Molly Tuttle won back to back Grammys for bluegrass album of the year with “Crooked Tree” and “City of Gold” and also earned a nomination for best new artist.

Her next album, “So Long Little Miss Sunshine,” seems unlikely to continue the streak, only because it explores musical ideas well beyond bluegrass.

The playing that made Tuttle the first woman to be named guitar player of the year at the International Bluegrass Music Awards is still front and center, but it’s in service of songs that span California rock, country and pop, including a radically reworked cover of Charli xcx’s “I Love It.”

The lead single “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” (co-written with Kevin Griffin from the band Better Than Ezra) is an indication of what listeners can expect with its catchy pop hook and breezy, sing-along chorus.

In a telephone interview last week, Tuttle said she is looking forward to hearing how the new songs sound alongside the more traditional bluegrass ones, and her performance July 5 at the Grassfire Festival at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park will be one of the first opportunities for an audience to hear that blend.

“I’ve been working on these songs for probably about five years now and at the same time working on writing my bluegrass record ‘Crooked Tree,'” Tuttle said. “I knew I wanted to make a solo record that was a little different from what I had done before, but I didn’t really know the exact direction or how it was going to take shape until we went into the studio last fall with (producer) Jay Joyce. I’d been sending him songs for a couple years and finally felt like I had the right collection of songs to make this record.

“But, yeah, we just sort of went back and forth about direction, then it just kind of came together in the studio with the musicians there. By the end, I was like, ‘OK, now I see what it is,’ but I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen.”

Joyce has worked with a wide range of country and rock acts, including Eric Church, Lainey Wilson, Miranda Lambert, The Black Crowes, Cage the Elephant and Sleeper Agent (whose lead singer was Champion native Alex Kandel).

He was recommended to Tuttle by her manager.

“He thought that Jay might be a great person to work with, because he’s such a great guitar player and would have some really cool ideas around thinking about guitar playing and stretching it into new directions and new styles,” she said.

His influence was strong on “Everything Burns,” a politically charged track written during the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election and recorded the day after the 2024 election, and “The Highway Knows.”

“Jay Joyce had these ideas for the solo sections that you hear throughout [‘Everything Burns’], and he helped me develop the guitar riff that starts the song,” Tuttle said. “None of that was really in there when I took the song to him, and ‘The Highway Knows’ also evolved a lot. The main thing that changed a lot were the guitar parts. There was no guitar solo section on that one either, and he kind of came up with that entire section that you hear that almost became like a bridge to the song.

“That was the most exciting part for me, coming into the studio each day when we were doing pre-production, and he would have so many new ideas. And it was just so cool to work with someone like that who was bringing the songs to life in these new ways that I could have never imagined.”

Both “Crooked Tree” and “City of Gold” were produced by Leavittsburg native Jerry Douglas, and those bluegrass album of the year wins brought his total to 16 Grammys and 33 nominations.

Tuttle said she and Douglas have worked together on different projects over the years and she got to know him better when she participated in one of the “Transatlantic Sessions” tours that Douglas does in the United Kingdom.

“I really like his energy, and just think he’s so genius with musical ideas,” she said. “I just got along really well with him. And then when it came time to make ‘Crooked Tree,’ I just thought he would be so fun to work with. And I was really excited when he actually ended up playing on a bunch of the record in addition to producing it. But I just love working with Jerry. He’s amazing and has such a great ear for arrangements.

“It also was cool to step into a co-producer role myself. He respected my ideas so much too, and we just got into a great kind of back and forth.”

Tuttle said she expects to play a few of the new songs at Grassfire and will work in more after “So Long Little Miss Sunshine” is released on Aug. 15.

“We’ve been doing like four or five new songs, which has been really fun, and then that leaves plenty of space for the older ones,” she said. “I think we’re going to slowly start working more of the album into the set, and then when the whole thing’s out, we’ll probably just rotate through. I like to play all the songs off the album at some point on our tour.”

Tuttle said the goal is both to appease and hopefully win over the bluegrass traditionalists.

“I think some of my really long time fans won’t be too shocked, because the records I made before ‘Crooked Tree’ and ‘City of Gold’ were more in this vein of experimenting with different genres, taking my flat picking guitar and putting it with drums and keys and all this other stuff. But, yeah, I’ve been in the bluegrass world my whole life. I’ve been going to bluegrass festivals since I was a little kid, and I definitely know that there’s bluegrass purists who don’t really listen to anything else. I’m hopeful that people — even if they are more in that realm where they just want people to stay in their lane and stay playing the same genre — maybe they’ll still give it a listen with an open mind.

“My live show is where I’m still gonna try to weave in the bluegrass and it’s still such a big part of what I do. I don’t want to stop playing bluegrass altogether. That’s why I’ve put together this band where we can sort of do both — play the new, more contemporary stuff, but then also play a bunch of my bluegrass material too. The people in my band are so, so good at doing both. I don’t want to turn my back on that world altogether, but it’s important to me to still evolve and take musical risks.”

If you go …

WHAT: Grassfire Festival with Greensky Bluegrass, Molly Tuttle, Del McCoury Band, The Infamous Stringdusters, Railroad Earth, Peter Rowan & Sam Grisman Project, The Steeldrivers, Michael Cleveland, Yonder Mountain String Band, Steep Canyon Rangers, Kyle Tuttle Band, David Mayfield Parade, Rumpke Mountain Boys and more

WHEN: July 3 to 6

WHERE: Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, 12001 Nelson Ledge Road, Nelson

HOW MUCH: Four-day, three-night passes with camping start at $189 and are available online at nlqp.com.