Anthony Scarlati
Nashville’s flatpicking guitar whiz Molly Tuttle plays Saturday evening.
The Sugar Maple Music Festival has everything you’d expect to see at any classic, all-Americana music weekend: camping, food trucks, workshops, artist lectures, beer wagons, hot weather.
Still. Nothing says Wisconsin all-Americana music weekend like a Bloody Mary Jam Session. That event (Saturday at 11 a.m.) is just one of the many features that make Sugar Maple, running from August 4 to 5, stand out in a summer brimming with outdoor fests.
“It’s music that can range from sing-along, dance-along, play-along — to intricate fiddle lines and songs of life’s stories,” says Bobby Batyko, a veteran Madison bluegrasser and board president of the Four Lakes Traditional Music Collective, the nonprofit that presents the festival on the shady shores of Lake Waubesa each year.
We arrived at the festival last year by water. Our little boat slid right into the slip at the Lake Park pier. The gathering formed the shape of a half moon bowed toward the shoreline, with food and drink tents, porta-potties, ticket booths and camps set in an arch, cradling the two stage areas. There was a big buzz on the night we sailed because Americana music groundbreaker and former Son Volt member Jay Farrar was closing the night.
Farrar’s presence last year demonstrates what makes Sugar Maple special: Batyko and his staff are booking savants. It’s hard to find a more eclectic blend of well-known and up-and-coming artists in any summer festival of its sort in the country. I tried.
And the festival has booked a lot of Sconnie talent before those acts blasted off to the Telluride stages of the world. Think Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
This year’s hot ticket is Molly Tuttle. The Berklee College of Music-trained guitar virtuoso will hunker in for a rollicking combination of performance and public presentations.
Tuttle, who now resides in Nashville, made a name for herself as a member of bluegrass festival staples The Goodbye Girls. Her new solo project Rise, however, vaults her into a next realm. The album includes lofty contributions from legendary Nashville troubadour Darrell Scott, as well as neo-folk crooners The Milk Carton Kids.
The 24-year-old Tuttle is a spellbinding combination of vocal artistry and instrumental prowess. She comes by it honestly. Folk and country music’s heritage is rooted in family bands. The Carters. The Louvin Brothers. The Monroes and Stanleys of days past. The McCoury family bridging then and now. The Nickel Creek Watkins family of today.
Tuttle grew up in California, absorbing and learning the music of her father, Jack, a master guitar, banjo and mandolin player. They eventually began to record and perform together. In 2012, in her second semester at Berklee, Molly and Jack performed on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion after they won first place in a national duet singing contest.
There’s been no looking back. Featuring all originals, Rise is a bridge to the other influences in Tuttle’s world, Bob Dylan and Gillian Welch. Whether she’s playing her own songs or covering others (her version of John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” is sublime), Tuttle serves up a flat picker’s feast on guitar. Watch her play “White Freightliner Blues” and witness a freakish display of rapid-fire pull offs, slides and struck notes.
Polina Mourzina
African Canadian roots star Kaia Kater performs Friday night on the main stage.
Seeing Tuttle is worth the trip, but she’s also here to teach. She will play her main stage set at 4:30 Saturday afternoon and then stroll across the grounds to the “Roots & Reason” stage to run a guitar workshop at 6 p.m. It’s one of many opportunities that elevate Sugar Maple from mere festival to full-on Chautauqua. Other highlights: Saturday at 3:30 p.m., country music historian and WORT host Bill Malone, together with bluegrass superstar Laurie Lewis, will discuss the life and legacy of the late singer/songwriter Hazel Dickens. Toronto-based African-Canadian roots musician Kaia Kater will run a hambone workshop. For the uninitiated, “hambone” is the ancient percussion technique of slapping (your own) thighs.
The festival also has children’s activities all weekend, including a kids’ bluegrass jam — an environment that could be the spark for Wisconsin’s next family band.
