Concert review: Billy Strings salutes Dickey Betts at sold-out St. Augustine Amphitheatre

When it was time for leavin', Billy Strings threw a big salute to the Ramblin' Man.

Strings closed out his sold-out Friday night show at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre with a salute to Dickey Betts, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist who passed away a day earlier, playing a rollicking "Ramblin' Man" that had fans dancing and crying at the same time.

It came at the end of a 31-song concert that had a packed house on its feet from start to finish and followed a gorgeous "Little Martha," also an Allman Brothers Band song, played by Strings and mandolin player Jarrod Walker as they sat at the edge of the stage.

You can pretty much forget about labeling the music that Strings and his four-piece band play. Bluegrass is about as close as you'll get, but that doesn't quite capture the band's power and versatility. Still, it's guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and stand-up bass, with no drummer at all, so call it what you want, but Strings has sold out 12 nights at the St. Augustine Amphitheatre over the last four years.

The band plays again Saturday and Sunday nights at the same venue. The shows are all sold out, likely to a lot of the same people who were at Friday's show. Strings typically never repeats a song all weekend, so many fans stay for all three shows.

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Strings is about as fast a guitar player as you'll ever see, regardless of genre, but he has a way of always bringing the song back around after going off on a wild solo. He plays everything on an acoustic guitar, stepping on pedals to change the tone, and the results can be a little startling sometimes, making you look for the electric guitar you know you're hearing but isn't there. Some purists give him grief over the use of the effects pedals, but he's still playing every one of those notes, and playing them blazingly fast. His voice is never going to get him invited to join the Metropolitan Opera, but it's just exactly right for the songs he's playing.

You don't necessarily need to love the genre or even know what song the band is playing to enjoy it; most have a tempo that makes you want to go jump on a horse or roll down the windows and stomp on the gas. Songs often turn into "top this!" contests, with the band handing off solos so seamlessly you hardly notice and frequently going around more than once on a tune, turning the crowd into a bouncing sea of tie-dye. Strings on guitar, Walker on mandolin, Royal Masat on bass, Alex Hargreaves on fiddle and Billy Failing on banjo are as tight as a band can be and any of them can bring down the house. Which musician is hottest can change from song to song. Strings is certainly the lynchpin — it's his name on the ticket, after all — but if you removed him from the equation for a song or two, it would still work.

Strings has grown his audience largely by word of mouth; people see him, enjoy the show and bring a friend the following year. He gets almost no radio promotion or national TV appearances but has almost single-handedly pumped life into a genre that hasn't gotten this much attention since "O Brother, Where Art Thou" came out in 2000.

Friday's setlist included plenty of favorites, plus covers of songs from Bob Dylan, Greensky Bluegrass, the Osborne Brothers, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and the Seldom Scene.

Where is Billy Strings playing in 2024?

Here's a look at Billy Strings' upcoming shows:

• April 26-27: Rupp Arena, Lexington, Kentucky

• May 11: Big As Texas Festival, Conroe, Texas

• May 17-18: Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre, Greenwood Village, Colorado

• May 21: The Armory, Minneapolis, Minnesota

• May 24-25: Allstate Arena, Rosemont, Illinois

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Billy Strings tour 2024: St. Augustine concert review