Details
— NOT included in the 2026 Summer Series Shows —
Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives x Molly Tuttle Trio LIVE on Sunday, August 9, 2026.
Doors: 6:30 PM, Show: 7:30 PM | The Ellis Theater, Philadelphia, MS
All Ages
About Molly Tuttle
On the heels of two Grammy-winning albums in succession, with her band Golden Highway—2022’s Crooked Tree and 2023’s City of Gold—plus a nomination for Best New Artist, Molly Tuttle returns with a solo album that’s her most dazzling to date: So Long Little Miss Sunshine.
Recorded in Nashville with producer Jay Joyce (Orville Peck, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, Eric Church, Cage the Elephant), the fifth full album from the California-born, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist features twelve new songs—eleven originals and one highly unexpected cover of Icona Pop and Charli xcx’s “I Love It.”
Tuttle’s career, which began at age fifteen, has charted a course between honoring bluegrass and stretching its boundaries. On this album—a hybrid of pop, country, rock, and flat-picking, plus one murder ballad—she goes to a whole new place. Her stunning guitar work is more up-front on this album than ever before. (One of the most decorated female guitarist alive, Tuttle was the first woman to win the prestigious International Bluegrass Music Award’s Guitar Player of the Year in 2017, at age twenty-four, and won again the following year, with nominations nearly every year since; she has also won Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award.) So Long Little Miss Sunshine also features Tuttle playing banjo, something she’s never done on one of her albums before.
“I like to be a bit of a chameleon with my music,” she says. “Keep people guessing and keep it full of surprises.”
Tuttle has been slowly building this collection of songs over the last five years, while also writing and releasing two hugely successful albums and a six-song EP (last year’s Into the Wild) and playing more than 100 shows each year with Golden Highway. Along the way she’d send songs to Joyce, who she first started talking to about collaborating on the album a few years ago.
“I’ve been wanting to make this record for such a long time. Part of me was scared to do such a big departure, and that went into the album title So Long Little Miss Sunshine. It’s like, ‘You know what? I’m just not going to care what people think. I’m going to do what I want.’”
The album was recorded with a group of musicians that includes drummer/percussionists Jay Bellerose and Fred Eltringham, bassist Byron House, and Joyce on multiple instruments. Ketch Secor (Old Crow Medicine Show) also plays banjo, fiddle, and harmonica, as well as singing harmony.
Tuttle also conceived the artwork for So Long Little Miss Sunshine, which features multiple Mollys, each wearing a different wig except for one with nothing on her head at all. (“I probably own as many wigs as I own guitars,” she says.) Tuttle has been bald since she was three years old due to the autoimmune condition alopecia areata; she acts as a spokesperson for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.“I love raising awareness,” she says. “I talk about it onstage a lot and broaden it to include anyone who’s ever had something that makes them stick out and look or feel different from others. Playing my song ‘Crooked Tree’ live is very meaningful to me, because it’s a moment where sometimes I’ll take off my wig and talk about my struggles with self-acceptance.”
One album track, “Old Me (New Wig),” is “about leaving all these things behind that don’t serve you anymore,” she says. “Parts of yourself that really aren’t in your best interest, like low self-esteem, anxieties, and not feeling confident. Learning to own these different aspects of my personality but not letting them control me is another theme of the record that inspired the album title and the cover art. Those are all things I’ve struggled with through the years—just feeling like an impostor, like I wasn’t good enough. I like singing this song because there are days when I still have to tell myself to leave that stuff behind.’”
Most of the So Long Little Miss Sunshine songs were co-written with Secor, who is also Tuttle’s partner. “We spend so much time together, we live together, and anytime I have a song idea, or he has one, it’s just so easy to transition from whatever we’re doing into writing a song.”
Although they were written in different times and circumstances, Tuttle found to her surprise that the songs were all tied together by interwoven themes. The opening track, “Everything Burns”—a dark, intense, big-guitar song—was written in 2020, during the chaos and division of the start of the Covid pandemic. It might as easily refer to the current chaos and division in America since Election Day 2024, though. In fact, they recorded it the day after the election.
There are several songs about traveling—sometimes down the open road, like “Highway Knows” and “Oasis”—but also back in time, as on “Easy” and “Golden State of Mind.”
The record also tells “a kind of coming-of-age story,” Tuttle says. “‘Golden State of Mind’ is one of the songs I feel is a through-line to that. It makes me think about people I’ve been close to in the past that I’ve drifted away from, and about growing up and figuring out who you are.”
That theme is in turn picked up in the beautiful ballad “No Regrets,” one of the last songs Tuttle wrote for the album. “It’s about looking back on your life and thinking, ‘Well, maybe I could have done things differently, but if I hadn’t made certain mistakes or gone down certain roads, then I wouldn’t be here.’ And I really like where I am now!”
So Long Little Miss Sunshine closes, as her last two albums did, with an autobiographical song, “Story of My So-Called Life.” “This is me looking back on my life, from growing up to going to school in Boston to moving to Nashville to where I am now—taking stock of all these pivotal moments throughout my life that made me who I am. I feel like after I’ve said so much in all the other songs, it’s just kind of nice to end it on a note of, ‘Here’s how this all came to be,’” she says.
*****
Earlier this year, Tuttle played guitar and sang on Ringo Starr’s new country album, Look Up. She also played with him and a host of other stellar musical guests at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and Grand Ole Opry as part of his televised Ringo & Friends shows. She was inspired by his fearlessness in following his passion for country music. “It is cool to see someone like that who has done everything you could imagine doing in a music career and he’s still just so psyched and still has a list of things that he wants to accomplish,” Tuttle says.
Looking back on her own career, Tuttle admits that she also has pursued what interests her: “It has never been a cookie-cutter thing where I’m just going down a straight road. I always had this crooked path.”
About Marty Stuart
In a career spanning over 50 years, dozens of albums, and too many shows to count, Marty Stuart still charts a course through new territory at every chance possible. Joined by his longtime band The Fabulous Superlatives, the five-time GRAMMY® Award winner, Country Music Hall of Famer, Congress of Country Music Founder, and AMA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient cruises into another stratosphere with his first-ever full-length instrumental LP, Space Junk. The inimitable interplay between Marty, Kenny Vaughan, Harry Stinson, and Chris Scruggs fuels this cosmic cowboy trip with sun-kissed surf guitar, breezy California rhythms, soul-stirring steel guitar, and fluid fretwork all around. “We thought the world needed a fresh instrumental album by a pretty good band,” laughs Stuart, “so we composed twenty instrumentals and took them to the microphones.”
Space Junk sounds like country music’s preeminent band crash landing on a Malibu beach and performing the most epic jam you’ve ever witnessed by starlight…
“Instrumentals have always been a part of the Fabulous Superlatives repertoire, but this is the first completely instrumental album we’ve done, largely inspired,” Stuart says, “by two of my favorite bands from the sixties, The Ventures and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. They did some dangerously cool instrumental records. We’ve done bluegrass, gospel, and country records. Our hearts just led us to this one. Space Junk turned us back into kids with our first guitars.” Ironically, the cover art of Space Junk is a painting by Stuart’s longtime hero and pal, Herb Alpert, who generously consented for use as part of this project.
Stuart’s deeper understanding of the instrumental form can actually be traced to the turn of the century. Marty took a year off from touring to focus on composing music for film and television. He notably scored All The Pretty Horses, garnering a Golden Globe® Award nomination for “Best Original Score” and earning GRAMMY® Awards in the category of “Best Country Instrumental Performance” for “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Hummingbyrd.” The experience proved pivotal.
“Scoring required a cinematic way of thinking,” reveals Marty. “I had to make music for what the scene called for, which turned me into more of a visual player in an understated way. That kind of thinking followed me into the studio during the making of Space Junk. I knew the music had to be pretty, but it also had to say something without losing its drive.”
He and The Superlatives ventured to Hollywood and cut the bulk of what would become Space Junk at the legendary Capitol Recording Studios. The palm trees, sunshine, and energy of the world-famous room most definitely set the mood for the boys to blast off.
“Just walking in, you feel the weight of that room’s history,” Chris observes. “You can’t help but think of The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, and Buck Owens walking down that ramp. It lifts you up and helps you take flight.”
“A place like Capitol makes you want to dress up and perform your best,” grins Harry.
“I started listening to rock ‘n’ roll before The Beatles came out,” Kenny chuckles. “There’s a mystique to Capitol; it’s still there too.”
“The creative atmosphere of California always gives me a feeling that the sky is the limit,” Marty muses. “Space Junk is California music. If you want a specific sound, you go to certain places in the world. For the California sound, it’s Capitol. You’ve got the blue skies, the legacy, the romance, and a lot of friendly ghosts. The atmosphere makes you do a little better.”
“California Part 1 (Bobbie Gentry Please Call Home)” channels this spirit. Captured live at Capitol, Marty played Clarence White’s famous Fender Telecaster guitar on this song. The dusty beat holds down a steady groove as a lyrical lead swoons and swerves toward an upbeat crescendo accented by pinch harmonics.
“It winks at me, because it’s purely California,” Marty goes on. “I close my eyes and see a Western sunset. Clarence played really softly. There was a magic bell tone to what he did. I finally found that tone on his guitar on this song.”
A dramatic drumroll gives way to ethereal guitar transmissions on “The Ballad of the Lonely Surfer.” Organic percussion quakes beneath delicately strummed chords. “I had a vague idea of the melody for a ballad,” recalls Kenny. “It fell right into place once I took it to the band.”
“Waiting on Sundown” alternates between tender low-string twang and echoes of sustained notes awash in waves of reverb. “The song is clearly under the spell of my romance with the Golden State,” Marty confesses. “It’s a reflection of the music, rhinestone fashion of Lankershim Boulevard, cars, the TV and movie heroes. In reality, it’s a love affair with the entirety of the landscape of California custom culture.”
The finale “Waltz of the Waves” revolves around a steel symphony performed with panache and poise by Chris.
“Back in the day, the steel players were stars,” Chris adds. “I wanted to do a song with that voice. There are elements of exotica and Hawaiian music too, which is dear to me. You can say a lot without words and just music.”
“To me, ‘Waltz of the Waves’ is the moment you get in the rowboat, let the sun go down, and float off into the sunset,” Marty continues. “It was the perfect way to close the novel.”
The guys recorded just a handful of tracks in Nashville. Among those, “Graveyard” hinges on a quintessential surf guitar riff ushered forward by a dynamic beat and fast tremolo. “We recorded at the House of Blues studio,” Marty remembers. “Right behind it, there’s a big graveyard where people like George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Marty Robbins, and Porter Wagoner are buried. The title worked.”
Then, there’s “Space Junk.” Steel drums thump, galactic chimes wail, and the guitar practically sings. It immediately evokes a big screen-worthy vignette topped off by a sample of the Sputnik signal. Kenny elaborates, “Sonically, it’s like you’re sitting in the window seat of a spacecraft and you’re seeing all of this stuff just drift on by.”
Over twenty years together and unparalleled musicianship enabled Marty and The Superlatives to reach such impressive heights. Often cited among the scene’s most elite players, the musicians leaned into their chemistry, conversing at a subconscious level after all of this time.
“Each band member is a lifer, and we’ve all got a little bit of the frontman gene,” Chris reveals. “A connection to music is part of who we are.”
“Also, none of us has ever had a job other than music,” laughs Kenny.
“Harry and I made records in the nineties,” Marty remarks. “I saw Kenny for the first time at Austin City Limits with Lucinda Williams, and I knew he could do it all. The three of us have known Chris since he was a little guy, and there’s no end to his musical chain. These guys are all producers. When we get together, it’s a masterclass in music and fun. After our very first rehearsal, I remember saying, ‘This isn’t your ordinary band. We’re called at a deeper level.’ It’s about standing and living for something, playing good music, and trying to make a difference.”
Marty’s light has only gotten brighter over the years. He has left an indelible mark on successive eras of country music and culture. He went from accompanying Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash to launching a storied solo career highlighted by classic albums such as the Gold-certified Hillbilly Rock and Platinum-certified This One’s Gonna Hurt You as well as GRAMMY® Award-winning anthems, including “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin’” [with Travis Tritt] and “Same Old Train.” Recently, 2023’s Altitude incited widespread critical applause. Of the latter, Associated Press applauded how, “Guitarist Kenny Vaughan, drummer Harry Stinson, and bassist Chris Scruggs match Stuart’s guitar virtuosity, with thrilling results,” and American Songwriter attested, “Altitude finds Stuart putting his own stamp on a traditional vein of country.” NPR put it best, “For millions, Marty Stuart is the very image of country music—splendid jackets, musical mastery and his respect for country’s traditions and a good jolt of humor.”
You’d be hard pressed to find a corner of country music he hasn’t impacted though. Speaking to his influence, he hosted long-running fan favorite television series The Marty Stuart Show and notably remains a member of the Country Music Foundation and Grand Ole Opry. Moreover, the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted him during 2020. He also curated and launched Marty Stuart’s Congress of Country Music in Philadelphia, Mississippi, preserving and celebrating the genre and its history.
Ultimately, Space Junk is another natural step for Marty and a worthy addition to his essential catalog.
“I hope Space Junk takes the listeners for a ride,” he leaves off. “It makes me forget my problems and remember why I play guitar and get to dress up in cowboy clothes. It reminds me I’m okay, and I want it to do the same for you. Mainly, I want to inspire some kid to go to the store, buy an instrument, and make a difference. This concept was passed down to us from the old heroes. If we can serve the same role, mission accomplished.”