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Sam and I went to see Billy Strings Sunday night at WAMU Theater. Billy and his band play bluegrass.
If I’m honest, for me, bluegrass is usually best served in small doses. I can admire the technical proficiency it takes to play bluegrass but having four or five players all playing notes as fast as they can starts to overload my ears after a while. In the case of Billy Strings you have five world class musicians, a mandolin, standup bass, Billy on guitar, five string banjo and fiddle, and these guys are all amazing players.
By definition bluegrass promotes an improvisational jam feel because on most songs players take a basic song structure and each takes turns playing lead. So the mandolin player will take lead on a verse, then the guitar player, and then the banjo, and so on. When Sam and I went to the bluegrass festival last winter in Bellevue there were groups of people all over the place just hanging out and playing together and it didn’t appear to me that they knew each other for the most part. They would just see a couple of guys getting ready to play and join in.
Billy is who everyone is coming to see though. He’s in his early 30’s but looks like he’s 18 and sounds like he’s 60. A hard life will do that to you. Billy grew up in poverty, with his birth father dying of a heroin overdose and his mom and her second husband becoming addicted to meth later on. Billy moved out when he was 13 but unfortunately his disgust with their lifestyle didn’t keep him from experimenting with hard drugs as well. Somehow he (and his parents) got clean and sober but that upbringing made Billy swear that he wouldn’t continue to perpetuate the cycle that his family had found themselves in. I read an article where he stated he isn’t running towards fame and wealth, he’s running away from poverty.
All that said, determination and hard work can change your lifestyle and get you out of poverty but to be a musician playing at the level Billy plays takes some innate talent and he has that in spades. If you want to see two of the most talented acoustic guitar players in the world jamming together, check out this video.
Anyway, back to my original statement about bluegrass being somewhat overwhelming, the thing with Billy and the band is that they don’t just play three hours (yes, they played almost three hours) straight playing only traditional bluegrass. They play plenty of that for sure, and almost half the set list was covers of traditional bluegrass songs, but they aren’t afraid to branch out from that as well. Billy plays acoustic guitar but he has pedals and effects that would make you swear at times that he’s playing an electric guitar. Some of the music doesn’t feel like bluegrass even though the underlying bluegrass structure is still there. I think it makes the music much more accessible to the casual fan like myself who appreciates the musicianship while still keeping the bluegrass faithful happy.
We were in line before the show with some people who had traveled from North Carolina to see the show and this was close to their 50th time seeing Billy. There was a lady they know who has seen him closer to 200 times. That’s insane to me but when he comes back to Seattle we’ll definitely go see him again.
