Molly Tuttle was on fire at Outlaw Field and it wasn’t only because she was was wearing an orange dress in 100-degree heat. A Bay Area native and one of the most skilled guitarists performing today, I noticed she was playing in Boise the same night we were going to be in town and picked up tickets more than a month ago. Touring a catalog of excellent songs with a crazy-talented band, Golden Highway, who can match her every pick, strum and claw hammer, her songs are based in bluegrass with subject matter that toggles between self actualization, empowerment and place (a good dose being story songs based in California).
On more than one occasion, Tuttle and company approached the near liftoff with their energetic playing. The fiddle player, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, left the crowd agog with one solo that verged on metal. But I was most taken with Tuttle’s voice and message. I teared up when she whipped off her wig — she’s lived with alopecia since childhood — and launched into the title track of her Grammy winning album Crooked Tree:
A river never wonders why it flows around the bend
A mountain doesn't question how it rose up from the land
So who am I to wish I wasn't just the way I am?
Who am I?
Oh, can't you see?
A crooked tree won't fit into the mill machine
They're left to grow wild and free
Oh, I'd rather be a crooked tree
Another artist with a compelling backstory and allegiance to traditional musical forms, Charley Crocket, headlined. The temperature was at least a few degrees cooler by then and he soon had many folks up and dancing with his brand of traditional country.
It was an overall positive scene on Outlaw Field at the Idaho Botanical Gardens despite the blazing heat. Other motivated citizens strolled and danced through the well-mannered crowd misting people with spray bottles.
Situated at the base of a hillside, located on the grounds of the city’s historic prison grounds (now a museum), the concert setting itself was an inspiring revisioning of the place. For 100 years the state penitentiary housed thousands of convicts including the assassin of the 1905 governor, ‘Lady Bluebeard’, and a lone cat who won over guards and prisoners alike. We walked past the quarry-mined walls on the way in (reportedly there’s been no shortage of ‘paranormal activity’ on the site), but will have to leave a more extensive visit for another day.