I Streamed A Stream

On Thursday, Molly Tuttle was playing live from The Basement in Nashville. Perhaps inspired by her recent album of covers, But I'd Rather Be With You, she had scheduled 3 shows highlighting other people's songs. The first one tonight featured music from her childhood home in the Bay Area of California.

The virtual audience, some of whom were well-known blue-grass musicians, was treated to what someone described as Molly's "Dylan Goes Electric" moment. Indeed, she strapped on an electric guitar and opened with White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane). It turned out that the singer Grace Slick wasn't the only musician showcased tonight who also attended Tuttle's alma mater at Palo Alto High School. She would go electric for a few more songs but mostly rotated through her acoustic guitar collection on numbers like Didn't I (Darondo), Basket Case (Green Day), and Diamonds and Rust (Joan Baez).

The Bay Area has a strong blue-grass community and Tuttle did a solo set paying tribute to her predecessors and often personal mentors: Diamond Joe (Laurie Lewis), Broken Tie (Kathy Killick), Across The Great Divide (Kate Wolf), Cabin On A Mountain (Vern Williams). Her fingers flew over the fret and her picking hand had "a 140 IQ" as marveled by one awestruck viewer.

Her versatility ran from punk (Rancid's Olympia Wa), to 70s rock (CCR's Lodi, Steve Miller's The Joker), and dreamy pop (Chis Isaak's San Francisco Days). Except for the recent Disco Man (Remi Wolf), I noticed that these selections were decades old. But her bluegrass fans seemed to skew older so they loved these classics.

It was my first time seeing a non-solo Molly Tuttle. Megan Jane on drums and Annie Clements on bass and harmony added richness to the set. Tuttle's complex playing often sound like a full band, but it was still great to finally hear more fullness especially on her songs Take The Journey and the new Golden State of Mind. She laughingly pointed out that she was from The Bay, too, so why not do her own material.

This was an excellent set and I felt, like others in the chat, that it would have been even better to have seen it at that venue. However, these live streams have allowed people from around the world to attend a concert together. Tonight, those tuning in from Europe and even Australia experienced live a magical moment that would have been impossible otherwise.