Molly Tuttle entered my life with two strikes against her before I heard a single note.

Strike One: She became the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association Guitar Player of the Year award in 2017 and won it again the following year. Good for Molly, but I’d never cottoned to bluegrass music, in large part due to banjophobia.

Strike Two: This particular album contains nothing but cover songs. Unless the cover songs are covered by a great interpreter like Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, I tend to avoid those productions because I suspect the artist in question was too lazy to write something original.

Facing a 0-2 count, Molly managed to stave off the strikeout . . . for the time being. Two developments forced me to rethink my position. First, the experience of hearing Maybelle Carter’s outstanding guitar work on “Wildwood Flower” during my review of 1920s music opened a tiny crack in the wall I had erected against bluegrass. That smidgen of enlightenment led me to take a closer look at Molly’s track list, and I was blown away by the eclecticism. Here is a list of the artists Molly covered on . . . but I’d rather be with you and their genres:

• The National (alternative rock)
• The Rolling Stones (psychedelic rock, in this case)
• Arthur Russell (avant-garde)
• Karen Dalton (country blues and jazz)
• FKA Twigs (avant-pop)
• Rancid (power punk)
• The Grateful Dead (The Grateful Dead is a genre all by itself)
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs (electro-pop)
• Harry Styles (pop-rock, synth pop)
• Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens (folk pop)

Pretty daring stuff! The selection that blew me away was Rancid, one of my favorite punk bands of all time. “How in the fuck can a bluegrass musician do justice to power punk?” I wondered. Curiosity triggered, I listened to the entire album in one sitting.

Wait a minute . . . did Molly just hit a home run?

Hmm . . . well, we won’t know if the ball went foul or headed out of the park until I examine the replays.

*****

Molly Tuttle grew up in Silicon Valley. She started learning guitar at the age of eight, encouraged by her multi-instrumentalist father Jack, who led a family band called the Tuttles. By the time she turned eleven, Molly’s skills had developed enough to enable her to play live shows with her father, and she recorded an album of duets with her dad at 13. She joined the family band at fifteen, continued to develop her craft and expand her knowledge of music, and wound up receiving a merit scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. Having won accolades galore for her musicianship and songwriting during that period, she moved to Nashville in 2015 and crowdfunded her first solo recording, the EP Rise, in 2017. After signing with Compass Records, she released her first full-length album When You’re Ready in 2019. The album received a slew of positive reviews, and it seemed that Molly was well on her way to stardom.

Unfortunately, Molly’s career was struck by a double whammy: a tornado cut its way through the Nashville area on March 2-3, 2020, and a few weeks later, Music City was shut down courtesy of COVID-19. Molly made it through the storm okay, but was denied the opportunity to build on the momentum of her maiden album via touring.

While most people who were lucky enough to survive spent the lockdown bitching about the restrictions and binging on Netflix, I know some people who adopted the motto, “Well, fuck it. If I can’t do the things I usually do, I’ll do something I can do.” For all the pain and hassles it created, the shutdown presented creative minds with a rare opportunity because limitations are just as likely to spur creativity as opposed to moaning and groaning. Renoir suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, but his need to express himself through painting resulted in over 4000 works. Basquiat had to overcome racism, poverty and the general aversion to graffiti to achieve worldwide recognition as an original artist. Taylor Swift’s two best albums were recorded during the shutdown, but not all of the creative activity during the pandemic came from artists. One of my American gym rat friends was forced to give up his fitness routine and had no space in his house for a Peloton, but he did have a huge backyard filled with weeds because he didn’t know dick about gardening. He spent the next two years clearing out the weeds and learning all he could about gardening, and wound up building a beautiful pollinator-friendly garden all by himself (and lost fifteen pounds in the process).

The Bandcamp page for . . . but I’d rather be with you describes how Molly built her musical garden: “Tuttle, who grew up in California and has toured as a solo artist for years, suddenly found herself—along with the rest of the musician community—sheltering at home. She found solace in revisiting favorite songs from throughout her life in an attempt to ‘remind myself why I love music.’ She conceptualized an idea for a record with renowned LA producer Tony Berg to be recorded over 2,000 miles apart. Tuttle taught herself how to use ProTools, recorded and engineered all of her parts before sending them to Berg in Los Angeles . . . ‘I love so many types of music, and it’s exciting to be a part of different musical worlds,’ she says, ‘but when I’m creating, I don’t think about genres or how it will fit into any particular format—it’s just music.’”

Tony Berg knew there were plenty of professional musicians with home studios riding out the storm in L.A., so he had little difficulty putting together a virtual band. The core consisted of Gabe Noel on bass, Matt Chamberlain on drums/percussion, Patrick Warren on keyboards and Rich Hinman on pedal steel guitar; Berg, Ketch Secor (of Old Crow Medicine Show) and Taylor Goldsmith added harmonies and vocal counterpoint; Cynthia Tolson plays both violin and viola on the album’s closing track, joined by Dave Eggar on cello.

Evaluating cover songs involves two fundamental questions. Does the artist bring anything new to the table, or do they settle for a carbon copy? Does the artist make the song their song, giving the tune new life? The Isley Brothers answered both questions in the positive with their version of “Twist and Shout” by adding the dramatic four-note rising bridge and a few whoops and hollers, crushing the limp original release by the Top Notes. Faced with that challenge and a pair of shot vocal cords, John Lennon made “Twist and Shout” his own, delivering “the most famous single take in rock history,” according to AllMusic.

With her eclectic choices of material and the long-distance collaboration necessitated by the pandemic, Molly Tuttle took on un défi extraordinaire in her quest to remind herself why she loved music. Now it’s time to see if she managed to pull off the upset. 

*****

“Fake Empire” (Bryce Dessner, Matt Berninger): In the liner notes, Molly expressed her admiration for Matt Berninger’s lyrics, which she described as “hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.” That description certainly applies to the opening track of The National’s Boxer, where Bernininger delivered an ironic state of the union address in which he exposed the voluntary blindness of Americans to the ugliness of the War on Terror and the consequent damage to democracy wrought by the Bush administration. As Matt put it, the scene was one “where you can’t deal with the reality of what’s really going on, so let’s just pretend that the world’s full of bluebirds and ice skating.”

Tiptoe through our shiny city
With our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
Bluebirds on our shoulders
We’re half awake in a fake empire
We’re half awake in a fake empire

Thirteen years later, denial takes another form: MAGA. Millions refuse to wear masks, hoping to infect liberals with COVID-19. Instead of bringing the citizenry together during a national crisis, Trump further divides the country by spouting lies, weird conspiracy theories and casting doubt on expert opinions. Molly’s decision to cover the song serves as a reminder that though the players and the crises have changed, America still had a long, long way to go to become great again.

I would classify the original version as compelling, insightful and somewhat haunting, and Molly’s version is all that and more. Her beautiful voice conveys a deep sadness regarding the state of her country, mixed with a tone of sage weariness that nothing ever seems to change. Both renditions are moving, but in different ways. The National’s version evokes a sense of dread; Molly’s brings me to tears.

I also have to commend Molly for the restraint displayed in her performance. As is true of many songs by The National, the chords are simple (C, F, G, Am) and often designed to produce a tense, droning effect. Molly wisely chose not to use the song to display her guitar wizardry, opting to fingerpick the basic chord pattern to retain the meditative mood of the original. The arrangement is generally minimalist, enhanced by Rich Hinman’s swooping steel pedal guitar.

Molly’s videos are  unique in that they consistently enhance the meaning of the song. In the video for “Fake Empire,” we see photographs of historical events demonstrating that the empire was fake long before Bush and Cheney took over, making the point that America has never been as great as phony patriots would like you to believe. As you will see shortly, Molly is hardly anti-American; she simply wishes that America would live up to its stated ideals for a change.

“She’s a Rainbow” (Jagger-Richards):  I tinkered with the idea of doing my shortest song review ever, but Molly deserves the full treatment. Just for the record, my short review goes like this:

WOW!

Molly shows the greatest respect for the original by duplicating the transitional riffs and melodic lines of the original, but the beauty of the notes that tumble off her fretboard and the sheer joy expressed in her vocals combine to give the song a vibrancy that brings happy tears to my eyes. Harry Carrigan of Folk Alley noted that in the second instrumental bridge, “Tuttle, Warren, and Hinman capture the shimmering beauty of the ways that individual droplets of water fall together in sunlight to create a rainbow,” an amazing tour-de-force of long-distance recording. In the background you hear occasional nods to the psychedelic influences displayed on Their Satanic Majesties Request in the synth growls and reverb-loaded percussion, bits of historical relevance that likely came from Tony Berg, who was entering his teens when the album came out.

Though the original was a paean to Marianne Faithfull and/or Anita Pallenberg, I get the sense that Molly wanted to expand the definition of “beauty” to include all women, not just those blessed with culturally-defined beauty. That motive becomes clearer when you watch the accompanying video, which celebrates all women and the ongoing struggle for equality. I beg my readers not to share this video with anyone connected with the Trump administration because its celebration of DEI could result in Molly’s arrest and deportation.

“A Little Lost” (Arthur Russell): As I married a cellist, I know this song very well. When Alicia and I first started our consulting business, we accepted every gig thrown our way to establish a solid record of excellent service, no matter where the client was located. This resulted in some lengthy separations: I might be working for a client in Montreal while Alicia was examining the books of an enterprise in Slovenia. After one such separation, I arrived home to find Alicia completely naked, sitting in a chair, holding cello and bow. “I want you to know how much I missed you,” she explained, and began singing and playing this beautiful love song:

I’m a little lost without you
That could be an understatement
Now I hope that I have paid the cost
To let a day go on by and not call on you

‘Cause I’m so busy, so busy
Thinking about kissing you
Now I want to do that
Without entertaining another thought

Needless to say, we went way past the kissing stage that night,

It’s a rare song that consists only of voice and cello, but Arthur Russell was a rare bird indeed. He bounced back and forth between avant-garde and disco/dance music, and collaborated with Philip Glass on his final studio album, Another Thought, where “A Little Lost” first appeared in 1994. Sadly, the album was released posthumously, as Arthur had passed two years earlier from AIDS-related illnesses.

After watching the video on YouTube for the first time, I scrolled down to look at the comments and found one that took the words right out of my hyperactive mouth: “I think this would have made Arthur cry. Your approach is as beautiful and unique as he was.” Though the visuals show a woman bowing a cello, there is no cello in Molly’s version, though you do hear synth strings in the background as the song progresses. The beauty comes in two forms: Molly’s flawless picking and clawhammering in the stereo guitar parts and her exceptionally lovely voice as she navigates the octave leaps of the melody. The rhythm section of Noel and Chamberlain provides excellent support, with Noel dropping in a few bass counterpoints and both supporting Molly’s passionate rendering of the chorus with a slightly more assertive attack. The highlight of the piece is found in the bridge, cued by a shift to a slower tempo, Molly’s sweet picking, and Noel’s bass counterpoint. Supported by strings and set to semi-stop time, Molly’s voice captures the latent sense of insecurity embedded in the “too good to be true” feeling reflected in Arthur’s lyrics.

It’s so unfinished, our love affair
A voice in me is telling me to run away
I hope your feeling isn’t diminished
I hope you need someone in your life
Someone like me

Damn! I’m crying again! I’ve rarely heard a singer who can evoke emotion as well as Molly Tuttle.

“Something On Your Mind” (Dino Valenti aka Chet Powers): This song appeared on blues-folkie Karen Dalton’s album In My Own Time in 1971. It’s not much of a song and Karen Dalton wasn’t much of a singer; she was also a difficult person to record due to ingrained defensiveness. Some people compared her voice to Billie Holiday, but Karen rightly rejected the comparison and claimed she sounded more like Bessie Smith. Nah.

Molly sings well enough to form a credible version, and the sound of the notoriously difficult sarangi (played by Gabe Noel) establishes the appropriately dour mood, but the song doesn’t move me in the least. You can’t make nothin’ out of nothin’.

“Mirrored Heart” (Ethan Flynn, Tahliah Barnett): This FKA twigs song appeared on her highly acclaimed album Magdalene, released in 2019. Though some use the label “breakup album,” Magdalene is better characterized as an album of profound emotion and catharsis involving the pain of loss and the healing found in self-reflection. Tahliah announced the coming album in the only press release I’ve ever read that wasn’t 90% bullshit:

I never thought heartbreak could be so all-encompassing. I never thought that my body could stop working to the point that I couldn’t express myself physically in the ways that I have always loved and found so much solace. I have always practiced my way into being the best I could be, but I couldn’t do that this time, I was left with no option but to tear every process down. But the process of making this album has allowed me for the first time, and in the most real way, to find compassion when I have been at my most ungraceful, confused and fractured. I stopped judging myself and at that moment found hope in Magdalene. To her I am forever grateful.

The FKA twigs version is multi-layered, with harsh synthetic sounds echoing the pain in the singer’s voice. Molly’s version is stripped down to the basics: guitar and voice, with Molly providing the harmonies and background vocals. The lyrics form a meditation on relational failure, reflecting a wide range of emotions, from confusion to anger, from insecurity to cynicism:

That’s why it’s all for the gain
It’s all for the lovers trying to push the pain away
It’s all for the gain
It’s all for the lovers trying to fuck away the pain

But I’m never gonna give up
Though I’m probably gonna think about you all the time
And for the lovers who found a mirrored heart
They just remind me I’m without you

As both women possess naturally beautiful voices, there is no reason to bother trying to figure out which version is “best.” If you’re in the mood for heightened drama, go with FKA twigs; if you prefer something more reflective, Molly provides.

“Olympia, WA” (Lars Frederiksen, Matt Freeman, Tim Armstrong): Now Molly faces the biggest test of all. Rancid’s And Out Come the Wolves is my favorite punk album of all time and “Olympia, WA” is a get-your-ass-in-the-mosh-pit bruiser in sync with the largely relentless attack that characterizes the album. 

How did Molly do? I’ll use a stray phrase that I remember from Deep Space Nine: “The kid did alright!”

After listening to the song the first time, I remembered another phrase, this one from Todd Rundgren’s “Onionhead”: You want the obvious, you’ll get the obvious. Of course Molly could make something out of this song! Stripped down to the bones, “Olympia, WA” is in 4/4 time with three chords: G-C-D. There are a gazillion songs like that in rock, but more importantly, there are a gazillion songs like that in country music. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: some of the best basic rock records in the 21st Century have come from country musicians, and given its country-like storyline of “lost in the big city and I wish I was home,” “Olympia, WA” begged to be transformed into country rock.

Oh, darn. I’m just another onionhead.

After Molly gives the countdown, the song begins with muted guitar supported by a few loud thumps from the bass drum. After a humorously bumpy transition, Molly launches her vocal, with guitar and bass driving a steady rhythm. On the third verse line, Ketch Secor joins Molly with his vocal, giving the song a clear country feel. Molly marks the transition to the chorus with three syncopated strums on guitar, and the song truly takes off, driven by a combination of greater volume and an assertive attack from the rhythm section. The changing dynamics employed throughout the song are in stark contrast to the play-loud-and-don’t-stop-until-you-drop approach in punk, but the dampened volume in the verses makes it easier for the listener to follow the storyline. I love how they take it down a notch on the closing line of the chorus, “Back to Olympia,” emphasizing the loneliness of the narrator, who is likely decked in leather with plenty of tats . . . but still very much a human being.

How many times will it take me
Before I go crazy, before I lose everything?
Somethin’ burning deep inside of me
Ran into three Puerto Ricans
Those girls took us to the funhouse
I don’t wanna be alone again

Hangin’ on the corner of 52nd and Broadway
Cars passin’ by but none of ’em seem to go my way
Oh, New York City
Well, I wish I was on the highway
Back to Olympia

Right before that verse and closing chorus, Molly tends to the punk rockers in the audience dying for a shot of speed (musical speed, of course) in an extended instrumental passage where she breaks the speed barrier with flurries of notes that approach the unbelievable. I also love the way she varies the melody in the closing verse by using the natural harmony in the simple chord pattern.

So, did Molly pass the test? I will now quote the opening line from my review of And Out Come the Wolves:

Fuck, yeah!

“Standing on the Moon” (Garcia-Hunter): This is considered a “deep cut” in the Grateful Dead anthology, appearing on their final studio album, Built to Last. Initially I found it more than a bit odd that Molly would choose a tune from a record in close competition with Go To Heaven as the Dead’s worst studio album, but Molly seems to have a gift for recognizing songs with strong bones that may be buried in less-than-satisfactory offerings. In the page for “Standing on the Moon” on the Grateful Dead Family Discography, co-writers Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia reflected on the song’s origins and impact:

Hunter: Standing On The Moon was one of those neat, sweet, quick things, like It Must Have Been The Roses, where the whole picture just came to me, and I grabbed a piece of paper and got it down. No changes, no nothin’. Out of the head of Zeus, full-born and clad in armor.

Garcia: … it’s one of those thing where I don’t know what it is I like about it, but there’s something I like about it very much. It’s an emotional reality; it isn’t linguistics. It’s something about that moment of the soul. To have those words coming out of my mouth puts me in a very specific place, and there’s a certain authenticity there that I didn’t want to disturb. By keeping it simple it allows what actually produced the song to be visible as possible to the listener, so just the song is there.

The lyrics imagine the narrator standing on the moon with a birds-eye view of the happenings on Mother Earth as he stands next to the American flag planted by the astronauts. As usual, the incompetent custodians of the planet are engaged in battle (“I see all of Southeast Asia/I can see El Salvador/I hear the cries of children/And the other songs of war”), and soon the narrator tires of watching the age-old spectacle and begins to yearn for “emotional reality”:

Standing on the moon
With nothing left to do
A lovely view of Heaven
But I’d rather be with you

And now you know where the album title comes from.

Fast forward from 1989 to 2020 and surprise, surprise—nothing has changed. Not even a worldwide pandemic could cool the human thirst for war. According to Wikipedia, while most of the world was stuck at home, humans still managed to engage in fifty-four armed conflicts. Q: “How many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned?” A: “Who the fuck knows?” I’m split as to whether to label Molly’s version as “fortunate” because the subject matter is timeless or “unfortunate” for more obvious reasons.

For the most part, Molly maintains the slow tempo and G-C-D chord pattern of the original, but towards the end of the song, she breaks from the original and inserts a bridge with a tension-rising pattern of Gm-C-F-D7, a dramatic move that inspires a belt-out moment from Molly and strengthens the composition tenfold. The vocals are a partial female-male duet with spot harmonies from Taylor Goldsmith, and once again, Rich Hinman sweetens the mix with his lovely steel pedal swoops.

“Zero” (Brian Chase, Karen Orzolek, Nick Zinner): Despite its celebration of leather, I can’t stand this Yeah Yeah Yeahs song with its irritating electro-pop arrangement and dumb-ass lyrics, but Molly makes more than something out of nothing with exceptionally spirited vocals that reveal her amazing range and a kick-ass guitar performance that tells you she can rock with the best of them.

The version that appears on the album is fine, but I did find the arrangement a bit busy and the production somewhat imbalanced, dimming the spotlight on Molly. Lucky for me, I found a Molly-only performance recorded at Paste Studio NVL that does a better job of displaying her remarkable talents and the joy she feels in making the song her own. 

The only other musicians I can think of who turned a song I loathed into a song I love are Miles Davis, Bill Evans and John Coltrane. Like those gentlemen, Molly can see possibilities in a song that most of us would miss.

“Sunflower Vol. 6” (Greg Kurstin, Harry Styles, Tom Hull): I can’t stand Harry Styles either, but at least this song has a decent melody.

Though the mix is a bit off at times due to too much bass (something this bass whore never thought she would say) and unnecessary applications of reverb, I’ll take Molly’s version over the slick, sterile production of the Styles version anytime. The gentle guitar arpeggios that open the song are accompanied by pedal steel guitar, conveying a warmth that will soon be echoed in Molly’s vocals. Her tone shifts to passionate in the refrain, and to my ears, it certainly doesn’t sound like she needed a shot of reverb to “strengthen” the power of her emotions. Though vocal patches can enhance a song and even convey additional meaning, Molly was blessed with a highly capable voice of exceptional clarity, and her ability to express a variety of emotions gives her work a sense of authenticity that you don’t want to lose through studio manipulation. Quibbles aside, I find nothing to complain about in Molly’s performance, but though her interpretation of the song is rock-solid, she’ll never turn me into a Harry Styles fan.

“How Can I Tell You” (Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens): Good news! I can stand Cat Stevens in small doses, but I think he’s a better songwriter than performer.

This tune from Teaser and the Firecat was largely ignored by the listening public due to the presence of three hit singles: “Morning Has Broken,” “Moonshadow,” and “Peace Train.” I would also hazard a guess that the song failed to excite the public because the song wasn’t suited for Cat’s raspy voice. That’s not a knock; the truth is that there are some singer-songwriters who should be labeled songwriter-singers due to their limited vocal capabilities. Cat Stevens wrote “Here Comes My Baby,” but the song did not realize its potential until the Tremeloes turned it into a great party song. Bob Dylan sounds great on “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35,” but Judy Collins made “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” much more palatable to sensitive ears.

Speaking of sensitive ears, I have to thank Molly for rescuing “How Can I Tell You” from oblivion. Now in the hands of a better singer and guitarist, the song’s fundamental beauty is realized, as Molly strikes the perfect balance between pleading and assertiveness as she tries to express her love to her honey. One could say that the song’s theme is “‘I love you’ simply doesn’t cut it; it’s a well-worn automatic response that fails to capture the emotional complexity of being in love. This theme is clear in both versions, but the sincerity of Molly’s delivery brings it to the fore. The minimalistic arrangement is one of the best on the album, thanks to Patrick Warren’s string arrangement, a well-designed expression of melancholy featuring Dave Eggar on cello and Cynthia Tolson on violin and viola.

I noted that Molly chose not to change the line “Wherever I am girl” to something non-binary, but don’t read too much into that. She is not gay, but a staunch ally of the LGBTQ+ community.

*****

In my humble opinion, I think Molly hit a grand slam with . . . but I’d rather be with you. The title expressed the way many of us felt during the shutdown, unable to visit friends and family while discovering that Zoom was a piss-poor substitute for human contact. Even with the fabulous music and timely title, I was not surprised to learn that the album failed to make any of the charts. Molly had made her big splash in bluegrass and I doubt very much that her core fan base reacted well to the album’s eclecticism. Molly recorded the album with Compass Records, an indie record company with a great reputation in the artistic community but hardly a commercial powerhouse. She has since moved to Nonesuch, a move that might lead to broader recognition because distribution is handled by Warner.

I doubt very much that Molly Tuttle is in it for the money or the fame. She clearly has a passion for music, a commitment to craftsmanship, and a willingness to explore different musical avenues. Whether she chooses to cast her lot with bluegrass (the two follow-up albums moved in that direction) or opts to diversify into other arenas, I’m pretty sure the music will be authentic—and true to her heart and soul.

If you watched the videos, you probably noticed that Molly frequently changes her appearance: sometimes she’s a brunette, sometimes a redhead, occasionally a blonde and at times completely bald. I knew she was wearing wigs (girls know these things) but I didn’t know why until I stumbled on this page on her website, where Molly explains, “I was diagnosed with alopecia areata when I was three years old, and within a year, the autoimmune disease had quickly progressed into its rarest form, alopecia universalis, or total body hair loss.” On that page, Molly relates her history with that condition, the struggles she went through and the insecurity involved in being different. I highly recommend reading her story, which closes with the following epiphany:

Having alopecia has taught me that there is nothing “normal” about everyone being the same. Humans are beautifully diverse. We all have work to do to make our world a safer and more welcoming place for everyone regardless of appearance, race, age, sexuality, gender identity, disability, or anything else that makes us human. Many of us mean well and don’t realize when we’re using hurtful stereotypes and creating stigma. I think that as a society we can start to heal by educating ourselves and listening to each other’s stories. I hope that by sharing mine I can make the world a better place for the bald kids of the future. Thanks for listening!

Note to Molly: I love the sleek look, but you will always be beautiful no matter how you choose to present yourself, because true beauty comes from what’s in your heart.

Molly’s new album will be released on August 15, and I look forward to receiving that slightly belated birthday present.