City of Gold Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway

• 1 El Dorado 04:23
• 2 Where Did All the Wild Things Go? 03:58
• 3 San Joaquin 02:37
• 4 Yosemite (feat. Dave Matthews) 03:10
• 5 Next Rodeo 03:47
• 6 When My Race Is Run 04:22
• 7 Alice in the Bluegrass 04:04
• 8 Stranger Things 04:01
• 9 Down Home Dispensary 02:42
• 10 More Like a River 02:57
• 11 Goodbye Mary 04:12
• 12 Evergreen, OK 02:53
• 13 The First Time I Fell in Love 03:53
• Total Runtime 46:59

Info for City of Gold

Just a few weeks ago, Molly Tuttle was awarded a Grammy in the category "Best Bluegrass Album" for her last album "Crooked Tree", and now we can already look forward to new material from the singer, songwriter and musician from Nashville. "City of Gold" will be released on 21 July via Nonesuch Records and was once again created in close collaboration with her band Golden Highway. You can already listen to the lead track "El Dorado", accompanied by a performance video. "City of Gold" is available for pre-order/pre-order now.

Tuttle produced "City of Gold" together with Jerry Douglas, the recordings took place in the Sound Emporium Studios in Nashville. The songs were inspired by Tuttle's tireless touring with her band Golden Highway over the past few years. The growing experience let them become a sworn unit in their interplay. This is evident on the album's 13 tracks, which capture the electrifying live energy of Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway while highlighting each member's musical strengths. Molly Tuttle co-wrote most of the songs with Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show), Mason Via wrote "Down Home Dispensary" and Melody Walker and Shelby Means co-wrote "Next Rodeo".

And if you're wondering what the title "City of Gold" is all about, Molly Tuttle explains: "When I was a kid, we took a trip to Caloma, California, to learn about the gold rush. I'll never forget the sight of the dusty hills there and especially that old miner who showed us the nugget around his neck. Just as he had gold fever, so do I with music: it has always fascinated me, captured my heart and led me down into the deepest shafts to explore it. On my new album, as songwriter (with Ketch Secor) and co-producer (with Jerry Douglas), I have once again dug deep and come back to the light of day with an album that celebrates the music of my heart, my life, the area I grew up in and the stories I heard along the way. My band Golden Highway and I recorded the album after playing over 100 shows around the country last year. On tour as well as in the studio we are inspired by artists:inside like John Hartford, Gillian Welch and Peter Rowan, to name a few. Their albums are like family albums to us. And just like them, we are keen to leave the familiar terrain again and again and open up new horizons. The songs span from fast-paced breakdowns to ballads, from fairy tales to fiddle tunes, from Yosemite to Gold Country and beyond the mountains. It was on that visit to Coloma - the first place in California to strike gold - that I first heard of El Dorado, the City of Gold. Making music can take you to a place that is just as precious. I hope you enjoy the album!"

Molly Tuttle, Golden Highway are:
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, fiddle
Dominick Leslie, mandolin
Shelby Means, bass
Kyle Tuttle, banjo
Additional musicians:
Jerry Douglas, dobro, backing vocals, production
Dave Matthews, vocals

Molly Tuttle
speaks softly. Her voice is both lilting and lucid, and when she says that she wants to create music that is truly original and unmistakably hers, her quietness shifts into a steely audacity that’s charming and almost funny––she’s only 25, after all. But then, you remember her songs. And it hits you: brash, beautiful originality is exactly what Molly is doing.
“I love coming up with interesting guitar parts that don’t really fit––that don’t sound like any specific genre or any other guitar players,” Molly says, home in Nashville the day before heading back out to tour. “I am hoping to create my own sound. To find some new ground.”
On her debut solo EP Rise, Molly reveals the rich new ground she’s discovered. Produced by Kai Welch (Abigail Washburn, Bobby Bare, Jr., the Greencards), the seven-song collection relies on a rock-solid bluegrass foundation as Molly breaks free without breaking ties, singing and exploring what her six-string acoustic guitar can do. “This album was a big learning process for me,” Molly says. “I knew Kai would know directions to take my songs that would push me a little outside of my box. I grew a lot more confident in the direction I am heading as an artist.”
Rise further introduces Molly to a roots music audience who’s already enthusiastically embraced and elevated her. Her 2017 win for Guitar Player of the Year from the International Bluegrass Association (IBMA) was history-making, as the first woman to ever be nominated for the honor, and the accolades kept coming in 2018 as Folk Alliance International’s International Folk Music Awards awarded her Song of the Year for her song “You Didn’t Call My Name.”
Anchored by her lucent vocals, smart writing, and incredible flat-picking, Rise is a direct reflection of Molly’s personal and artistic growth over the last several years. A sense of longing––for someone, for a feeling, for a state of being––pulses throughout the EP. “The songs were written over a long period of time, but throughout it, I was experiencing a lot of transitions in my life,” she says. “Going off to college, then moving from Boston to Nashville. All of this music was written from a place of dealing with a lot of change.”
“Good Enough” kicks off the EP with effervescence and wry self-awareness. Molly’s bluegrass roots are on proud display: her nimble acoustic guitar is joined by a rolling chorus of strings as she ponders the concept of satisfaction. “The idea for ‘Good Enough’ was inspired by writing songs––just never feeling like they are finished and wanting to work and work on them,” Molly says. “It’s also rooted in the discomfort of being a musician in general, having some doubts in the back of my mind about whether or not I and my music are good enough.” Ultimately, the song urges self-reliance and trust. “It’s about finding that place where success and what people say doesn’t matter,” she says. “You’re just satisfied for yourself.”
If “Good Enough” is bluegrass reassurance, second track “You Didn’t Call My Name” is genre-defying grace. Molly’s guitar sets a dreamy, roots-pop pace as she sings achingly about missed opportunities. “I wrote the song right before I left California,” she remembers. “I was feeling a lot of things were unfinished there.”
Even as she stuns listeners with her original songs and collects songwriting awards, Molly’s identity as a guitarist and vocalist influences how she writes. “I think my songwriting goes into who I am as a musician,” she explains. “Writing songs inspires different things on guitar, and vice versa.”
Frenetic “Save This Heart” is a perfect example of Molly’s process. “I came up with the guitar part, and then the words and story started falling into place because the guitar had an urgency to it,” she says. “It’s a song that came out of guitar playing first.” The track is a mesmerizing showcase of Molly’s clawhammer guitar mastery. Even when she could easily fall back on the magic of her fingers, she never shortchanges listeners lyrically: “Your letters get shorter, days get longer / I call across the border, it’s static on the line / Save this heart of mine,” vividly captures the panic of realizing you might be too late.
Molly had the melody for “Friend and a Friend” for years before settling on its traveling musician storyline. Reveling in its bluegrass bones, the song builds, growing bigger and stronger like the “friend and a friend” fanbase she’s singing about. Instrumental “Super Moon” exudes the spontaneity of the song’s recording process: Molly and drummer Jano Rix had never played the tune together before, and their virtuosic chemistry is a joy.
“Lightning in a Jar” breathes new life into a familiar metaphor, and Molly says the moving portrait of nostalgia may be her favorite track on the EP. Her haunting vocals steal ears away from her subtly brilliant playing, underscoring just how much of a triple threat she truly is. “I was thinking about when I was a kid, growing up and visiting my grandparents in Illinois,” she says. “It was a totally different environment than California. It was a magical time, and I was just trying to capture it––my childhood memories.” EP closer “Walden” rearranges Thoreau lines and mixes them with Molly’s own to create stunning musical commentary on impermanence. “I was thinking a lot about climate change,” she says. “In California, we are dealing with really big fires, and it’s so sad. I know people whose houses have burned down. I was thinking about how we relate to the planet.”
When asked what she hopes listeners experience listening to Rise, Molly doesn’t hesitate: “I hope it can bring comfort to and move people. I wrote some of these songs to try to bring positivity to tough situations. Really, I just want to bring people joy.”

This album contains no booklet.