About
Tristan Scroggins is a mandolinist, composer, writer, producer, archivist, and teacher who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He was born in Texas, the son of banjo player Jeff Scroggins, and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After his parents separated, he moved with his father to Colorado's Front Range in 2008, and at 14 formed Jeff Scroggins & Colorado with his father and guitarist Greg Blake. Tristan toured extensively with the band for nearly ten years. He was awarded the International Bluegrass Music Association's Momentum Award for Instrumentalist of the Year in 2017, and in 2018 he was nominated with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado for IBMA's Emerging Artist of the Year. He moved to Nashville in 2018. He won the first FreshGrass Mandolin Award in 2019 and was nominated for IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year in 2021.
In Nashville he became a regular fill-in and session mandolinist. He played extensively with Sister Sadie while the band was between mandolin players, and he recorded on their album No Fear (2024), which was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. He also toured with Robbie Fulks, Dailey & Vincent, and Chris Jones, and played select shows with Steve Martin, Molly Tuttle, and Blue Highway. What began as fill-in work for Missy Raines became a full-time job during the COVID-19 pandemic, and by 2021 he was the mandolinist in Missy Raines & Allegheny. He is currently the mandolinist in the road band of fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, now known as Bronwyn, and plays on her album Rattlin' Bones, released in 2026.
He worked for the estate of John Hartford for several years, archiving Hartford's papers, and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum later hired him to continue that work when the collection moved to their facility. He plays on The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Vol. 1, an album of previously unrecorded Hartford tunes that was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album, and he toured with an early version of the project's band alongside Megan Lynch Chowning and Adam Hurt. His duo with violinist and composer Alisa Rose, Scroggins & Rose, combines classical forms with bluegrass. Their debut album, Grana, came out in 2016; a FreshGrass Foundation grant funded their second album, Curios; and they released Speranza in 2025. Starting in 2023, he recorded and independently released the Old Time 100 with George Jackson. The project, a field-recording-style series of 100 old-time tunes recorded with Nashville musicians, has gained an international reputation as one of the most accessible entries into the genre.
He has written for Fretboard Journal and the Bluegrass Situation, and at one time wrote columns for No Depression and Peghead Nation. IBMA named him Writer of the Year (formerly Print Media Person of the Year) in 2021. He built and curated the Women in Bluegrass Archive Project, a free, searchable digital archive of the Women in Bluegrass newsletter (1994-2003). That project led to Don't Call Me Darlin', an eight-part podcast on the BGS podcast network that draws on the newsletter's stories, which he co-produced with Carolyn Kendrick.
He has taught at music camps across the country and led many workshops, and he is the author of several instructional books, including How to Play Mandolin in 14 Days and Jam Standard Fiddle Tune Favorites. He also offers lessons and transcriptions through Patreon.
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