This Sunday, Molly Tuttle closed out the 2026 FreeFall Bluegrass Festival in Avon, CO on the festival's one nice good weather day. A handful of other great musicians played throughout the day, but Molly's set was the highlight featuring an impressive cover of Dolly Parton's 9 to 5.
All weekend, rain and thunderstorms threatened the outdoor fall bluegrass festival, but on Sunday, October 11 the weather finally cleared. The festival was held in Avon's Harry A Nottingham Park which proved to be a great venue. Although it wasn't sold out, there was a few thousand attendees every day that came to enjoy some great bluegrass music despite the harsh rain on both Friday and Saturday. This reviewer was only in attendance for Sunday, so we'll cover some of the best highlight's of that day, and include our great interviews we had with musicians Lauren and Jill Nershi along with Molly Tuttle.
Sunday opened up with the Drew Emmitt Band, who provided some jokes and comic relief throughout their morning set when the music started at 11:30AM. "We thought we would be playing to a bunch of plastic chairs," joked Drew in reference to the many lawn chairs out in the audience. However, a small dance crowd was in front of the main stage all day that grew in size. The special guest included Andy Hall, who performed yet again for the second musical act of the day. It was clear the fans loved with constant cheers for Andy throughout the morning and early afternoon.
Andy Hall played yet again with Nershi Hann Trio, who were celebrating the release of their first album together this weekend. The trio which included Lauren, Bill and Jillian Nershi was one of the highlights of Sunday afternoon. It was great seeing Bill and Jillian's daughter, Lauren join them on stage. While Nershi Hann Trio is a fairly new musical group, Jillian told us she has been writing music for the String Cheese Incident for many years. "Unfortunately, due to my eye and seeing issues, I can never actually see them perform live," Jillian told us dissapointedly because every fan knows how spectacular their lights show can be. Jillian is of course married to String Cheese Incident guitarist, Bill Nershi.
Perhaps the hardest working musician of the day was Nashville's Nicki Bluhm, who performed two back to back sets in the afternoon, including a regular one and a secondary set with Grateful Dead covers. She played for over three hours Sunday afternoon, but the middle aged singer didn't seem to mind. Molly Tuttle also joined multiple sets throughout the afternoon, including Nicki's Grateful Dead set where she played her cover of "Direwolf".
Molly performed an impressive set of her own when she graced the festival at 7:30. Her band line up may have changed since she first started going solo a year ago, but they are still fantastic. Molly's energy and charmastic can carry an entire music festival, and it was clear those in the crowd have seen her many times. The set included her classic covers of 'She's a Rainbow' which she does every concert. However, the crowd was surprised to see her play Dolly's "9 to 5" as a tribue to one of the greatest musicians we lossed this year.
One stample of a Molly Tuttle show is seeing her perform the double acoustic guitar, which she does during "Burn" and another song. Of course, it isn't a Molly show without her playing her hits "Crooked Tree" and "Doolitle's Farm". This was one of the better times we saw Molly perform, and we had a chance to sit down with Molly after her show for more if an in dept interview.
One of the things we asked Molly was how she achieved the infamous double acoustic guitar as she's one of the only musicians we've seen that actually plays one. "We call it the double neck," she answered, "I saw Billy Strings play it and wanted one, so I went to where he purchased one in one of our musical stores in Nashville and they actually gave me one!" Molly explained the double neck is difficult to play, which is one of the reasons why she only plays it for two songs.
Perhaps the thing Molly was excited about the most was when we brought up Old Crow Medicine Show and Ketch Secor, who she recently married. Molly cut two amazing tunes on their new album "Union Made" with them including their hit single "Last American Waltz". "They wanted to do an all American album this year, so that was the theme of it and of course that song," Molly explained. We asked Molly if she was going to be doing more songs with Old Crow, and she said absolutely.
One of the things we asked Molly about was her incredible version of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", which unfortunately wasn't in the set that night. "We include it now whenever there is extra time, and we actually played it the previous night," Molly explained. "We use to play that song every night and just need a break from it," which is of course is perfectly understandable. Molly performed "9 to 5" instead, which is her favorite Dolly Parton song.
"I hope to reuinite someday with my old bandmades, but it's hard with everyone's touring schedules now," Molly said referring to of course the grammy award winning group, The Golden Highway.
This was our second time interviewing Molly Tuttle, and we are always thankful to be around her and her other band mates of her old group including Kyle, Bronwyn and Shelby who we have reviewed many times over the past few years supporting their own solo journeys. Thank you Molly and Alan who helped set up our interview!
A+
Photos by Jessica Lewis coming soon
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