Maggie Rose and Molly Tuttle (co-headliners)
May 15, 2026
The Kent Stage (Kent, OH)
By Rob McCune
Make no mistake, California-born Molly Tuttle has the Heartland in her heart and true Bluegrass-stained knees.
Nashville by way of Palo Alto, 33-year-old Tuttle brings a millennial modernity to an authentically twangy old-school Americana. In the way that Noah Kahan and others have been Pied Pipers of sorts leading new generations to folk, Molly might be the gateway drug for new Bluegrass. She would be just as at-home on stage with Taylor Swift as female Bluegrass icons Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris (with whom she has shared microphones before).
She fingerpicks and strums a guitar like “Mr. Guitar” Chet Atkins while belting out songs about her “grandpa Dooley’s Farm” and foregoing the more ladylike side-saddle horseback posture to ride “bowlegged like the boys.”
And in 2026, she has a mostly-female band that elevates her style and sound in every way – with Mair Meyer on mandolin and fiddle; and Vanessa McGowan on standup bass and bass guitar. On tour now, she also is backed by Karl Smakula on banjo.
A natural extension of this musical talent is Maggie Rose and her band, co-headlining on this tour. In fact, when the bands converged in the encore performance, it was as if a seamless supergroup had been activated.
But Maggie Rose is a phenomenal talent all her own. With a Maryland upbringing and southern soul, she is another Nashville implant who is shaking up the conventional country sound. Maggie, 38, balances between a spit-fire sass and wholesomeness that your mama would be proud of. She also blends modern country/pop with an unmistakable ’90s vibe, recalling singer-songstresses such as Reba and Dolly, with a voice as powerful as Whitney’s – all artists who are knowable on a first-name-only basis, in the way Maggie might herself one day be.
Even more remarkable, both Molly and Maggie have a not-so-easy-to-pull-off-these-days indiscriminate appeal. They welcome with warm, wide-open arms both the conventional and unconventional. They shuffle between the old and new sounds, while singing about acceptance, coming to the table together, and embracing the beauty of being different – and even “crooked” or what some might consider “odd.”
On a tour stop at The Kent Stage in Kent, Ohio, in front of a sold-out crowd and a live stream, the dichotomy was on display during Maggie’s set between her soulful ballad “What Are We Fighting For?” and a sit-down, acoustic cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make Me Love Me.” On the latter, Maggie dueted with M.P. Gannon as a stand-in for Vince Gill, with whom Rose has recorded that track – and Gannon nailed it, too, by the way.
On “Red Shoes,” the first single off her forthcoming fifth studio album, Rose on a glittering red electric guitar turns up the beat and heat with an infectious Shania-like pep; while “Gentle Man,” a song written for her young son, slumbering on the tour bus before the show even started, is a gentle, guiding and hopeful lullaby.
For her part, Molly Tuttle emerged in full, fiddle-and-banjo, foot-stomping twang with “Rosalee” and “The Highway Knows,” off latest (2025) fifth studio album and first solo album “So Long Miss Sunshine,” before delighting with a Bluegrass-tinged cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” that might just be my favorite version of that song ever. (And that’s saying a lot, coming from a diehard Counting Crows fan.)
Tuttle’s set also pulled generously from her albums with her former band Golden Highway, with storybook-inspired and storytelling-heightened tracks like “Alice in the Bluegrass” and “Where Did All the Wild Things Go?”
In her Dylan-esque throw-down on “Dooley’s Farm,” which she recorded with country guitar virtuoso Billy Strings, she interjected a verse from Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Ohio” – appropriate for both the setting (a stone’s throw from where Kent State protesters were shot in 1970, inspiring the song) and the moment we’re in. Many musicians, from Dave Matthews to Soul Asylum on this same stage weeks before, have felt compelled to reference “Ohio” in live shows to cast light on government-sanctioned murder of protesters in Minneapolis.
Molly’s “Crooked Tree,” the title track of her 2022 album, feels immensely personal – she talks about her compulsion to play it all over the world, and her fan club goes by the moniker “Crooked Trees.” In it, she espouses the virtues of “not fitting into the mill machine” by growing and stretching and thriving in all your own weird, wild, wonderful ways.
Her “regular” set concluded with what’s bound to be another signature song off the new album, “Old Me (New Wig),” during which Molly pauses mid-chorus to triumphantly remove her wig and toss it high and away, revealing her au natural bald head (a trait she proudly and beautifully displays, in part to raise awareness of alopecia, which she was diagnosed with at age three).
For a two-song encore, Tuttle stayed sans-wig and brought out Maggie Rose first for a rousing rendition of The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow,” which is about as apt a description of both of these women as there could be. Their colors were everywhere for the duration of the evening performance, and especially during the celebratory “Up On Cripple Creek,” covering The Band, which closed out the show.
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