Molly Tuttle has received much acclaim for her guitar chops, including winning the International Bluegrass Music Award’s Guitar Player of the Year twice, and the Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award.

Her fretwork, singing and songwriting were also recognized with two Grammy Awards for Best Bluegrass Album with her previous band Golden Highway.  

In addition to being a superstar of the bluegrass genre, Tuttle’s wonderful new album “So Long Little Miss Sunshine” shows she can also bring engaging pop sensibilities to her music without compromising her virtuosity. In fact, her guitar playing on the album is arguably even more prominent than on her previous recordings.

Don’t miss Molly Tuttle when she performs Sunday, Dec. 7 at the Arlington Theatre as part of the UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Tickets are available here.

Tuttle talked to Noozhawk’s Jeff Moehlis about the upcoming show and her various musical pursuits. Here is part of the interview:

Jeff Moehlis: What can people look forward to at your upcoming concert in Santa Barbara?

Molly Tuttle: It’s going to be a really fun show. We have Kaitlin Butts opening up for us, as well as the great artist Meels, and they’re both absolutely amazing.

Then we’re gonna play songs off all my different records, but we are on tour supporting my new record “So Long Little Miss Sunshine.” It’s been really fun working up the new songs and playing them out there on the road, as well as re-imagining some of the older material as well.

So, we’re putting on a show that really spans lots of different genres and styles, from rocking out on certain songs to stripping it down and doing some fully acoustic segments of the show as well. So, there’s just a lot of different fun and exciting moments, and it’s going to be a great night.

JM: I know the new album is being described as a bit of a departure from your previous recordings. What inspired you to kind of explore a new direction, or do you see it as a new direction? Do you see it more as kind of a continuum of what you’ve been doing?

MT: Yeah, I mean for me it’s kind of a continuum of my solo work that I’ve done in the past. In my mind I have my records that are Molly Tuttle, and that’s where I’m free to explore and just try on different styles and genres.

Over the last couple years, I’ve made two records under the name “Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway.”

When I came up with that name, it was just really like I wanted to honor the bluegrass music that I grew up with, and I wanted to differentiate it from my solo stuff as well, to create this new project where I could almost make this art that was paying tribute to my family history with my grandfather playing the banjo and my dad being a bluegrass musician.

I just wanted to make music that you could play around a campfire or a bluegrass jam. So, my last couple records were that.

But this feels like more of a solo record in that I’m just exploring sounds that feel uniquely my own, and just kind of not thinking about genre as much.

JM: I first heard of you when I saw a video on Facebook where you did a cover of “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane, which I absolutely loved.  And I’ve seen on social media and elsewhere that you do a lot of other cool cover songs, many of which are before your time.

Then on your new album you cover Icona Pop‘s “I Love You,” which is a great song as well. I’m curious, how do you decide which songs to cover?

MT: It just comes about in different ways. Like “White Rabbit,” I worked it up for a show I was doing of songs from the Bay Area where I grew up.  That’s such an iconic Bay Area song that I worked it up for that show, and just liked it so much that we kept doing it.

As far as Icona Pop, that one came about one day in the studio. We were working on some of my songs and at the end of the day Jay was like, I think it’d be so fun to cover this song “I Love It,” and just make a really slowed down kind of trippy version of it where you don’t even really recognize what song it is at first.

I was like, yeah, let’s try it. We can do it tomorrow. So, I went home and learned it.

I don’t always set out to be like, I have to cover a song, or I don’t hear a song and think, “Okay, that’s one I’m going to cover.” They just kind of come about in different ways.

I’ve even had songs that fans have requested me to learn, and then they’ve become some of my favorite songs to cover. So, I just kind of am open to learning new songs, especially on tour. It’s fun to mix in a few covers and songs that people have heard before.

JM: I think it’s very cool that you recorded with Ringo Starr for his new country album. What was that experience like?

MT: It was so much fun. I worked with T Bone [Burnett], and we were in Nashville recording our parts, and Ringo was in LA, so we’d get his vocal parts and his drum parts, and then I would try playing over them and singing some harmonies each day.

We worked on it for a couple weeks, and it was just a huge honor to be involved in that kind of project. Also to get to work with T Bone Burnett for the first time was something I’d dreamed of for a long time. I’ve been a fan for almost my whole life.

I think the coolest part was one where Ringo came to Nashville and did the Ryman [Auditorium] shows, and we got to play with him and I got to meet him for the first time.

For the full interview with Molly Tuttle, click here.