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.” “Molly Tuttle, blew away the unsuspecting crowd with her rapid fire bluegrass guitar work that would put even the most talented shredders to shame. It was a marvel to see such incredible technical skill combined with a sweet voice and fun, barn-storming songwriting.” — JONAH, WRITE TO THE BEAT 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. “[Molly Tuttle] sings with the gentle authority of Gillian Welch, yet plays astoundingly fleet flat-picking guitar like Chet Atkins on superdrive. ” — PAUL ZOLLO, AMERICAN SONGWRITER MAGAZINE “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.”

There’s a lot of freedom to be found in solitude. On her own, an artist is free to express her voice authentically and without reservation, can make art that reflects who she is at her core. But going it alone can be daunting sometimes, particularly after years spent collaborating with others. For Maya de Vitry, striking out on her own to write her debut album Adaptations was a metamorphic experience marked by liberation, exploration and deep personal growth. A member of the acclaimed string band The Stray Birds, de Vitry had long wanted to release music under her own name, but, as she explains it, had to summon both the “patience” and the “determination” to put her music out into the world. “It really did take me a while to get to that place of confidence,” she says. “These songs were from a time of almost self-exile or something. Eventually, I began creating from a place that I realized would not fit in any context other than myself.” De Vitry began writing the songs that would comprise Adaptations in the summer of 2016. She was supposed to fly to Nashville when she found out her flight had been delayed, leading to the serendipitous decision to spend some time alone at her grandparents’ cabin in Pennsylvania instead. There, she followed her creative impulses, listening to Neko Case and podcasts and taking walks and jotting down ideas for songs and projects. She would write several songs during that time, eventually bringing them back to Nashville and to friend and producer Dan Knobler. De Vitry initially approached Knobler to record demos, but, after the two recruited a band (Jason Burger, Sam Grisman, Anthony da Costa) in the early summer of 2017, the recordings sounded so good that the group knew it had a record on its hands. “Basically by the end of the week we were like, ‘I think we actually just made half of a record,’” she says. “It was exciting. I had crafted the songs and lived with them and really felt that they were strong and flexible and sturdy.” The group finished Adaptations in August 2017, at which point Knobler tapped friend Russell Durham to arrange and add strings and woodwinds to the songs, which were otherwise recorded live. De Vitry is a classically trained violinist with well-honed chops playing the fiddle, too. “But for this, I just wanted to play guitar and sing my songs. And I didn’t want fiddle on the record because I didn’t want it to be a bluegrass album, so Dan was like, ‘What about violin?’” de Vitry says, laughing. “Some of my earliest, most powerful musical memories happened to be in the orchestra, and when I heard my songs and my voice surrounded by strings and woodwinds, I was overjoyed, transported.” Adaptations opens with the cinematic “Wilderness,” which invites listeners in with chirping birds and haunting vocals before building to a transcendent crescendo of guitar and strings. The track pays homage to the natural muse found in the wilderness, which inspired de Vitry daily while she wrote what would become the album. That thread runs through much of Adaptations, as on the following track “What Said the Moon,” which de Vitry wrote after a moonlit canoe ride with friend and fellow songwriter Courtney Hartman. Where the natural world inspires many of Adaptations‘ tracks, the album also has a deep sense of interiority. De Vitry cites the writing and recording of the album as a personally transformative experience, and the songs present her revelations about friendship, womanhood, freedom and love with great insight and vulnerability.