Not long after Michigan-raised songwriter Lindsay Lou moved to Nashville in 2015, she made a startling discovery: many of the bluegrass standards she’d been performing since her Uncle Pete took her to her first jam in Montana at 13 were written by women.
“When I think about the first generation of bluegrass,” she says, “of course, I think of The Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, and Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass. But there is no mother of bluegrass.”
She began digging into the history books and found more forgotten stories: “In the Bluegrass Jam Along podcast, [host] Matt Hutchinson said 83 percent of the trad songs were collected from women, but they all have A.P. Carter's name on the copyright.”
A founding member of the Carter Family, he helped bring the songs to a wider audience – but his sister-in-law, Mother Maybelle, had a profound impact on the sound itself.
“In bluegrass the guitar didn't take solos,” Lou says. “The guitar was a rhythm instrument. Mother Maybelle is one of the earliest people to take solos, and the way she played is unique, picking out the melody with the thumb pick. In bluegrass, it's primarily with a flat pick.”
The idea of music blossoming in family circles feels fitting for a tradition whose repertoire grew through informal playing. “That’s the special thing about bluegrass and acoustic music: you don’t need a stage,” says Lou. “You don’t need a sound system. You need a bunch of people who are obsessed with the music.”
That spirit became the foundation of her latest album, Bluegrass Women, showcasing 10 tracks written by the elder women of the genre, performed by an all-star acoustic line-up. The first piece of the puzzle was finding the right producer; and, unsurprisingly, the bluegrass community delivered.
“I learned about Shani Gandhi as she engineered an EP for my friend Billy Strings. I remember meeting her at one of his shows and being impressed because even among engineers and people in the behind-the-scenes world, it’s hugely male-dominated.”
Gandhi provided her own impressive network; she co-produced singer/mandolinist Sierra Hull’s Grammy-nominated 25 Trips, and won Best Folk Album award for producing Sarah Jarosz's Undercurrent.
With Gandhi on board, Lou rapid-fired messages to her friends. “Hey, this is what I’m doing. Do you want to be a part of it?” All of them said yes. One month later, Bluegrass Women assembled at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios.
What could have felt like an intimidating roll call felt more like an inevitability. Many of Lou’s chosen artists were already deeply connected, including flatpickers Courtney Hartman and Molly Tuttle.
Tuttle, in particular, was a linchpin, having performed in a childhood band with skilled string player AJ Lee and later worked with Grammy-winning fiddle player Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and Hasee Ciaccio.
“We’re all women in the scene,” Lou says. “But to have all these different parts of Molly's life in one room felt a lot like the fates too.”
The record began to take shape in the traditional bluegrass way. “I told everybody, ‘Just show up,’ and that's what we did. We got in a circle, played the song a few times, and the arrangements presented themselves.”
Some songs demanded more deliberation, though. “I’ve Endured is the one that we labored over. I wanted to embody Ola Bell Reed’s spirit as much as I could,” she says, mindful too of the Tim O'Brien version everyone carries in their heads.
The between reverence and reinvention is central to Lou’s own relationship with the tradition. “I'm not a flashy picker, which makes me a little bit of an anomaly in the bluegrass world. But I love singing these songs, and I love harmony so much that I’ve managed to weasel my way in here!”
Her route into music began with folk and family. “I grew up in a really big family of hippies that played. The first song I learned was an Indigo Girls song.” Later, at college in Michigan, she formed her band the Flatbellys, dove into original bluegrass recordings, and found herself really falling for the sound.
“Bluegrass gave me tools to tighten up my guitar playing and a whole well of songs to sing with anybody,” she says. “You can be a band with so many strangers all over the world if you got bluegrass in your pocket.”
Her guitars followed that evolution: a Recording King acoustic guitar, then a Martin Dreadnought, before she settled on a Martin 00-17, which she describes as having “this old Carter Family woody depth to it. I also have a Double 00-17 parlor hybrid by Preston Thompson Guitars that I love to play.”
If those guitars connect Lou to bluegrass’ roots, one of the project’s most powerful moments came when a living link to that history walked through the studio door. Laurie Lewis, an inspiration to many of the players, happened to be in Nashville during one of the four recording days.
“When Laurie Lewis came in – a mentor to all of us – that was an incredible pinch-me moment,” Lou says. “She’s a force, and it was so cool to have her presence anywhere on this record.”
For all the project’s historical weight and countless contributors, Lou keeps returning to one deceptively simple word: ease. The ease of gathering. The ease of celebrating the music together. The ease of playing in a circle and letting an arrangement emerge. Perhaps that’s the real heart of Bluegrass Women.
She’s not out to rewrite the history of bluegrass, but to make some of the women who helped shape the sound harder to overlook – and to give the next generation a clearer path to the music.
“I hope it’s a stepping stone, where you see more young women coming up, picking and leading bands,” she says. “It’s one small contribution to a greater history that’s unfolding.”
- Bluegrass Women is out now.
