they can go to a Billy show and immediately connect to the authenticity of what the music is,” exclaims Hull. “We live in a day and age where people are ripping on their pedals and doing more progressive stuff than they ever have before with string music, but at the same time most all of these bands have their moments where they throw that all away and just play a straight-up bluegrass tune. Seeing people resonate with that is central to what this music is and does.”

Another woman staking out a career in and around jamgrass is Lindsay Lou, who first discovered the subgenre witnessing the early days of Greensky Bluegrass performing in Michigan. Although she’d already been vaguely familiar with Yonder and Leftover Salmon, Lou credits Greensky’s sound and proximity to her as the driving factors for introducing her not just their music, but jamgrass as a whole.

“Greensky was my gateway to the jam world, because we were both part of the same scene,” says Lou. “I started hanging with them and soon found myself at festivals with other like-minded bands that sent me diving into the music of the Grateful Dead and others.”

One of those artists she wound up connecting with was a young Billy Strings, who she’d grow close with and later live across the street from in Nashville. The two would even go on to co-write a number of songs together including “Freedom” and “Nothing’s Working,” which both appeared on Strings’ albums Home and Renewal, as well as the latter appearing on Lou’s Queen Of Time. “It’s been really cool having written songs with Billy and hearing him perform them to arenas packed with 30,000 all singing along.”

“It’s no surprise to me that Billy has brought so many people to jam and bluegrass music in the same way that Yonder and Greensky did for so many before him, including Billy himself,” she stresses. “It’s been so much fun watching a young hippie kid like him take a traditional song to places you never thought it could go due to him embracing the musical conversation that jam music is centered around.”

Someone at the heart of the Billy Strings phenomenon is Jarrod Walker, who’s played mandolin in the Michigander’s band since 2018. Similar to Sam Bush, Walker believes the roots of jamgrass can be traced all the way back to Bill Monroe, due to how he took popular songs of the day and breathed new life into them with stringed arrangements – similar to how modern day jam bands pull from influences far and wide to create something entirely new. And although he credits Sam Bush as being a central figure for the movement, he also holds the Seldom Scene – who recorded an extended version of the Grateful Dead’s “I Know You Rider” (simply called “Rider”) on its 1973 album Act III – in a similarly high regard.

“There have been a smorgasbord of different influences in jamgrass from the very beginning with Irish and English music and gospel and blues – all of it was an integral part of what Bill Monroe originally did,” says Walker. “Then someone like Jerry Garcia comes along and follows Monroe like people would soon be following the Dead, which led to Old & In The Way, continuing the prophecy that’s still playing out to this day.”

But even as that prophecy continues to play out, Walker is amazed by where it’s taken not just the Billy Strings band, but string music as a whole. Having been accustomed to gigging at performance art centers and other smaller, seated venues for most of his pre-Billy picking days, he says that the experience of performing at rock clubs and now arenas with fans going crazy for bluegrass music has been mind-boggling and a phenomenon he’ll never stop being captivated by.

“[Playing arenas] is something none of us saw coming and is a combination of being at the right place at the right time and the contributions of everyone who came before us that paved this path for us to do it,” states Walker. “Billy is also a fantastic musician and student of bluegrass whose love for the music combined with his other influences is emblematic of the cohesion that is core to jamgrass and everything it stands for.”

Like all forms of music, jamgrass is a living, breathing organism that is constantly evolving and bringing new ideas and influences to the table. Whether it’s traditional and progressive bluegrass or rock, blues, punk, soul, country and everything in between, it all has a place in the jamgrass setting and is without a doubt the biggest driving factor of the genre’s success. It truly is a “rising tide lifts all boats” scenario that may have been a long time coming to arrive, but now that it’s here and thriving shows no signs of departing anytime soon.

“It took a long time for listening tastes to catch up with this kind of music and these instruments, but it’s no surprise to me that someone as talented as Billy is having the success he’s having,” declares Bush. “It’s only natural that the music is going to grow, and it’s in a really healthy place right now. But even with the rise of jamgrass you still have good ole Del McCoury leading the pack with his Bill Monroe style of bluegrass, and the same audience that loves jamgrass loves him too.”

Continue exploring our Jamgrass in July coverage here. This content brought to you in partnership with Preston Thompson Guitars.

Photo Credit: Sam Bush courtesy of Crossover Touring; Sierra Hull courtesy of the artist; Ben Kauffman courtesy of Crossover Touring.