True confession: I am a late adopter of the streaming music scene, reluctant to join the pandemic-necessitated digital surrogate for the live music experience. Billy Strings may have cured me and lured me into the possibilities.
On Thursday, September 24, the 27-year-old Nashville neo-new-bluegrass wizard kicked off UCSB Arts & Lectures’ “House Calls” series, which continuies on Thursday, October 1 with acclaimed Nashville singer-songwriter-picker Jason Isbell). As an epicurean adjunct to this “House Calls” experience, I savored a customized rib dinner from the Lark as companion piece--with gourmet popcorn thrown in. It was a wonderful House Calls version of a night out.
Strings is a triple threat/promise, a strong flat-picker, an engaging songwriter, and an organic stylistic hybridizer—bluegrass roots, psychedelic/jamband asides, touches of metal in the underbrush--without making a pretentious point of it. Check out last year’s vibrantly fine album Home for proof of his cred as a phenom in the making.