White Freightliner Blues
Townes Van Zandt's song, taken up by bluegrass bands, which Tuttle recorded as a duet with Tommy Emmanuel in 2023.
Molly Tuttle (2023)
Townes Van Zandt wrote "White Freightliner Blues", first released on Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, recorded over five nights in July 1973 and released in May 1977 on Tomato Records; the track is 3:26. New Grass Revival brought it to bluegrass in 1992, and Americana UK lists covers by Colter Wall, Steve Earle, Billy Strings, the Flatlanders and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Tuttle played it with the Tuttles and AJ Lee at the California Bluegrass Association's Father's Day Festival in a video said to date from 2009, and Americana UK praises a Golden Highway version from the Ossipee Valley Music Festival in Maine.
Her studio duet with Tommy Emmanuel was released as a video on March 1, 2023, filmed in Nashville and directed by Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard, as a digital single on March 3, and on Emmanuel's Accomplice Two (April 28, 2023, CGP Sounds). Both sing and play guitar, and Emmanuel says the tracks were recorded live. Tuttle said it was the first time they played it together and that she was thrilled when Tommy called. Setlist.fm logs 69 plays across her setlists. Which performance our upload is, the duet or a Golden Highway live version, has not been established.
More songs by Molly Tuttle
Sources
- Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, Wikipedia
- Versions: White Freightliner Blues, Americana UK (2023-09)
- Tommy Emmanuel and Molly Tuttle, Grateful Web (2023)
- Molly Tuttle statistics, setlist.fm