{"id":2030537,"date":"2025-09-18T03:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T03:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2030537"},"modified":"2025-09-18T03:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T03:47:13","slug":"a-secret-weapon-of-bluegrass-arts-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/a-secret-weapon-of-bluegrass-arts-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"A secret weapon of bluegrass | Arts & Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wila Frank, Lindsay Lou and Emma Rose make up the Honeymoon Trio. They will perform at the Wheeler Opera House at 8 p.m. Saturday. Lou is one of a generation of bluegrass musicians propelling the genre into the mainstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Lindsay Lou is the secret weapon of the new wave of bluegrass music that has propelled the genre from the fringes to the mainstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tickets are available at wheeleroperahouse.com<\/a>. A portion of every ticket will benefit the Independence Pass Foundation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople love to play with Lindsay because she knows the right spot to fit in,\u201d said Dave Bruzza, guitarist and vocalist for Greensky Bluegrass. \u201cShe 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, we once stole a golf cart at a festival and went around playing and singing for every campsite we passed. She\u2019s a great adventurer.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with Lou, Saturday\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bluegrass\u2019s seismic increase in popularity in the last decade has been propelled by flat-picking guitar wizard Billy Strings, another frequent collaborator of Lou\u2019s. Strings and Lou have written several songs together, including \u201cFreedom,\u201d which appeared on Strings\u2019 2019 Grammy-winning album \u201cHome.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery song comes together in a different way and \u2018Freedom\u2019 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\u2019s Billy\u2019s wheelhouse. And I wanted to write a song that would be fun. We got together and wrote it from scratch in my kitchen,\u201d Lou said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBilly would start to play something, and I started singing and we started writing lines,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt can get cold and wintery in Nashville, and on the day we wrote \u2018Freedom\u2019 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, \u2018All white as snow, black as night\u2019 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Lindsay Lou performed at Rockygrass in Lyons in August with her band, the Honeymoon Trio. Lou is a frequent collaborator of many of the biggest names in bluegrass, including Billy Strings with whom she penned the song \u201cFreedom\u201d on his album \u201cHome.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Sometimes that songwriting space needs a lot of time to breathe. The song \u201cNothing\u2019s Working\u201d that Lou wrote with Strings had a much longer gestation period, taking two years to complete from start to finish before appearing on Strings\u2019 2021 Grammy-nominated album, \u201cRenewal.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lou said she and Strings have another song in the works that they started in February 2024. Lou wasn\u2019t 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\u2019 son River is a little over 1 year old and Lou\u2019s baby boy Bart is 4 months old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lou\u2019s partner is Kyle Tuttle, a former member of Jeff Austin\u2019s band. Most recently Kyle was a member of Golden Highway, Molly Tuttle\u2019s band.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBarthas completely totally and utterly transformed my life,\u201d Lou said. \u201cIt is the most amazing thing ever to get to be his mama. He\u2019s been on over 25 flights already. He\u2019s a real road dog and he loves music.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She grew up constantly singing with her family. Her brother taught her to play a Indigo Girls\u2019 song, \u201cBlood and Fire,\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lou attended college at Michigan State where she met the Flatbellys. The band \u201creally introduced me to a deeper community of bluegrass,\u201d Lou said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She graduated in 2008 and toured with The Flatbellys for 10 years. Lou released her debut solo album \u201cRelease Your Shrouds\u201d in 2012. Her 2015 record \u201cIona\u201d was released as Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys. She followed with \u201cSouthland\u201d and \u201cQueen of Time\u201d in 2018 and 2023.<\/p>\n

Lou is a soulful artist with an angelic voice and a gift for melody. She is an adept songwriter. If you slipped Lou\u2019s catalogue into an Alison Krauss anthology, you wouldn\u2019t be left thinking, \u201cWhich of these songs are not like the others?\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cit must be the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMichigan is surrounded by The Great Lakes, which holds 20% of the world\u2019s freshwater. As we move into the climate crisis, freshwater will be so vital and it\u2019s interesting that all this music is coming from the world\u2019s greatest concentration of freshwater,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lou has been tapping into a feminine space in her music in the last several years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI love bluegrass,\u201d Lou said. \u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019ve gotten more comfortable in my own voice, my music has captured sounds outside the bluegrass genre. It\u2019s a consequence of me following my own path.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why they call it Mother Nature, \u201cLou said. \u201cAny time I have any experience with Mother Nature I reconnect with my sense of femininity. It\u2019s one of the reasons I love Colorado.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lou said she hopes attending one of her shows can be a cathartic experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so drained by screens and phones and bad news about what\u2019s happening in the world,\u201d she said. \u201cIt can leave you feeling like giving up because it\u2019s 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\u2019re not just two sects pitted against each other, we\u2019re a community of diverse people with way more in common than those in power would like to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aspendailynews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wila Frank, Lindsay Lou and Emma Rose make up the Honeymoon Trio. They will perform at the Wheeler Opera House at 8 p.m. Saturday. Lou is one of a generation of bluegrass musicians propelling the genre into the mainstream.\u00a0 Photo by Mike Moran Lindsay Lou is the secret weapon of the new wave of bluegrass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2030538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2030537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/A-secret-weapon-of-bluegrass-Arts-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2030537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2030538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2030537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2030537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2030537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}