Billy Strings continues to bring his electrifying live show to bigger venues. The flat-picking wiz and his ace backing band have amplified bluegrass—an idiom known for intimate porch roots—into an arena spectacle, with wild light displays and psychedelic pedal effects.
Strings’ sonic evolution into large rooms is on full display throughout the new live album, Billy Strings Live Vol. 1, a 10-track effort compiled from shows in 2023 and earlier this year.
A standout, “Highway Hypnosis,” comes from an appearance at Pine Knob Music Theatre in the guitarist’s native home state of Michigan. The tune, a wayward traveler’s anthem, starts out as a traditional-sounding foot-stomper, but it gradually drifts into a blissful deep-space exploration, with distant whiffs of the Grateful Dead’s “Eyes of the World” and Phish’s “Harry Hood.”
Near the 15-minute version’s conclusion, the acoustic improv takes a menacing turn, before Strings draws the crowd into some communal call and response.
The new release can be streamed or purchased here.
Strings has tour dates on the books through December, and regionally you can catch him at the Bryce Jordan Center in State College, Pa., on August 2-3 and the CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore on October 31 and November 1.
Photo by Dana Trippe
