Billy Strings Shows Why He’s a Live Boss with an Epic New Concert Recording

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GettyImages-1494376969-2 - Credit: Steve Jennings/WireImage/Getty
GettyImages-1494376969-2 - Credit: Steve Jennings/WireImage/Getty

At a Billy Strings concert, you never know what you’re going to get. Case in point: His recent Halloween show included pro-wrestling costumes, guests like Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull, and Strings breaking his guitar over someone’s head in a skit. And that’s not including the music, which can be even more unpredictable. Strings shows why he’s a live boss in a new recording released on Friday — a nearly 40-minute journey through three songs.

Recorded at a March 2023 gig at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the performance begins with “Meet Me at the Creek,” a track off Strings’ 2017 LP Tinfoil & Turmoil that forms the skeleton of the epic jam. From there he and his band — mandolinist Jarrod Walker, bassist Royal Massat, banjo player Billy Failing, and fiddler Alex Hargreaves — segue into “Pyramid Country,” another song off Tinfoil & Turmoil, before jumping ahead to 2019’s Home album and a rendition of “Must Be Seven.” Strings wraps it all up back where he started, returning to “Meet Me at the Creek” with a flourish.

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At noon/ET on Friday, Team Strings will drop a video for the song(s), which includes footage from his ongoing tour. The guitarist is in the midst of a headlining run that boasts multiple nights in cities like Nashville, Atlanta, and New Orleans. He’ll play two shows in Baltimore this weekend, before hitting Pittsburgh for a pair next week, and then a one-night-stand in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 15.

Strings is up for three Grammys at this year’s awards, including for two collabs: his song “High Note” with Dierks Bentley and the ode to puffing weed, “California Sober,” with Willie Nelson.

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