Bluegrass artist Billy Strings returns to take over Rupp for two concerts

These kids. They grow up so fast.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Billy Strings, already the talk of the new generation bluegrass world, was a tearing it up on regular basis at The Burl?

Among his high-spirited stops at the Distillery District club was a May 2018 outing, his third show there in a 10-month period, where the warp-speed wunderkind guitarist mashed-up, along with his own well-schooled tunes, the songs and styles of such divergent artists as bluegrass patriarch Bill Monroe, Americana upstarts New Grass Revival and Southern rockers Blackfoot.

But nestled near the end of the set, Strings eased into a renegade tune from an era that unfolded long ago and far away — Southern California in the early ’70s. The song, “Lonesome L.A. Cowboy,” was penned a half-century ago by Peter Rowan, an esteemed Monroe alum with an indelible outlaw streak.

Rowan performed it with the short-lived but long-heralded misfit string band Old and in the Way before passing it on to the hippie country brigade New Riders of the Purple Sage. It details the kind of loneliness that has been thematically embedded into bluegrass music but tells it from the standpoint of a singer riddled with vices — drugs, primarily — that most players in the genre shove under the covers. The harmonies, though, are sweet and the serenading swing within the composition is a thing of beauty.

Strings and his band captured it all at The Burl. Then again, in the two-and-a-half decades of upbringing that led up to the Burl gig, he has traveled many of the dark highways the song’s protagonist sings of. More on that in a minute.

Returning to Lexington for major concerts

The Burl shows were the beginning of what has since become a fruitful relationship between Strings and Lexington, an alliance that will hit its latest apex this weekend with a pair of concerts at Rupp Arena.

You heard right. A bluegrass-rooted artist who knows every variation of tradition the genre has followed, but chases it today with a sound very much his own, is headlining two shows at an arena.

To date, no bluegrass player has had his profile play out so prominently at Rupp as Strings will on Friday and Saturday.

Another distinction: Among the few bluegrass performances presented at the arena, this will be the first to have a rock concert-style pit in front of the stage. Looks like Strings wants to retain a little of that Burl feel in an arena setting. There will also be another intimacy factor at work for the weekend run. No upper arena seats were placed on sale for either show.

While neither performance is fully sold out as of this writing, only a smattering of tickets remain. According to the Ticketmaster website, roughly a dozen single seats are available for Saturday’s concert. The picking is slightly better for Friday’s show.

Origins of Billy Strings

So where did the road begin for this lonesome L.A. cowboy who is actually from Michigan? Well, to put it plainly, in a very dark place. His father died of a heroin overdose when Strings — born William Lee Apostol — was two. His mother battled depression as drugs began to dominate his home life, leading to intense addictions while the guitarist was still in his teens.

The light within a such a devastating upbringing: An introduction to bluegrass roots music from Strings’ stepfather, an amateur but highly proficient guitarist whose influence helped mold an obsession with music that would eventually overtake his more damaging habits.

As his career ignited, Rolling Stone hailed Strings as one of the Top Ten New Country Acts to Know in 2017. That accolade came just weeks before his debut solo album, the indie-released “Turmoil & Tinfoil,” surfaced. In 2021 — by which time the guitarist had won a Grammy for his follow-up record “Home” — The New York Times pegged Strings as “a premier bluegrass mind for this post-everything era.”

As a guitarist, Strings is a dazzler, rattling off licks with speed and agility that will likely drop the jaws even of bluegrass die-hards accustomed to the genre’s fascination with fast fingering. Yet his rhythm playing is assured and patient, flowing with a very natural grace. As a vocalist, which is where Strings often receives scant notice, he sings and interprets with the worldly clarity, both in tone and temperament, of a roots music scholar much older than the guitarist’s current age of 31. As a songwriter, which is where Strings is often at his most dynamic, he takes the parallels of darkness and faith so inherent in bluegrass tradition and regularly employs them in stories that echo his own youthful hard living.

On “Taking Water,” the lead-off tune to the “Home” album in 2019, Strings sings of staying afloat in a world that is sinking around him (“Cold cold ashes on the ground; nothing lost and nothing found. Friends and loved ones falling down. Can’t you hear that mournful sound?”). The focus becomes more intense and internalized on “Know It All,” which introduces 2021’s redemptive “Renewal” (“Thought I knew it all, ’til I crashed into the wall”).

Strings has been all about collaborations since then. His most recent album, 2022’s “Me/and/Dad,” was a set of bluegrass hymns and standards recorded, as the title implies, alongside mentor and stepfather Terry Barber.

“You don’t see people play like him anymore,” Strings told me prior to a sold-out 2020 performance at Manchester Music Hall, where he graduated to after his Burl performances. “My father is a rare breed. He fully embodies the emotion of a song when he plays it and he’s not even a professional musician. He just does this out of the love of music. I’ve played with a lot of the best musicians in the world and I have never really come across anybody that truly has what my dad has. He comes from that old guard.”

Playing with Bela Fleck, Willie Nelson

The alliances have continued this year. In February, banjo star Béla Fleck sat in with Strings at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. In March, Strings went electric and rocked out at a reunion show by the Michigan metal band Flesh and Blood Robot. Then as recently as mid-April, he played with prog-funk pal Les Claypool at the FirstBank Amphitheater in nearby Franklin.

Still ahead is a one-off August guest performance as part of Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival in Seattle. Strings released a single, “California Sober,” with the Americana legend last year just before serving as one of the many all-stars playing Nelson’s 90th birthday concerts at the Hollywood Bowl.

It all seems a bit removed from those days at The Burl, eh? Or does it? The club’s current calendar has a pair of home-state string bands, Hot Brown Smackdown and Dark Moon Hollow, playing on April 26 for an outing billed as a “Billy Strings Afterparty.” Showtime is midnight, late enough for Rupp attendees to take in the fun. Even though he will be playing the big house this weekend, Strings will be remembered at the club that first gave him a performance home here.

“I love getting to play bluegrass in Kentucky,” Strings said in the 2020 interview. “I mean, that’s where it’s from. You get in front of an audience down there and they know the songs as well as the history.”

Billy Strings

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

When: April 26 and 27, 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: $49.50-$69.50 through ticketmaster.com.