It’s easy to see why Strings’s music sparks exuberance: His ferocious flat-picking guitar wizardry melds traditional sounds with the rhythmic crunch of punk and heavy metal, along with exploratory jams that have already become the stuff of legend. “The last dude was really spun out,” Strings says, smiling. The delirium has reached a crescendo in such a way that Dale has started to have preshow meetings with security staff at each venue to warn them of potential stage crashers. He estimates he’s played around two hundred shows each of the last seven years, including a sold-out night at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium this summer that left the audience gobsmacked and howling for more. The twenty-six-year-old Strings might be a bit of a stoner, but he’s no slacker. “Wait, are you high enough to do the interview?” asks Ally Dale, his tour manager and girlfriend. Wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of bluegrass legends Hot Rize, he squints out the window. ![]() It’s a little past 2:00 p.m., and Billy Strings has just woken up, with a shaggy bed head. A black and silver tour bus idles behind the stage, the inside cool, hushed, and dark. I t’s a sweltering afternoon in New Martinsville, West Virginia, the sun and humidity punishing workers who are readying the stage for the opening night of the Back Home Festival, a celebration of Appalachian sounds and community set in a grassy field just off Main Street.
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