9 February 2023 - Molly Tuttle - Olympia WA

The first five Rancid albums are “go to” albums for me (the records after…not so much but they each had their “moments”). That said, they are one of my favorite bands ever. …And Out Come The Wolves is punk perfection.

Over the years I discovered that I like bluegrass music, too. Well, if the singer is a woman. I can’t think of a male bluegrass singer I like…and that includes Billy Strings who everyone seems to dig. Hell, I even hated Sturgill Simpson’s two bluegrass albums where he reworked his perfect contributions to country music into a bluegrass bore. Gimme Sarah Jarosz, Sierra Hull, Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent and the like and I swoon. It’s time to now add Molly Tuttle to that impressive list.

And as the world is now learning of her via her latest album Crooked Tree (which received a couple Grammy nods), I’m still grooving to her previous album …But I’d Rather Be With You which includes this tasty Rancid cover, among others.

• Random Point 1: I went to Olympia High School. Totally unrelated to this song.
• Random Point 2: I went to Olympia High School with the drummer of Mastodon. He was two years younger, and we didn’t know each other (surprisingly I was told this bit of info on Facebook by my considerably shocked friends from high school). This random point is even funnier to me as I’ve been a huge Mastodon fan for at least 15 years.