Billy Strings Escaped the Darkness. He’s Playing to Not Go Back.

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0:32I'm David Marchese, and today I'm talking to musical sensation Billy Strings. At 33 years old, Strings is bringing his blend of music influenced by bluegrass artists like Doc Watson and Bill Monroe and jam bands like the Grateful Dead to sold-out arenas across the country. He grew up in Michigan, surrounded by poverty and heavy drug use. His new album, So Much for Goodbyes, is inspired by his mother, who died about a year ago of an overdose. One of my favorite tracks, Milltown Flood, is a melancholy story song which is built on Strings' beautiful guitar playing. And it looks like it's raining That guitar playing I got to witness firsthand in our second interview, which you'll want to stick around for.

1:21Hey, hey, hey, hey

1:27Here's my conversation with Billy Strings. But first, a quick message. If you're not a subscriber, we have some news for you. You can now explore The Times for free without paywalls during your first month in The New York Times app. Just download the app, and we hope you enjoy it. Okay, on to the interview.

1:48Thank you for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. Yeah, of course. You know, I wanted to ask, you're playing all these sold-out shows across the country this summer, and later in the summer, you're even doing your own festival. It's pretty wild for someone who got their start playing bluegrass music and still plays music that's so informed by traditional bluegrass music to just have achieved what you've achieved. Was there a moment for you that stands out as sort of representing when you realize, like, oh, this has actually gotten really big? Yeah. I went from playing in my bedroom to playing in coffee houses and pubs and restaurants and stuff like that.

2:29And eventually I was able to put in my two weeks at my day job, which was working at a hotel up in Traverse City. and at that point I thought man if I never get any bigger than this I'd be happy I'm making a living playing music I remember when I put out my first record Turmoil and Tinfoil I never thought about how the record would be like good for my career I was just trying to record these songs I wrote down a bunch of stuff that was personal to me and it was kind of like writing in my diary or something. And I just wanted to make this art. And I was really focused on that. And then I remember when we actually sold some records and I was like, whoa.

3:14It was just kind of a big eye opener to me. I never thought about the record helping to further my career. Can you tell me about the title of the new album, So Much for Goodbyes? What does that mean? Where does it come from? Yeah. My mom passed away last June, just over a year ago. I was actually on my way to a show in Kentucky,

3:41and I just woke up the next morning on the bus, and my wife came back, and she told me the news. And to me, it was this kind of sad thing, you know, this idea that I didn't get to say goodbye. But when I told my manager about the title, He's kind of like, man, I like that, you know, because it's not really goodbye. She's in everything and she's everywhere. And I'm her, one of her greatest creations, you know, she was so artistic and so creative that she made me and my brother and sister. And so I like the idea that it can kind of be taken both ways, you know, so much for goodbyes, like I didn't get to say goodbye, but also so much for goodbyes because it's not really goodbye.

4:29I'm sorry for your loss. If you don't mind me asking, how did your mom pass away? She struggled her whole life with different kinds of substance abuses. And I think she had a lot of unresolved trauma that she never really had proper therapy for. And I think that was her way of kind of getting through some of that, was medicating herself. And so she had an illness that eventually she succumbed to. So she died of an overdose. And it was a shock to me because I had no idea that she was using again. And she seemed to be doing really well. And her addiction has caused a lot of trauma and stuff in my own life.

5:27and she's kind of like a conundrum because she's such a beautiful, amazing, artistic and just an amazing person. I've never met anybody like her. We always talked about having her make the art for the next record cover. She was an artist. She always was making art, these little shadow boxes and mixed media art and she would always be collecting kind of these little trinkets and pieces of junk and stuff, and she would take all this forgotten, rusty old crap and glue it together to make something beautiful. So even before this record was, before I had any of the songs for it, she was going to make the next record cover.

6:09That was our goal and our dream. And I told her, you know, you can make the next record cover, you know, with your art. And we did, we got to make her piece of art the record cover, which I was really, really stoked on. It was actually the piece that she was working on the night she died. It was the last thing she touched. Are there songs on the album that allow you to feel like you're saying things to her that you would have said that you didn't get a chance to say? Yeah, I think the big one on this record when it comes to that sort of thing is it's called Still I Crash. and I wrote that song not too long after she died and that's the one that's pretty blatantly kind of me talking to her, you know.

7:04Just wondering where she went, asking her where did she go and why and explaining the fact that I feel like I have to learn how to walk again like a child.

7:22and yeah, just how difficult it is to be here without her. Yeah, it's hard. My mom died two years ago. She had had ALS, and then she did, they call it medical aid in dying. She decided she didn't want to be around anymore and suffer, so she had someone come and help her. But I was able to say what I wanted to say to her because we knew when it was going to happen. But then my dad died at the end of April. It was sort of like your mom, completely unexpected. I had a hard relationship with him. But just when you don't have the chance to say things that you feel like you wanted to say, it's like an open wound that you're not sure when it's going to close.

8:06Whereas with my mom, I feel like there aren't unanswered questions or there wasn't anything left unsaid. So the grief feels very, very different. it. Yeah, absolutely. It's not better or worse either way, I don't think. And it's just one of those things we have to learn to live with, you know, and try to just remember who she was and love and cherish her memory and live up to her wildness. You know, she's inspired me to really let loose and let my freak flag fly a little bit more, you know, live more the way she lived and trying to be so cautious all the time. And I feel like I've always tried to stay out of trouble and do the best I can to just not get myself hung up.

9:01But my mom would just live life to the fullest constantly. And so she, you know, she inspires me to kind of live a little bit more on the wild side, you know. And how does playing music help process the feelings that you have, whether it's about your mom or anything else? Well, it's always been my coping mechanism and survival strategy and my medicine, you know, and playing bluegrass music is, it's like a portal back to my childhood, back before I knew anything dirty about the earth. I think it's, it's a way for me to go back to a time that was just beautiful and full of light. And, you know, it can give me deja vu, stuff like that, you know, growing up playing music with my dad and then songwriting and stuff like that.

10:01It's kind of my cathartic and therapeutic way of dealing with things. I think sublimation is one of my main characteristics that I do in life. I just try to, instead of letting this hard stuff drag me down, I try to just make art from it, you know, make lemonade, if you will. You know, when you were a kid, I know, you know, sort of maybe a chaotic way that you grew up in Michigan. You mentioned your mom's substance abuse problems, and you referred to your dad, and he is your dad, but technically speaking, it's your stepfather, right? Because your biological father died when you were really young from an overdose.

10:45It just sounds hard, but how did music fit into your family life? Like what role did it play for you growing up in the family? You know, my biological father died before I ever knew him. I was two years old. And so when I say my dad, I'm speaking of Terry Barber, and he taught me how to tie my shoes and wipe my ass and how to play guitar and all that. And I think early on, it was a way for me to bond with him. And the better I got, I kind of would get attention from that. And I think I liked that. So I just kept trying to get better and better and make him proud. And I still do that to this day.

11:33I mean, even back when my mom was still alive, any time I would reach some sort of milestone, you know, I remember one of the last ones was when I played with Bob Dylan. You know, I'm calling my mom right before walking on stage, and I'm like, you're never going to believe this. I'm getting ready to go play with Bob Dylan. But back when I was a kid, before any of the fame and all this stuff, it was just kind of our way of life, you know? I mean, it was like, it's just what we did. We just played music around my house. It was, if I wasn't playing old bluegrass tunes with my dad, I was listening to my mom playing Beatles records and stuff like that.

12:15And I remember being a little kid. You know, this is kind of a good portrait of how my mother was. I was probably maybe seven years old, and she was playing the Beatles, the White Album, Backwards for me, listening to Revolution No. 9. Right, for secret messages or something? Yeah, she was backwards masking, kind of showing me how this stuff works, and I was just a little kid. I was like, what the heck? But music was always, yeah, it was always a big deal. You know, what you just described sounds very buoyant and positive, and that was a natural part of how you were growing up. But then there was this sort of other darker side.

13:02Was it hard for you to make sense of the light and the dark in your family at the same time? Or was it just that's just what you knew and so you didn't really think about it? Well, I mean, early on it wasn't so bad, you know. I think by the time I was old enough to kind of remember stuff, like four years old or so, my parents were doing pretty good. But there was just some bush lights and, you know, a few joints here and there. It wasn't anything hard or crazy. So my early childhood was really beautiful and surrounded by music and friends. And we had food in the cupboards, you know. We lived in a trailer, but it was a nice trailer.

13:45And we got out of the trailer park and we got this place over in Muir. and we had a swimming pool and my mom was digging in her garden and things were good. And then it just started to go downhill. By the time I was 10, 11, 12, we moved into this other house that was a lot more kind of run down. And I think my dad lost his job and we just started struggling a lot more financially. That was at the same time that my parents were kind of falling into this addiction. And then after quite a few years of that, you know, I just moved out. I moved out of my mom's house when I was 13. And I was trying to like guilt trip them into seeing what they were doing, you know.

14:36I mean, there wasn't any food. There was, my house was no longer a home. So I took off. My friend Brad came and picked me up in his truck, and I went and stayed in his basement for a while. And I was playing in a heavy metal band at that time, and I kind of was just couch surfing. And when I realized that me moving out wasn't going to change anything, that's when I was like, oh no, I actually, now I'm actually kind of homeless. You know, when I moved out, I was trying to cause a big scene to try to guilt trip people into realizing what was going on, but it didn't work. So then I had to just figure it out.

15:19But eventually, you know, I never disowned my parents or I never like cut ties with them. And it actually became this kind of era of I was a young teenager and I was starting into trying things myself. and eventually it became a really cool party house because I could show up there with several carloads full of miners and a bunch of half gallons of whiskey and stuff and we can party at my house, my mom's, you know, and they couldn't tell me no. My dad would always be like, you're not having all these miners drinking here. I'm like, okay, well, what are you going to do, call the cops? You know?

16:07So I eventually just started partying with them. And, you know, when you lose people to addiction like that, especially as a young kid, you almost wonder why or what it is that's so powerful that basically took them from me. I mean, I remember a time, that's actually what the song Turmoil and Tinfoil is about. I was staring right at my mother. She's sitting right there, but I missed her. She's not herself anymore. Her soul and her beautiful vibrancy is gone. It's just this kind of gray shell of a person that is really sick. So, you know, you wonder yourself, what is this stuff all about? So, you know, I was 16 the first time I smoked meth with my mom.

17:00and around that time is when I, you know, I was probably 15 when I started doing coke and by the time I was 16 I was doing speed and trying crack and stuff and then a couple years later after that I kind of got wondering about my father, my biological father. I never knew him and I always kind of thought, man, he must have loved heroin more than me. So I always wondered what was so good that it was better than me. So that's when I would try heroin and stuff like that because I just had to see what it was all about. So I don't know. I got a lot of that stuff out of my system early on, and I think it was a good thing.

17:45I never really got hooked on anything because I was always surrounded by tweakers and junkies and stuff. So I saw how bad these people's lives were, and I never wanted to let myself get that far. So if I tried anything out of curiosity, I would try it once and I would leave it alone for a while, you know. But when you were younger and partying with your parents, I would bet that there was some part of you inside that felt conflicted about it or felt uncomfortable with it. Did you and your mom and your dad ever talk about that period in your life when you were sharing that kind of stuff? no it was just what it was i mean sometimes you know we'd get high and i would play guitar with my dad until the sun came up i mean hours and again now we're bonding again yeah and that felt good you know you had this odd situation where you're playing guitar with your dad and you were getting praised for it and you're getting attention for it even if sort of like the circumstances in which it was occurring were kind of rough circumstances.

18:54But when did you realize that you were actually good at guitar? Not just that you could pick a tune, but that you had a real gift for it. I mean, that was early on. I started playing when I was about four years old. By the time I was six or seven, I could carry a tune. And I was my dad's rhythm player. He would play all the lead and do all the fancy picking and singing, and I would hold down the rhythm for him. So by the time I was six or seven, I knew a lot of bluegrass songs. And one of the biggest moments for me was I was sitting in my dad's bedroom with him, as I would basically every night, sitting there playing two guitars.

19:36And he was teaching me the song Beaumont Rag. and we would play the tune and I would mess up the second part every time. And, you know, I stopped us right in the middle of the song. I said, stop. Why don't you just play it and let me listen? And so that's what we did. I just listened to him playing it. And instead of trying to count, you know, one, two, three, four on the D chord and one, two, three, four on the A chord. I listened to what he was playing. I listened to the melody. And so then I was like, all right, let me try it again. And instead of counting, I was just, I heard the melody. I heard what he was doing.

20:21Yeah. He was cueing you, right? Exactly. Yeah. And so that, and then I nailed it. And he was, he was awful proud. He called my grandma, made her listen on the phone. And that was a big moment for me because he was, he was awful proud and I was proud. And that's when this sort of, this listening thing started. When I was able to listen to the music more intently and I could tell what chord was coming next. I used to think I was magic or something. I mean, I had no concept of music theory or anything, but my dad would play, you know, maybe a G chord. And then he would play a G seventh. And my ear would just lead me to the, I'd be like, well, the next chord's probably going to be a C.

21:08and then it would be. I think bluegrass and folk music and hillbilly music like that, it's kind of better to learn it that way than to try to learn it from some academic point of view. It's better to learn it on the back porch and to let it just get under your skin because then it's not some equation. It's a feeling. It comes from your soul. Was there a time when you started to really think that music and pursuing music could be a way into a different kind of life than the one you were living? Did you think of it as a way out? I never considered that. Growing up in the area that I did and just growing up the way that I did, seeing music as a career, it just kind of seemed like a really far-fetched idea.

22:05Although when I was younger, like middle school and stuff, I mean, I used to think I was going to be, you know, the next Jimi Hendrix or something. I used to dream about being a big rock star. But as I got a little older, I sort of realized that, like I said, it's far-fetched, you know. But I never thought of it as a career until I started kind of—I went out and did some open mic nights out there in Traverse City just for fun. just because my friends and I would be at home and let's go to the bar and, you know, I could sign up and play a few tunes. And this was before I was even old enough to be in the bar.

22:43And I'd go up there and play a few tunes, flat pick a little number and people would, I'd get a standing ovation. And I started to realize, wow, this flat picking stuff, this bluegrass stuff really gets people out of their seats. I mean, it's always been to me just something that I did around the house with my dad or whatever, something that I like because it brings me back to my childhood, but people really react to it. And, uh, it's when I started to kind of realize, man, maybe I do have something here. And, uh, it's kind of like, wow, these never, these people never heard of Doc Watson before or what, you know?

23:23Well, but as, you know, someone who knows about the predecessors, who knows Doc Watson, who knows Tony Rice. Or one of my favorite players is Clarence White. You ever listen to him? Of course. Yeah, beautiful player. Those are some of the greatest musicians who have ever lived, who played this incredibly beautiful music with such skill and heart. And they never attracted tens of thousands of people to arenas or had sort of the mass success that you've been able to have. Do you ever wonder, like, why you and not them? You must wonder about that, right? Um, yeah. I mean, on one hand, I don't know.

24:10Right. At a certain point, I stopped, you know, like, wearing a suit and combing my hair back with pomade and trying to pretend like I was born in the Appalachian Mountains and my daddy was a coal miner and kind of doing this whole Civil War reenactment. And I started just being myself. And I also allowed the other influences from other kinds of music that I enjoyed. I enjoy everything from hip hop to jazz and classic rock. heavy metal and death metal and hardcore. I played in heavy metal bands and stuff. So I feel like my whole brain is just this kind of musical goulash that's just all mixed together.

25:01And when I stopped trying to just be one thing and I just allowed myself to enjoy and basically accept all of those influences in my own music, I feel like there's a very broad spectrum of people that what I do can attract. Everyone from metalheads to old bluegrassers to people that are into more improvisational music like the Grateful Dead. I mean, I got people from young teenagers to 70, 80-year-old people in my crowd. And I play a little bit for all of them. I also, I've just always paid attention to, at least when I started to have a career in music, I paid attention to the marketing side of it too, the way that different bands from different genres would promote themselves.

25:56You know, bluegrass is an old tradition, and it's stayed kind of in the past in a lot of ways. I remember when I was coming up, a lot of the flyers for a concert or something, it would look like an elementary school newsletter. Meanwhile, I see these rappers and stuff. When they promote a concert, they have a video and everything. It looks like a movie. And so I thought, man, we should do that or we should kind of mix these different ideas from different genres and stuff and just mix the way that different artists promote themselves and try to bring that over to the bluegrass scene. There is like a community of people who are Billy Strings fans.

26:44I know that outside some of the shows, there's like a, what do they call it? Like a shakedown street kind of situation where people are selling, I don't know what they sell, grilled cheese sandwiches or whatever, selling weed and stuff like that. What do you think that community is looking for when they come to a Billy Strings show? I think that's a big part of the experience. It's not just the music. It's the camaraderie between all the friends that show up. And, you know, we never play the same song, you know, the same way once. All these parts are not worked out exactly. A lot of it is very improvisational.

27:25So we have the way the song goes, and we get that. But in the middle, every solo is different every time. And sometimes we get into parts of the show where it's a very long improvised piece, and that's where the audience and the band kind of come together to make this one big reciprocal thing. I've always kind of felt like the audience is in charge of the show. The more energy they give us, the more we can give back, and they start kind of being able to press on the gas or the brakes or steer us in different directions because we're just kind of vibing off what they give us. I was reading an article about you, and I think it talked about how before shows, you used to get real anxious and have real stomach pain.

28:10Is that still an issue for you? I definitely get nervous before a show. Sometimes moments before I'm walking on stage, I feel like I might pass out or I feel really lightheaded and weak. And I just got to kind of stumble up on stage and get into the first song or two. And halfway through the show, I'm like, I'm the complete opposite. I have all this energy. I feel great. I feel super confident, almost cocky even, you know, to the point where I just, I start having a lot of fun. And it's just the people's smiles that I think bring it out of me. And there is that sort of expectation from the crowd to do something amazing.

28:56And also that expectation from myself to always do better than I did the night before. Because this is my livelihood and this is my life. and at a certain point, deep in the back of my mind, I'm scared that this is all going to go away at some point and maybe I'll have to go back to the way life was when it was really hard and surrounded by, you know. There's this little devil on my shoulder that tells me I don't deserve any of this and thinks that I should be in some little trailer somewhere addicted to drugs or something and not a penny to my name. So it does feel like I'm kind of playing for my survival a lot.