Molly Tuttle: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

See Molly Tuttle live at WFUV's "An Evening with The Mountain Goats and Molly Tuttle" on Tuesday, November 11, at Sony Hall.

Grammy winner Molly Tuttle is back with a fifth album, So Long Little Miss Sunshine. The new record from this singer, songwriter and guitar virtuoso is a bit of a departure from the bluegrass sound that's earned Tuttle a slew of awards, including those two Grammys for 2022's Crooked Tree and 2023's City of Gold, both with her former band, Golden Highway.

Tuttle has described the songs of her new solo album as nearing folk rock with acoustic guitar, but there are plenty of pop elements woven into So Long Little Miss Sunshine, including a cover of Icona Pop and Charli XCX's “I Love It."

The album also includes an original song,"That’s Gonna Leave a Mark,” which Tuttle co-wrote with Kevin Griffin of Better Than Ezra. That track is probably the most pop-present song on the record but it also includes some wicked clawhammer guitar action. So although the songs do feel a little bit different, the style and vibe are still the same.

Tuttle has actually been working on this album for the past five years, steadily building up a collection of tunes that would make sense together.

During my conversation with Molly, we talked about how nervous she was to show this other side of herself, but why she decided to leave behind the anxieties and self-doubt and keep moving forward. She touched on her autoimmune condition, alopecia areata, in her song "Old Me (New Wig)," and why wigs are a big form of expression for her, confessing to own as many wigs as she does guitars. (Tuttle began losing hair due to the disease at the age of three.) In fact, she wears some of her favorite wigs, along with a bare-headed photo of herself, on the cover of So Long Little Miss Sunshine.

Tuttle did bring a ray of light into Studio A when she stopped by for this session, her first for FUV.  She is a down-to-earth, humble, and extremely present person, and an immensely talented musician. She did one take of each of the songs, "The Highway Knows," "San Joaquin," and "That's Gonna Leave a Mark," and just nailed it each time. 

[Recorded: 7/9/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman, Holden Buckley, and Thomas Lapus. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Mia Vilke, Bella Lipayon, Adithi Vimalanathan, and Olivia Iannaccone.]