# Bluegrass has a father, but no mother

> Lindsay Lou found out the songs she'd played since she was 13 were written by women nobody names, so she made a record about it.
- Title: Bluegrass has a father, but no mother · Guitar World
- Summary: Lindsay Lou found out the songs she'd played since she was 13 were written by women nobody names, so she made a record about it. The women who shaped…
- Keywords: bluegrass, lindsay lou, molly tuttle, women in music, acoustic guitar, father, mother, Guitar World
- Source: Guitar World — https://guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/lindsay-lou-bluegrass-women
- Published: 2026-09-13T16:00:00+00:00
- Read time: 2 min
- Topics: bluegrass, lindsay lou, molly tuttle, women in music, acoustic guitar
## A startling discovery in Nashville
Lindsay Lou moved to Nashville in 2015 and realised many of the bluegrass standards she'd played since age 13 were written by women.
## No mother of bluegrass
Everyone can name the fathers: the Stanley Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe. The maternal side of the family tree was never written down.

> But there is no mother of bluegrass.
## Collected from women, credited to a man
A podcast host told her 83 percent of the trad songs were gathered from women singers. A.P. Carter's name sits on the copyright.

> 83 percent of the trad songs were collected from women, but they all have A.P. Carter's name on the copyright.
## Mother Maybelle invented the solo
Guitar was rhythm duty in bluegrass. Maybelle Carter was among the first to take a lead break, picking the melody out with her thumb pick instead of a flat pick.

> In bluegrass the guitar didn't take solos. The guitar was a rhythm instrument.
## You don't need a stage
The music grew in kitchens and jam circles, not venues. All it asks for is a few people obsessed enough to keep playing it.

> You don't need a sound system. You need a bunch of people who are obsessed with the music.
## Finding the right producer
Lou picked Shani Gandhi, who engineered for Billy Strings, co-produced Sierra Hull's Grammy-nominated 25 Trips, and won a Grammy for Sarah Jarosz's Undercurrent.
## Everybody said yes
She fired off messages to her friends asking if they wanted in. All of them agreed, and a month later the group was at Sound Emporium Studios.

> Hey, this is what I'm doing. Do you want to be a part of it?
## Molly Tuttle was the linchpin
Tuttle's childhood bandmate AJ Lee, plus Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and Hasee Ciaccio, all ended up in the same room. Separate chapters of one life, together.

> To have all these different parts of Molly's life in one room felt a lot like the fates too.
## Just show up
No charts, no pre-production. They sat in a circle, ran each song a few times, and the arrangements worked themselves out.

> We got in a circle, played the song a few times, and the arrangements presented themselves.
## The one they laboured over
I've Endured took real work. Lou wanted to carry Ola Belle Reed's spirit while knowing the Tim O'Brien version lives in everyone's head.

> I wanted to embody Ola Bell Reed's spirit as much as I could.
## A stepping stone, not a rewrite
Lou isn't trying to rewrite bluegrass history, just make these women harder to overlook and give young pickers a clearer path in.

> I hope it's a stepping stone, where you see more young women coming up, picking and leading bands.
## Key takeaway

The women who shaped bluegrass wrote the standards and invented the guitar solo, and a record of their songs is how you stop them being overlooked.