As I note at the top of Episode 298 of The String, bluegrass music is having one of its periodic moments. A lot of that is due to Billy Strings, who fills arenas almost at will and whose new Highway Prayers LP just topped Billboard’s all-genre album sales chart, making it the first acoustic string band project to do so since the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack of 2001-2002.
Another artist in the vanguard making a mark on the wider culture is Molly Tuttle, the California raised singer, songwriter and guitarist who’s wrapping up her third year touring with her band Golden Highway. She’s a top draw on the circuit, and she’s won numerous awards in her genre, including two consecutive Best Bluegrass Album awards at the Grammys. I bring her up because Molly has deep connections with both of the breakout artists who appear in this week’s split episode - Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and AJ Lee.
Bronwyn is a dazzling fiddler who’s been most visible recently in Molly’s hard-touring band. On stage, she’s kinetic and aggressive and elegant, meshing effortlessly with both band and audience. I’ve seen her half a dozen times in the last few years, and she’s not just skilled - she’s passionate and exciting. And because Golden Highway was also the studio band for Tuttle’s most recent album City Of Gold, Keith-Hynes was able to take home her first Grammy Award last winter.
Her hometown is Charlottesville, VA and her first directions on her instrument were Suzuki violin lessons and then a passion for Irish music and dance that set her on a trad/folk path. She was devoted enough to take that interest to the Berklee College of Music’s American Roots program, where she encountered and fell for the bluesy improvisation of bluegrass. The training and camaraderie there led to her first touring band, Boston’s Mile Twelve, which thrived until the pandemic. And in the slow comeback year of 2021, Molly Tuttle called, inviting Bronwyn into what the fiddler said struck her as “a band of a lifetime” - with Kyle Tuttle on banjo, Shelby Means on bass, and Dominic Leslie on mandolin.
They played their first shows on a west coast tour in January of 2022, and they’ve been going non-stop ever since. It’s been something to watch them develop from those early shakedown sets to the dynamic hive mind of a band that recently played their Ryman Auditorium debut.
“We've all learned a lot from each other,” Bronwyn says. “Kyle brings a pretty deep knowledge of jamming and jamgrass. He played with Jeff Austin for years and kind of understands that world better than any of us. And everyone brings their own unique experiences with music. And I guess we've just all kind of been really open and always trying to improve and learn from each other.”
In the meantime, Keith-Hynes won two IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year Awards for the years 2021 and 2022. She also largely inherited the Monday night 6-8 pm residency slot at Dee’s Lounge in Madison, where East Nash Grass, the IBMA Best New Artist for 2024, developed as a band before hitting the national circuit. This year Bronwyn released I Built A World, her first album as a singing band leader with top tier guest musicians. And as if she weren’t having a big year already, she is getting married this week to Del McCoury band fiddle star Jason Carter. So we pack a lot into 30 minutes.
AJ Lee goes back even farther with Molly Tuttle, because they grew up together in the California bluegrass and roots festival scene. The first time many fans heard of either of them, a pre-teen AJ was making sweet music with Molly’s family band. Jack Tuttle, a well-known musician and educator in the Santa Cruz area led the group from the bass, while Molly and Sullivan (Sully) played guitar and brother Michael played mandolin. First AJ was a guest and then they started playing venues and festivals as The Tuttles with AJ Lee.
This was all nested in a musical culture heavily influenced by the California Bluegrass Association, which goes above and beyond getting youngsters involved in music, so AJ and Molly were surrounded by picking friends and opportunities to play on stage. A related organization, the Northern California Bluegrass Society, named AJ its top female vocalist six times, putting her lovely voice on the map.
When Molly left home for Berklee (where she befriended Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and most of her Golden Highway compadres), AJ (four years younger) stayed in California. At a jam session that included Sully Tuttle, the friends decided to be a band, and that led to AJ Lee & Blue Summit, now in operation for about nine years with three albums to their credit including their newest City Of Glass. Also sitting in this conversation, held at an outdoor restaurant during Americanafest, is guitarist, singer and songwriter Scott Gates, who’s known AJ since she was five. He is carving out the band’s unique sound with two fleet-fingered acoustic flatpickers.
And at the core of the Blue Summit story is Lee’s singing. Her lustrous and clear-toned voice is unlike anyone else’s on the scene, and she surprised bluegrass this year by being nominated for her first IBMA Award for Female Vocalist of the Year. (Blue Summit was also nominated as New Artist for 2024.) So it’s a good thing Lee stuck with music, despite some temptations in other directions, she tells me.
“For a while I tried to reject being a musician altogether,” she says. “Out of high school, I wanted to try being a pilot. I'll try being an engineer, a veterinarian, blah, blah, blah. But for some reason I could never shake the music, and it's just been such an integrated part of my life, and I still love it, and that's why we are in this band still. That's why we continue to do it - the love for the music, and because we just get so high playing with each other. Because it's just such a magical feeling.”
