Pine Creek hosts evening of mountainside jamgrass w/ Billy Strings
Poised to take bluegrass in bold new directions, singer/songwriter and guitarist Billy Strings is quickly gaining attention for his incendiary live performances and imbuing his take on Americana with distinctive bursts of psychedelic virtuosity. While deeply reverent of the roots of traditional bluegrass music, which his father shared with him as a boy, Strings learned his high-energy performing skills by playing fleet-fingered guitar solos in a heavy metal band in his native Michigan. While he has matured as a player, singer and songwriter in his own right, and re-embraced the music his father introduced him to, Strings has applied the intensity of heavy metal to bluegrass. The end results, as demonstrated on his most recent release, Turmoil & Tinfoil, provide a fresh jolt to the genre.
In anticipation of his Southwest Montana return, the Rolling Zone spoke with Strings about his latest album, mishmash of influences and how he’s helping to modernize a categorically traditional genre.
RZ: We’re catching you between shows as the spring tour segues right into summer. You’re no stranger to the road, but how has this outing been thus far?
BS: We play so many shows that it’s hard to even think about, but the last couple weeks have been actually pretty crazy. I went up on stage at the Ryman and guested with Mavis Staples and Margo Price and a bunch of other folks, Sheryl Crow. That was pretty cool hanging out with those big stars. Then we’ve played our own shows, had a couple sold-out shows on the tour, hit some festivals here and there. It’s just been incredible as far as the response we’ve been getting. People are coming and checking us out, man. It’s really exciting for us.
RZ: Billy Strings, collectively speaking, is known for its live show. We can listen to the albums or even watch past performances on YouTube, but why would you say the in-person experience is optimal?
BS: I feel like you have to come to the show to really figure out what it is we’re doing because we play so much off the audience, and you might actually inspire us to play something different that night. We feed off interaction and the more we give, the more we get back. It sort of makes this loop where it’s no longer just us on stage and the audience out front – we’re all there together. I almost feel like I can only play as good as the audience. If people are really ravenous and crazy and screaming and hollerin’ and they really want us to go nuts, then we will. If people are quiet and relaxed and kinda calm, then we might put on more of a mellow show. We feed off the audience and that’s why I think the live show is really the thing. We try to get the live atmosphere onto the recordings, but it’s hard to capture the energy [of] standing in the front row and maybe getting sweat on ya, you know. We’re just kind of a live show band. And it’s different every night. Even if we play the same song, a lot of times we play it totally different. But we try not to repeat many, especially if they’re covers, because we try to mix it up. You just have to be there.
RZ: There have been whispers of some possible new music on the horizon. What’s the story there?
BS: Yeah, we recorded an album back in January. All I can say really at this point is that it’s going to come out this fall.
RZ: Ah. Road-testing any of those tunes in the meantime?
BS: Only like two of them. For the most part, I’m trying to wait until the album comes out to release those songs into the world. That way when the record comes out and we play them live, it’s fresh. Like I said, we’re really a live band. If we’re playing the record that hasn’t come out yet, by the time it does everybody’s going to have heard the songs already. So, there’s two songs we’ve been playing that are on there, but that’s it.
RZ: That’ll be a nice taste of what’s to come, but let’s talk a little bit about the latest album, Turmoil & Tinfoil. How did bringing in producer Glenn Brown (Greensky Bluegrass) either reinforce or alter your initial goals for the project?
BS: I would say reinforced, he definitely helped us hit that touchdown. He’s a wizard, man, a genius. He’s just a brilliant person and joy to be around, especially in a creative environment. He’s got a really positive vibe and is there the entire time. He’s really into the music, into the idea. He’s like, ‘Man, let’s make this thing fucking cool.’ It’s almost like we’re little kids playing, and that energy is just so great in the studio. One of my things, I play a lot of bluegrass but didn’t want to make a record that sounds like it was recorded as a traditional bluegrass album. [Turmoil] kind of plays like a rock n’ roll record. I like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath records and Jimi Hendrix albums, so I’m trying to do more of that sort of thing. I want to make an album. Not just like, here’s a collection of twelve classic bluegrass songs. I want it to be like you’re watching a movie or something. So, we just tried to mess around. We used a lot of different instruments like a theremin and the Buchla, synthesizers and stuff like that. We’d also do things like play my acoustic guitar into a mic and record it, then send that signal through an old, dirty guitar amp and put it through a Marshall cabinet so it would sound really trashy. And we’ll do the same thing with my vocals to distort them. Glenn has a lot of like, rock n’ roll recording tricks [to] use on a bluegrass band. He’s always got good ideas when it comes to that sort of stuff.
RZ: You’re often packaged with the other bluegrass/Americana artists, but that’s a tidy label not entirely consistent with what you’re putting out. How would you classify Billy Strings, genre-wise?
BS: I guess we would fit somewhere in that progressive bluegrass, jamgrass kind of territory. Like a lot of bands out there, we’re playing banjo and mandolin and dobro but we’re just writing songs that aren’t necessarily bluegrass. We’re like a bluegrass band but somewhat more contemporary. I like to think of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys as the trunk of the tree. Then there was Seldom Scene and New Grass Revival and the Osborne Brothers and bands like The Dillards [who] would bring in pop songs from the era. Then came along Leftover Salmon, Greensky Bluegrass, Yonder Mountain String Band, and the Infamous Stringdusters. I think we’re even a little bit farther up the branches than those bands. We’re like the leaves, the new little buds budding this spring. Bluegrass, and all music really, progresses and as time goes on, it’s almost like a little family tree. I look at New Grass Revival and I’m very much inspired by them, Béla Fleck and Sam Bush and Drew Emmitt, everything that those guys have done. It’s just cool as hell. It’s a really amazing community and scene that we’re a part of.
RZ: Citing a more traditional upbringing in the bluegrass world and how your artistry has since evolved, Billy Strings represents how you can effectively pay tribute to roots artists while still helping the broader genre progress. How important is experimentation and genre-bending, what have you, to celebrating the music you and so many others grew up on?
BS: The more I bend and tweak it and mold things into sort of my own category, on one hand, I gain an entire army of fans that love what I’m doing. But on the other hand, there’s a big ole group of traditional purists who just hate it. They can’t stand that I would plug my guitar into an effect pedal. ‘That’s not bluegrass.’ Well no, I guess it’s just a song I wrote. I grew up playing the music of Bill Monroe, and Doc Watson especially. Doc Watson’s my hero and the best guitarist to ever walk the planet, and the best musician and human as far as I’m concerned. But think about what Bill Monroe was doing. He took the country western guitar and romantic mandolin from France and Celtic fiddle tunes from the British Isles and mixed it all with the Texas swing and came up with this big musical goulash that is bluegrass. He was bending and doing stuff that was way ahead of his time and I bet he got guff from some people. I like to think he would appreciate what we’re doing. I know at one point he said the New Grass Revival was ‘no part of nothin’,’ so who knows what the Father of Bluegrass Bill Monroe would think about what we’re doing. But a lot of people just write us off like, ‘Oh they ain’t playing bluegrass, they suck.’ And man, they ought to stop doing that because we’re keeping this shit alive. It sucks to say, but I see a lot more young people in our crowds than at the traditional bluegrass shows. It’s a touchy thing because I love these people, I love the community and everything that has to do with bluegrass music.
RZ: It’s certainly where you’re rooted, regardless of how your music has matured.
BS: I’m very passionate about traditional bluegrass. For as much progressive and crazy jamgrass that we play, you’ll always hear a Doc Watson song or some Stanley Brothers stuff. We don’t do a show without playing a good number of traditional songs. I have a collection of records I inherited from my father and I was spoon-fed this music as a child. It’s in my heart and soul, so it hurts my feelings a little bit when people say I don’t know anything about bluegrass. I do, I just play a little different. I grew up playing traditional bluegrass and then eventually got into Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath, and even that led to me playing in a metal band. For a while, I played electric guitar and sort of strayed away from bluegrass because it was the music that my dad and all his friends played, and I wanted to play music with people my age. But I came back to bluegrass because my heart lead me there. I decided I wanted to take these things I learned in the other music, rock n’ roll and heavy metal, and kind of infuse that into my own. Just like Bill Monroe infused all the things he heard during his travels into his music. In a way, it’s the most respectful thing to do to bluegrass. If anything, we’re just trying to spread the word of bluegrass music to more and more people – and we are doing that.
RZ: You’ve now got festival season to look forward to, and you’re also coming up to Montana early next month. What are you most excited about for the not-so-distant future?
BS: Our schedule’s pretty studded so I’m stoked about that. We’re really happy about all the festivals where we’re booked because all the other bands on the circuit with us are ones we love. It’s just really exciting to be a part of that scene. We’re seeing bigger audiences everywhere, whether that’s a festival or our own show. And we love Montana! We’re good friends with the Kitchen Dwellers and always look forward to coming out to Bozeman, hopefully hooking up with them and just getting some of that Big Sky country. We’re looking forward to ripping it up.
Billy Strings comes to Paradise Valley’s Pine Creek Lodge on Tuesday, June 11th at 7pm. Advance tickets to this all-ages show are $25 at www.pinecreeklodgemontana.com or $28.50 in-store at Cactus Records. Day of show tickets will also be available for $30, depending on availability.
Billy Strings is frontman William Apostol (Billy Strings), Billy Failing (banjo), Royal Masat (bass), and Jarrod Walker (mandolin). Learn more about the band at www.billystrings.com or find them on Facebook and Instagram for updated tour details and other announcements. Their latest album, Turmoil & Tinfoil, is available now. Stream on Spotify and Apple Music. •
