Molly Tuttle Shows Off Her Beloved Custom Martin & Pre-War Dreadnoughts | My Guitars & Me S3E1 - video Dailymotion

Guitar

Molly Tuttle is one of the most respected and beloved names in bluegrass guitar, with a spellbinding flat-picking technique that puts the two-time Grammy winner amongst the modern acoustic greats.   But her new record, So Long Little Miss Sunshine, sees the 32-year-old Californian push outside the confines of Americana, exploring new sonic territories with the help of a pair of striking new custom guitars.   Molly takes us on a tour of two of her most prized and trusted instruments: a  stunning Martin Custom Shop Dreadnought, an a Pre-War Guitar Co. instrument that's been battered and scratched but has the Holy Grail of guitar woods hidden underneath.

Transcript

00:00Hey, I'm Molly Tuttle, and this is My Guitars and Me.

00:20I am holding a custom Martin guitar.

00:23This is a Dreadnought guitar, and I got this about a year ago from Martin.

00:27We've been talking about it for a whole year of just kind of planning out this guitar.

00:31They built it and then delivered it to me last summer at my show in Pennsylvania,

00:35where Martin guitars are built.

00:40So it's a Dreadnought, and it's a Madagascar rosewood back and sides.

00:47So it's kind of like a D28 model, but I got a custom sunburst, custom inlay,

00:52and a few other little specifications like the neck size and neck shape that I like,

00:57the V kind of shape and the 1 and 16th neck.

01:01And then I got to pick out the wood that you see on the back, which is really pretty.

01:05I like a slimmer guitar neck, but it really depends.

01:08Like certain bluegrass guitar players who play super fast like the thicker necks,

01:12because they feel like it's easier to just kind of like have the space that you need for your fingers.

01:18But for me, I like the thinner size.

01:21And actually, just back in Nashville, I bought a vintage Martin from the 40s,

01:26and that kind of went into my decision to get a 40s Martin instead of a 30s Martin,

01:30because the 30s, the ones that I played have a much thicker neck,

01:33and then the 40s is when they started doing that thinner necks that I like.

01:37It's kind of hard to tell, except if you're like really up close, but they are crooked branches,

01:51so I'm glad you could like see what they were from over there.

01:54One of my, like the first kind of bluegrass record that I made a couple years ago was called Crooked Tree,

02:00and we had this logo made up, it's my initials, an MT, made out of tree branches,

02:06and that was like on the CD and the vinyl packaging.

02:10My little logo was on that record.

02:14So I sent that to them as one potential inlay idea,

02:16and then they had this idea to make the fret markers out of branches

02:21and make it like get more and more crooked as you get up the neck,

02:24and then finally my logo up here.

02:26So it was kind of inspired by my Crooked Tree song.

02:30I kind of write on all my guitars at home,

02:36like whichever one's lying around I'll just pick up and start writing on.

02:39So I can't remember any specifically which songs I've written on this,

02:42but I've also taken it out on the road a fair amount.

02:45I was playing it all last fall after I got it in the summer,

02:49and I'm playing here at Royal Albert Hall tomorrow,

02:52so I'll have this guitar there.

02:54So it's done kind of a road guitar for me,

02:56so sometimes it like lives in the road case and I don't have it at home.

03:00But it's really great for touring with,

03:03and it's a beautiful guitar and like it was really fun.

03:06The whole process of kind of making it customized was fun,

03:09so then at the shows people always get excited when I take it out.

03:12So long, little Miss Sunshine, and it's a collection of 11 songs that I wrote, one cover,

03:27and I recorded it in Nashville with amazing producer Jay Joyce,

03:30and he really kind of pushed my music into some new territory.

03:34My past couple records before this one were more in the bluegrass realm.

03:37This one is a little bit of a departure stylistically,

03:40but it's all these songs I've kind of been writing for the past few years and,

03:44you know, stockpiling, just kind of waiting for the right moment

03:47to make a record like this and really explore new sounds with my music.

03:51There was a little bit of both kind of making sure my identity and my roots with like,

03:58I guess bluegrass and kind of American roots music still stayed like a through line on the new album.

04:03And a lot of how we did that was with the guitar playing.

04:07But at the same time, I did like want to stretch my playing as well and not just kind of play

04:13everything like I would as if I was playing with like a banjo and an upright bass.

04:18I wanted to just kind of make it more like make the style a little more general and also just kind of

04:24more uniquely mine, not trying to fit into any sort of certain mold.

04:29On my past couple records, I go to take a solo and it's kind of like a constant stream of notes,

04:34or like there'll be some ideas and melodic stuff in there, but it's a lot of like notey guitar solos.

04:39With this record, we wanted to make the solos.

04:42Some of them we tried to make it so almost you could like sing the solo.

04:45It's not just this flurry of which you find a lot in bluegrass.

04:49I'm not saying that's like a horrible thing, but it's kind of what I've been doing.

04:54Can't really change my natural tone too much.

04:58But we did use some like effects in the studio.

05:00I was running my guitar at times through a pedal board that Jay Joyce had put together and he was

05:06clicking the pedals as I as it went along.

05:08And then he went back and, you know, added some stuff.

05:11And I feel like that was taking like the purely acoustic tone and trying to make it a little

05:16contemporary and fit in with this different style of production that I hadn't really done before.

05:21This guitar is from the pre-war guitar company.

05:34They're in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and it's a really small company.

05:39They have a long waiting list now because their guitars have gotten really popular.

05:44But I first heard about this company at a little guitar store in Nashville where I live called

05:50Carter Vintage Guitars.

05:53And it kind of came about like an interesting way.

05:56I was playing a show in Ohio.

05:58This guy came up to me and said he had all this really beautiful Brazilian rosewood.

06:03And he knew I liked pre-war guitars.

06:05So he offered to send the wood to the guitar company for free and have them build me this guitar.

06:10So it was kind of out of the blue.

06:12This guy had this amazingly rare wood that ended up being on this guitar.

06:16And I talked to the company and they're like,

06:18yeah, we know that guy.

06:18Like he's legit and he has a really nice wood for building guitars with.

06:23So it was super generous.

06:24So it's definitely seen some wear and tear.

06:28It's been cracked here and here and here.

06:31And it got dropped once by some stage techs and it got messed up there.

06:37And then it has these, I don't even know what these are from.

06:40So yeah, it's seen some, seen some wear and tear.

06:43This is all from like belts and stuff I wear on stage, just wear on the back.

06:47But the thing that's kind of interesting about the pre-war guitar company is that they

06:52age all the wood and they also, they have different levels of distress that you can order.

06:58So some of their guitars, they scratch up and they make them look crazy.

07:01They've even put like a bullet hole in a guitar before.

07:04They'll like tie, chain them to like a car and like drag them through the gravel.

07:11I don't know if they actually have done that, but I think maybe they have.

07:14But this one I asked for no distress because I was like,

07:16I'm going to mess it up on tour enough already.

07:19So all of this that you see is from me.

07:23But yeah, when I got it, they had just kind of lightly worn down the finish.

07:26So I think it's like, it's a little thinner than you find on a lot of new guitars.

07:30So it's easier to like make your own scratches on it.

07:41For the style of guitar playing that I do, it's like you really can't beat like the vintage guitar sound.

07:48And vintage guitars just have like a certain fullness to them.

07:52They've been like played for so many years that they, a lot of them have really opened up and they

07:57have a bigger sound and they're more resonant.

08:00And the other thing about them is it's kind of nice for touring in a way because the wood has

08:05been aged and it's dried out. So the top doesn't like change and fluctuate as much.

08:11The woods kind of had a chance to settle in, which is part of why I like these pre-war guitars,

08:15because they do an aging process on the wood where they're almost like putting it in a sort of oven

08:20for the wood. And that gets a lot of the moisture out. So I find when I take this on the road,

08:25the setup, the action doesn't go up and down as much on some of my other newer guitars.

08:30My theory is that maybe their aging process helps the guitars be a little more stable.

08:34I just drilled a hole in it for a mic to come out of. So when I'm playing live, I can mix

08:45this mic signal with my pickup signal and have two channels coming out of the guitar. So it's a little,

08:51it's turning into a little bit of a Frankenstein and I don't really want to bring like a vintage

08:55Martin out on the road because I know it'll get worn out. So this will be my new strictly touring

09:00guitar. And then I'll have another studio guitar at home. The pickup is a KNK Pure Mini. I just got

09:07this put in about a week or two ago. It's brand new. So I haven't played a single show with this

09:14new setup, but we've had some tech rehearsals where I was using it, making sure I liked how

09:18it sounded. And it's kind of night and day for me because I've been using just a pickup or a pickup

09:23with a little tiny mic that's like embedded into the pickup system under the saddle. And I think this

09:30will be better because it gives me a lot more control with a dedicated mic channel. It's also

09:34like a really nice kind of high quality mic for the guitar. And then I can get the volume that I

09:39need and the fullness that I need like in no matter what venue I'm in, I know I can be loud without

09:45feeding back, which is the issue with just the mic. It's really hard for acoustic instruments to get

09:49loud enough. I'm hoping this will give me the best of both worlds. It was a bit of a commitment to

09:54drill a second hole into this Brazilian rosewood, but I think it'll be worth it. It sounded really good.

10:00When I was playing it the other day. But yeah, I would never want to do this to like any sort of

10:05vintage guitar. So that's kind of the beauty of having a new guitars that still has that old,

10:10old sound and old feel to it.

10:23This has been my guitars and me. Thank you all so much for watching.

10:30All right.

10:34You

Molly Tuttle Shows Off Her Beloved Custom Martin & Pre-War Dreadnoughts | My Guitars & Me S3E1

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended