Molly Tuttle had a very specific goal in mind for her latest album. The musician appeared on the latest episode of American Songwriter’s Off The Record podcast and shared what she hoped to deliver to fans with So Long Little Miss Sunshine.
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“I wanted to make a record that uplifted people, and a lot of the songs were kind of written to be fun while also celebrating yourself,” she said. “Just being unafraid to be who you are, I guess. When we play them live, I just think there’s this fun kind of positivity in the air to some of these songs.”
From “celebrating life” with “The Highway Knows,” to embracing reinvention on “Old Me (New Wig),” the 12-track LP is all about becoming the person you were meant to be and standing firm in who you are.
Molly Tuttle Opens Up About Her Battle With Alopecia
Tuttle embraced that idea on her album cover, where she posed bald for the first time ever.
“I’ve worn wigs since I was 15… I lost my hair to alopecia when I was three, and it never grew back, so I’ve just been bald since I was a little kid,” Tuttle shared. “… I was like, ‘I want to have a picture without my wig on this album because it feels like I’m kind of stepping into a new era. It’s a new chapter. And I’ve never done it before, so I think it would be cool.’”
“But at the same time, I wear wigs all the time, and I love wigs. I have so many wigs at my house. And so it felt like that was a big part of my journey as well,” she continued. “It became a sort of a form of self-expression. It sort of started out as like this comfort blanket, where I didn’t want people to see me without the wig. And then it became almost like a fashion accessory that I just have always had fun with it.”
With that in mind, and The Beatles’ Let It Be album cover as inspiration, Tuttle “drew from all these different little sounds on the album, different songs on the album, and worked with the photographer, Ebru, to figure out these different looks.”
Molly Tuttle’s New Sound
Sonically, the LP was focused largely on Tuttle’s voice and guitar.
“We wanted to make the guitar the central piece that wove the songs into each other, but also wove it into my past work as well, where there’s so much bluegrass flat-picking on this new record,” she said. “I’m really the only soloist on the album, so that was a fun thing to focus on throughout the recording process—how do we make it interesting and come up with these different hooks on the guitar and really feature my playing amidst these songs that are a bit more singer-songwriter, more contemporary sounding?”
The result connects with fans and industry insiders alike. The project earned Tuttle two GRAMMY nominations.
“It’s so cool. And it was just such an amazing surprise,” Tuttle said of her nods for Best Americana Album and Best Americana Performance. “… It’s amazing to feel that validation and that support from your community.”
For Tuttle, the nominations were all the more special because she “did something different sonically” and “took a little bit of a leap of faith” with the album.
“It was kind of scary at times, but it was exciting. I felt like I was kind of following my heart in a new direction,” she said. “So to then feel that support from the peers at the Recording Academy, it was just this amazing validation of, like, ‘OK. I’m on the right path. I trust myself and trust my heart.’”
“Not that that’s why we all make music. We’re not getting into this because we want to win awards,” Tuttle continued. “But when you know people were listening and liking your work and liking the art and choosing to support it in that way, it’s very cool.”
Photo by Ebru Yildiz
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