After welcoming their first child into the world last spring, Lindsay Lou and Kyle Tuttle return to the Front Range as a duo this month in Golden. Credit: Nick Negrete
Her favorite Boulder hike hit a little different this year, as Lindsay Lou ascended the Flatirons with an extra 23 pounds strapped to her body and not quite enough sleep. It was her first time sharing the trail with her young son, Bart, whom she welcomed to the world last May with her partner in life and music, Kyle Tuttle.
“Anytime I play in Boulder, I always hike the Flatirons,” Lou, 39, says with a sweet and low timbre almost as lovely as her singing voice. “This time it was extra special with Bart strapped to me.”
Tuttle and Lou spent years getting to know each other as friends, sitting in on the same bluegrass circles as far back as 2009. It wasn’t until 2020 that they joined forces in the same musical project, playing a couple livestreamed gigs with a pandemic supergroup called Super Flex, including Mimi Naja of Fruition and Royal Masat of Billy Strings.
“It’s definitely one of the things that sparked our love interest,” Lou says. “We were playing music together and it was really easy and fun.”
“It’s just like another level of communication,” Tuttle adds. “Another sort of shared language that we speak in complimentary ways.”
Front Range concertgoers will get a chance to experience this shared language for themselves during a duo set from the two lovebirds at Boogie on the Mesa, Aug. 14 and 15 in Golden. The joint performance is a rarity these days, as each of them stays busy with their own careers.
“It’s going to be some crazy travel logistics on Lindsay’s part to make it work,” Tuttle tells Caribou Current ahead of the two-day camping and music festival. “But it ended up making enough sense to give it a shot.”
The idea for a paired set came from festival organizer Travis Dennis, who pitched the idea to the Nashville-based couple when putting together the lineup for the 5th annual event. Now that the moment is here, attendees can expect to get up close and personal with the music in a new context.
“It’ll be a mix of Lou and Kyle songs in a nice, intimate setting. Sort of stripped down,” Lou says. “Because it’s a duo of two acoustic instruments, there’s so much space for vocals and song to speak, and it really gives Kyle a chance to stretch out.”
Tuttle won’t be the only musician with a little extra runway in this configuration. He says the stripped-back arrangement will allow the two musicians to bring out the best in each other — a hallmark of any good relationship.
“My music is very banjo centric and therefore instrumentally focused, and Lindsay’s instrument really is her voice,” he says. “We can share a space complementing and supporting each other, rather than doing the same thing.”
This dreamy duo make magic together, but the two musicians are power houses all on their own. Tuttle’s resume includes three years with the late mandolin legend Jeff Austin of Yonder Mountain String Band, as well as a Grammy win for City of Gold with Molly Tuttle (no relation) as a part of the Golden Highway. Lou herself has also collaborated with Greensky Bluegrass, Leftover Salmon and more, even co-writing a song on Billy String’s Grammy-winning album Home.
Tuttle and Lou added more magic to their formula when they became a trio after bringing their son Bart into the world.
“I feel more settled into myself. I don’t feel like I have as much to prove because there’s a bigger, greater thing,” Lou says. “I especially felt it when I was pregnant because it was like everything I sang I knew was reverberating in the bones of this being inside me, and that felt really huge.”
Raising their first child together might have slowed things down just a touch, but the two musicians are still bringing forth new projects. The Boogie on the Mesa performance will coincide with the release of Lou’s latest album, Bluegrass Women, packed with talented ladies from the scene and recorded when she was seven months pregnant.
“When I first moved to Nashville, I found out that ‘I Only Exist’ was written by Ralph Stanley’s wife Jimmi and her friend Joyce and that ‘All I Ever Loved Was You’ was written by Ricky Skaggs’ mom, Dorothy,” Lou says. “I was like, ‘Man, there’s got to be so many more songs I’ve been singing that I didn’t even know were written by a woman,’ and it felt really special to me.”
After a few years on the road with Molly Tuttle & the Golden Highway, Tuttle has gone back to touring primarily with the Kyle Tuttle Band. He says new music could be right around the corner.
“I’m actually sort of in and out of the studio right now, just sort of getting the ball rolling on what will be my band’s next record,” says the 40-year-old songwriter. “My hope is to have it out next spring time.”
Until then, the couple is grateful for a chance to take a breath and reconnect on stage against the beautiful backdrop of Golden — without all the pomp and circumstance that comes with a full-band production.
“I did the whole touring thing in 2023 and 2024 with drums and electric guitars and the whole big band sound,” Lou says, “I really love the harmony and collaboration and musical conversation you get from the band setting, but I love the intimacy and how much space there is for the voice and for the song to speak in a solo setting. I think the same thing is true when Kyle and I play as a duo.”
Tuttle chimes in with enthusiasm: “We’re looking forward to being back out in lovely Colorado to do it again.”
“Because it has the mountains and the hiking and the wildflowers and the rivers and streams, it attracts people who are into that,” Lou adds. “There’s this really beautiful marriage of nature and music.”
“You’re just playing for such like-minded, passionate people who are into the same things that you are and really pumped about the music,” she continues. “It’s a really special place.”
ON STAGE: Boogie on the Mesa. 12-2 p.m. Fri-Sat., Aug. 14-15, New Terrain Brewing Company, 16401 Table Mountain Parkway, Golden. Weekend Pass: $150 / Single Night: $75
