“Crooked Tree” is the title track of Molly Tuttle’s 2022 album, her first with her band Golden Highway. Tuttle wrote it with the songwriter Melody Walker, taking as a starting point a remark of Tom Waits’s — that the crooked trees are the ones left standing, because they cannot be cut for lumber.
From that image the song builds a quiet anthem of non-conformity: the crooked tree, useless to the mill, gets to grow wild and free. For Tuttle, who has been open about living with alopecia and about charting an unconventional path in bluegrass, the metaphor was personal — a celebration of difference rather than an apology for it.
The album Crooked Tree was widely honored, including a Grammy for bluegrass, and the title song stands as a statement of purpose for one of the music’s most prominent younger artists.
