When Grammy-nominated singer Molly Tuttle wrote the song “Grass Valley,” she was reliving a pivotal childhood experience when she used to accompany her dad to the Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival in the Nevada County town. “People playing 'neath the pines—heard the music floating from the stage,” goes the song. “Pitched our tent and walked around, my heart opened to the sound.”
In the latest episode of the California Now Podcast, Tuttle talks with host Soterios Johnson about her ongoing love for Grass Valley, a little town surrounded by pine trees in the Sierra foothills. Johnson also welcomes two Grass Valley locals who share more about this Gold Country gem, located about an hour north of Sacramento, and 90 minutes east of Lake Tahoe.
The episode begins with Tuttle, whose bluegrass album Crooked Tree has helped earn her a 2023 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. Tuttle grew up in Palo Alto and found early musical inspiration from her father, a bluegrass guitarist, and the festivals they attended—the kind where many fans bring their own instruments for campground jam sessions. “It's such a nostalgic place for me,” Tuttle says of Grass Valley, noting that “there are a few other festivals throughout the year at that same campgrounds—like the Strawberry Music Festival, and now Hangtown, and California WorldFest. Every time I'm there, no matter what festival, you'll see a lot of the same people, same kind of vendors, and it just it brings back a lot of good memories.”
California in general is an under-the-radar bluegrass hotspot, Tuttle notes, pointing to artists such as David Grisman, Tony Rice, “and of course Jerry Garcia. Palo Alto is where Jerry Garcia is from. He used to play the banjo and had a bluegrass band there, and I think the Grateful Dead has had such a big impact on a lot of the folk music and the bluegrass jams that you find [here].”
Music is only the beginning of Grass Valley’s quirky charms, says the podcast’s next guest, Sonya Krimsky, the events manager at the Holbrooke Hotel. The Grass Valley local uses words such as “adorable,” “quaint” and “idiosyncratic” when describing her adopted home town, but also admits with a laugh that she has also called it “a cross between Twin Peaks and Schitt's Creek. Everyone has their personalities—the town crier, the town gossip—that you only find in a small town.”
The Holbrooke Hotel, she says, is another one of the town’s personalities, which is closely tied to Grass Valley’s Gold Rush origins (the Empire Mine State Historic Park sits right outside town). The hotel is “the most prominent building in the downtown,” she says, thanks in part to its central location and also due to the fact that in Grass Valley, “nothing is taller than four stories.” Grass Valley and neighboring Nevada City both have a lot of “old Gold Rush buildings,” she says, and the hotel’s style is “almost Edwardian or Victorian, but it's unique to the Motherlode area, and so we call it Motherlode architecture.”
The hotel’s recent makeover, she says, has created more open spaces and added updated décor, but also involved restoring the building’s original mahogany, as well as the copper walls of the Golden Gate Saloon. The bar is extra special, she says since the hotel “was founded first as a saloon for all those gold miners. It's the oldest and longest running saloon in California history.”
Once it also became a hotel in 1853, Krimsky adds, another fascinating chapter began in the building’s history. Back then, “getting here was arduous,” she says. “You couldn't cross the Sierra Nevada easily or safely—and so these weren't just one night or weekend stays. You would stay for months.” The hotel had several famous guests back in those days, she says, including writers Jack London, Brett Harte, and Mark Twain, who tried prospecting for gold himself. “Mark Twain supposedly stayed in what's now room 2, the corner suite,” she says. “It has this beautiful balcony access, and he would sit out there with his bourbon or his whiskey and heckle people as they rode by.”
Today you can still feel some of that colorful history when staying at the hotel, from The Iron Door bar (rumored to have been a brothel and speakeasy in earlier days) or the hotel’s “Haunted by History” tour. “I've never actually seen a ghost,” Krimsky says, “but sometimes I get that feeling that if these walls could talk, there are some stories still playing out.”
Also in this episode, Grass Valley local Patrick Millar gives his answers to the California Questionnaire. The owner of Gold Vibe Kombuchary, Northern California’s first hard kombucha taproom, weighs in on his ultimate California culinary experience, the best boutiques in Grass Valley, and his vision for a perfect day. “I’d be a tourist in my own town,” he says. “Bop around town, go down to the Yuba River and hang out with friends. The Yuba River has big white granite boulders, turquoise water, and there are things about that river that are in my mind better than going to the beach. It's just fantastic.”