A secret weapon of bluegrass | Arts & Entertainment

Lindsay Lou is the secret weapon of the new wave of bluegrass music that has propelled the genre from the fringes to the mainstream. 

She performs Saturday night at the Wheeler Opera House with her band, the Honeymoon Trio, at 8 p.m. The show is part of the Roaring Fork Sessions, a series produced by Ed Baney and Melanie Love that highlights the best in Americana and acoustic music. 

Tickets are available at wheeleroperahouse.com. A portion of every ticket will benefit the Independence Pass Foundation.  

Over the last 15 years, Lou has collaborated with an all-star list of musicians, either as co-writer or singer. Indeed, If you had to pick one artist that connects the entire bluegrass/jamgrass scene, Lou would be a good candidate. She has collaborated with Greensky Bluegrass, Infamous Stringdusters, Yonder Mountain String Band, Leftover Salmon, Cris Jacobs, Railroad Earth, Peter Rowan, Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas, just to name a few. 

“People love to play with Lindsay because she knows the right spot to fit in,” said Dave Bruzza, guitarist and vocalist for Greensky Bluegrass. “She has such a calming energy and such a love of music that when she is performing it is as honest as it gets. We have been friends a long time, and we have had so many times together musically on and off stage. 

“In fact, we once stole a golf cart at a festival and went around playing and singing for every campsite we passed. She’s a great adventurer.”

If you’re not familiar with Lou, Saturday’s show offers an opportunity to tap into one of the great bluegrass musicians working today. Rounding out the trio are Wila Frank on guitar, fiddle and harmonies, and Emma Rose on bass and harmonies. 

Bluegrass’s seismic increase in popularity in the last decade has been propelled by flat-picking guitar wizard Billy Strings, another frequent collaborator of Lou’s. Strings and Lou have written several songs together, including “Freedom,” which appeared on Strings’ 2019 Grammy-winning album “Home.” 

“Every song comes together in a different way and ‘Freedom’ was particularly unique in that Billy and I got together and all I had was a concept and how I wanted the song to feel. The idea was freedom and the feel was a Doc Watson-esque song with interwoven parts because that’s Billy’s wheelhouse. And I wanted to write a song that would be fun. We got together and wrote it from scratch in my kitchen,” Lou said.

“Billy would start to play something, and I started singing and we started writing lines,” she continued. “It can get cold and wintery in Nashville, and on the day we wrote ‘Freedom’ there was a blizzard outside. We took a break from writing and sparked a doobie and galavanted around the neighborhood and did the run and slide thing and when we got back we finished the song really quickly. The first line of the song, ‘All white as snow, black as night’ is what was happening around us. Songs are like children, they come through you, not from you. You have to hold space to let it happen.” 

Sometimes that songwriting space needs a lot of time to breathe. The song “Nothing’s Working” that Lou wrote with Strings had a much longer gestation period, taking two years to complete from start to finish before appearing on Strings’ 2021 Grammy-nominated album, “Renewal.”  

Lou said she and Strings have another song in the works that they started in February 2024. Lou wasn’t sure when that song might come to fruition; they might finish it over a playdate with their newborn children. Both artists have had their first babies recently. Strings’ son River is a little over 1 year old and Lou’s baby boy Bart is 4 months old. 

Lou’s partner is Kyle Tuttle, a former member of Jeff Austin’s band. Most recently Kyle was a member of Golden Highway, Molly Tuttle’s band. 

“Barthas completely totally and utterly transformed my life,” Lou said. “It is the most amazing thing ever to get to be his mama. He’s been on over 25 flights already. He’s a real road dog and he loves music.” 

Lou was born the daughter of a coal miner from Missouri. Her family moved to a part of upper Michigan known as Iron Mountain shortly after she was born.

She grew up constantly singing with her family. Her brother taught her to play a Indigo Girls’ song, “Blood and Fire,” on the guitar when she was 13 and that sparked her interest in the guitar. She counts the Cranberries as another major influence from those formative years. 

Lou attended college at Michigan State where she met the Flatbellys. The band “really introduced me to a deeper community of bluegrass,” Lou said. 

She graduated in 2008 and toured with The Flatbellys for 10 years. Lou released her debut solo album “Release Your Shrouds” in 2012. Her 2015 record “Iona” was released as Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys. She followed with “Southland” and “Queen of Time” in 2018 and 2023.

Lou is a soulful artist with an angelic voice and a gift for melody. She is an adept songwriter. If you slipped Lou’s catalogue into an Alison Krauss anthology, you wouldn’t be left thinking, “Which of these songs are not like the others?”

Lou, Billy Strings and Greensky Bluegrass all hail from Michigan. When asked why Michigan has been such a crucial part of bluegrass, particularly in the 21st century, she said “it must be the water.”

“Michigan is surrounded by The Great Lakes, which holds 20% of the world’s freshwater. As we move into the climate crisis, freshwater will be so vital and it’s interesting that all this music is coming from the world’s greatest concentration of freshwater,” she said. “You’re basically on an island, cradled by lakes that feel like seas. You have to take boats and ferries to move around the state. Many people just hunker down with their communities, and they all support music.”

Lou has been tapping into a feminine space in her music in the last several years. 

“I love bluegrass,” Lou said. “It’s so exciting. It does something for your spirit. I learned how to hold down rhythm on a bluegrass song. It taught me so much. But I always felt a little disconnected from bluegrass in my original songs. It is very masculine. There is a masculine side to me but I also have this supremely feminine part of me and my music and my spirit never felt totally authentic to just lay back on bluegrass. As I’ve gotten more comfortable in my own voice, my music has captured sounds outside the bluegrass genre. It’s a consequence of me following my own path.”

Her next album will be an album of bluegrass songs by female artists. She said being in nature helps her tap into her feminine side. 

“That’s why they call it Mother Nature, “Lou said. “Any time I have any experience with Mother Nature I reconnect with my sense of femininity. It’s one of the reasons I love Colorado.” 

Lou said she hopes attending one of her shows can be a cathartic experience. 

“We are so drained by screens and phones and bad news about what’s happening in the world,” she said. “It can leave you feeling like giving up because it’s too much. Going to music shows and festivals and having time to have musical experiences with a community is so important to the human experience. They help us remember that there is good everywhere, we’re not just two sects pitted against each other, we’re a community of diverse people with way more in common than those in power would like to believe.”