North Carolina was very excited to welcome Billy Strings and their tour opening 3-night run in Asheville February 16-18th. The Western North Carolina city along with the help of event organizers and fans who traveled far and wide welcomed the band to town with arms wide open. The city was bustling, hosting multiple pre and post-show events planned around the launching of this 2024 tour.
On Friday there were a couple of opportunities for fans to meet up, including a welcome party at Jack of the Wood plus a second event called Meet Me By The River at Zillicoah Brewery, Friday from 12 to 4pm.
The kind folks at Partly Cloudy Presents based out of Winston Salem - who you might remember because they hosted The Red Daisy Festival surrounding Billy String's celebration of Doc Watson's 100th birthday celebration just about a year ago - were in Asheville for these shows hosting what they called The Ice Bridges Festival. They chose the name from the band's instrumental song "Ice Bridges" from the band's 2021 release Renewal.
This year's event took place Saturday and Sunday and it included some of our region's most popular bands scheduled at both The One Stop and Asheville Music Hall.
Ice Bridges was the perfect opportunity for fans to find high-quality pre-show entertainment in venues within walking distance from the civic center. It was well organized and executed and included a large number of vendors peddling their wares like unique fan art items stickers, jewelry, custom shirts, and more. There was also a raffle to help raise money for BeLoved Asheville a local charity involved with many projects including one trying to aid the homeless population there.
The bands they scheduled included long-time favorites, like Larry Keel's Electric Larryland. In most of his musical projects, Larry Keel plays guitar and his wife, Jenny Keel, plays bass. Some Asheville locals in the lineup include Jon Stickley Trio along with some rising stars like the Tray Wellington Band as well as the Raleigh-based jam-grass band Into The Fog, known for winning the Merlefest band competition in 2021. There were also a couple of Piedmont Triad favorites, The Keith Allen Circus, you might know Keith from his previous work with The Mantras, who for decades their fans have seen as a psychedelic force of almost supernatural power. It's a mystery how they never rose to the fame that they deserve. Keith's band is promoting their newly released EP Rob's House. Another Greensboro act and one of my favorite rising singer-songwriters, Ranford Allmond, performed touring to support his recently release record titled Old Soul.
Not to be forgotten, Wyatt Ellis, that 14-year-old mandolin player whom Billy had sit-in last March in Winston Salem at the Doc Watson 100 show was the artist at large.
I believe Wyatt sat in with every band that I saw during this two-day event. And he also was there signing his first record, released just a few weeks ago for any fans that walked up to purchase it on vinyl or CD.
The event reached a climatic peak when somehow the organizers were able to arrange a live stream of the Jon Stickley Trio, set with special guests that included Billy himself and Travis Book of The Infamous Stringdusters sitting in together which led to Stickley inviting Wyatt to join them up on stage for their last song. Also worth mentioning here is that Jon Stickley was a part of Billy's last Halloween shows in Asheville, as he played the part of Bilbo Baggins in that production which is still recognized as one of many of his fan's favorite events
Thankfully there is video of the entire set here:
There were even more bands playing around town over the weekend including a Friday late-night set by Kyle Tuttle, and a couple of after-party sets Saturday night that offered either East Nash Grass at the Asheville Music Hall or Town Mountain at The Salvage Station. Sunday late night gave fans a chance to see Shadowgrass at Asheville Music Hall or another after show set with Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country at The Salvage Station which also had a live stream.
Downtown Asheville was busy all weekend with street performers busking, sidewalk vendors set up around the venue and of course, people hoping to find last-minute tickets for each night and friends meeting up for meals and ticket transfers.
The shows themselves at the Explore Asheville Arena, or the Asheville Civic Center as it's known to most locals were the first nights of the Winter tour and the fans also got to see the debut of a completely new stage and lighting design that proved to be very popular.
Each night of the 3-day run, the production crew demonstrated different ways they could use the new rig. The giant video wall was a good example of this. On Friday night they used the images from the band's first recording Turmoil and Tinfoil cover art. I loved how the eye on the top of the cabin was constantly looking around the arena.
Photo by Jesse Faatz
The Friday night show was a fine example of how the band can seamlessly move from a very traditional Bluegrass sound in and out of effects-glazed sounds that add grungy rock and psychedelic elements that fuel their jams and then back into the more traditional framework of their songs. The new stage and lighting elements serve to elevate the fan experience with that sense of psychedelia and the eye candy that they delivered.
On Saturday night the imagery and lighting of the new rig were some of my personal favorites as they seemed to step up the effects to make the background images look a lot more three-dimensional.
Photo by Jesse Faatz
Sunday's show it seemed like the big screen was mostly used for live video of the band members during their breakout jams which also allowed people in seats further away from the stage to enjoy those close-up shots.
All of this helped push the weekend to epic levels of fun and earned Asheville and these event promoters a few special shout-outs from Billy during his shows at the Civic Center. By Sunday night Billy told the audience how Asheville had earned a place in his heart for everything that they had done to create such an incredible scene for the band and its fans that surrounded this weekend.
As with many Bluegrass artists, this music has a long history of being passed down through family bands to newer generations and this holds true for at least several of the members of this band. Billy credits playing with his stepfather, Terry Barber, growing up as laying the foundation for his music. I have also heard both Royal Masat and Jarrod Walker speak about playing in bands with their own musical families. At one point during the Friday night show, Apostol told the crowd how much he loved Bluegrass, then he mentioned Doc Watson and Bill Monroe. Typically, at any North Carolina show it's a safe bet that the band will cover multiple songs that were written or often played by Doc, but on this tour's opening night, it was Bill Monroe's turn to be highlighted with a few well-placed songs in this night's setlist. Of course, the band also played Black Mountian Rag, a tune that Doc Watson often played. Billy also told the Asheville crowd that another North Carolina musician, Bryan Sutton, was his favorite guitar player. Sutton's grandfather and father were both known for playing fiddle, and he got his start in their family band, The Pisgah Pickers.
North Carolina has long been a fortunate state, having landed so many shows on this band's tour. I first saw Billy in 2016 at one of the International Bluegrass Music Association's weeknight showcase events just after they moved the IBMA conference to Raleigh from Nashville, where it was just seen as another event and they felt like it was no longer attracting all the attention that it deserved because there was just too much going on in The Music City.
It was at the storied local venue, The Lincoln Theater before the current band had been formed and he was playing with Don Julin. I knew right away that he was someone to keep an eye on.
Later in August of 2017, the band played the Back Porch Music on the Lawn Summer Music Series in Durham at The American Tobacco Campus just before they released their first record Turmoil and Tinfoil and I photographed that show and then hung around to meet Billy and he graciously autographed a CD of that for me as he hung around to chat with fans while selling this just before it was publicly released.
Later I was lucky to catch him at a couple of festival performances at the Rooster Walk Festival two years in a row, where his band played and then he sat in with Marcus King for a King and Strings set that was so popular the festival producers brought both artists back again the next year to play. The folks up in Martinsville VA were also lucky to have the first version of his band play at the Rives Theater twice before that beloved venue was lost to a fire.
North Carolina has been a frequent stop for the band since they solidified the current lineup of musicians in 2017. Apostol has often declared his love for Bluegrass and especially the music of North Carolina's own Doc Watson and Tony Rice too, as one of the reasons he worked hard as a young musician trying to learn his instrument and the music that inspired him to play.
In the recent past since the band became popular nationwide, North Carolina has enjoyed shows, in Greensboro, Cary, several years of Halloween runs with elevated production elaborate themes, including, A Clockwork Orange, The Wizard of Oz, and my favorite Away from the Shire encouraging fans to attend in costumes to take part in the fun.
Of course, we also were lucky to have Billy come to Winston Salem for the Doc Watson 100th birthday performance and celebration and for him to introduce many of us to the young up-and-coming artists like Wyatt Ellis, and also allow those who were lucky to be there to watch him play Tony Rice's guitar.
One of the things that I have always loved about this band's live performances is how they always try to find some local/regional songs to add to their sets, that pay respect to either a local artist or sometimes a nod towards the local history in the places that they bring their tours through and on this night during the first set, they played Swannanoa Tunnel. The website Billy Base, a great resource for fans to dig into set lists, song histories, and other useful data had this to say about this song:
The work song "Swannanoa Tunnel" is well known in the Appalachian mountains and was collected by folklorist Cecil Sharp in 1916. Western North Carolina Railroad's Swannanoa Tunnel was the longest (1800 feet) of seven hand-dug tunnels through the Blue Ridge mountains to Asheville. The project, completed in 1879, took twenty years and cost at least 300 lives. The first recording was made on December 9, 1939 by Will "Shorty" Love under the title "Asheville Junction." Bascom Lamar Lunsford's 1949 recording is the most well known and the song is most associated with him.
Here is a video of this song's debut:
One of the highlights of the weekend was when the band brought out Chris Henry, a bluegrass mandolin player who Wyatt Ellis told me was one of his mentors when I told him about this sit-in the following day at Ice Bridges. The band plays of cover of one of Henry's songs "West Dakota Rose". You can learn more about him here
You can watch the band cover his song from Friday night in Asheville at the link below:
Instead of going through three nights of set lists for this run, I am just going to recommend that if you're lucky enough to be a subscriber to Nugs.net you might still be able to view these shows as well as the most recent Nashville run and upcoming shows through your account. If you don't have a Nugs account there is often a lot of fan-shot footage you can find on YouTube.
I've already mentioned a few of my highlights from the weekend, so here are some of my thoughts about this band and the fan community. First, Billy is the first to tell us that he loves and appreciates his fans, and thanks them often at shows reminding everyone that he wouldn't be up there doing what he loves without the fans supporting it. The fans themselves come from very diverse sets of demographics, some serious Bluegrass fans, and many who wouldn't consider themselves as Bluegrass fans at all. There are very young fans, children often attend shows with their families, and you also have touring fans who have seen likely over 50+ shows in just a few years, and I am often meeting people seeing their first show. Some are rail riders, others prefer the dancing space of the back of the room, some prefer to sit in seats, and there are those who want the excitement of the GA floor and pit. Several groups dedicated to safety and sobriety exist like The H33ling the Herd crowd, trying to keep people safe and alive, The Dusty Baggy Clean and Sober fans, who are those like Billy and Willie who embrace that "California Sober" lifestyle, all there to share in celebrating what they love.
Speaking of love, a few more highlights from my weekend run. I loved when Billy recognized a couple of his fans who got engaged right in front of the stage one night and Billy shouted to the crowd about it, he said "They're in love!", and announced the engagement while the crowd cheered. He often says love wins, and I agree every time. Another thing about this fan base is how they will help each other out, with all kinds of things, supporting the creators in the fan art community, sticker and pin meet ups, helping fellow Billy Goats, get tickets to sold-out shows. For example, many local Asheville and surrounding community fans didn't have the local box office ticket sale for this run, a mistake that I hope the band will find a way to prevent from happening in the future as tickets get harder and harder to acquire when they are selling out so quickly and the fan base growing so rapidly. So many fans who did manage to get tickets made sure to help those people with their extra tickets. I managed to get three different pairs of people in each night of the run. Friday, a couple I have known and loved for decades that live in Waynesville, got in for their very first show. Saturday I got a couple in from West Virginia and Sunday another pair of local Asheville friends who love the band but also had never seen them live.
I had friends that came to town hoping that they might find tickets against what seemed like impossible odds, yet somehow they got in. I witnessed a least two people getting miracled free tickets on Saturday night alone. In fact I think all my friends that came to town somehow managed to get into the shows just by sheer determination not to abandon hope. Also, fans help other fans, when vehicles break down they post in the fan groups and other fans come to their rescue picking them up on the side of the road, just to get them to the show and deal with their problem afterward.
On Saturday morning I was up early uploading images I had shot from the night before to my PC in my hotel room in East Asheville when I read a post by a person asking for help in a Facebook group for fans, who traveled from South Carolina for the shows. He was staying in a tiny house cabin at the Swannanoa KOA, which happened to be about two miles from my hotel. His truck had broken down and he had managed to get a ride to the show Friday night and back, but still needed to try to fix his truck to get to the other two shows and to get back home. He needed to try to arrange a ride again for Saturday night's show and to get to the auto parts store to see if he could get the parts he needed to attempt the repair himself. I messaged him to either offer him a ride into town and back or to see if I could help him get to the store. He responded and we ended up meeting after I drove to offer help. He turned out to be a really great young man, a guitar player, and also told me about one of his relatives, also a fan, who worked hard for a long time to help get the Dust in a Baggy sober fans group in touch with someone connected to Billy's management so that they could move their information and meetup table from having to be outside with the show's permission to be allowed to set up a table and meeting spot inside the shows.
All of these things are just a reflection of how people in the fan base choose kindness and how we all end up in the same space for different reasons. Even just getting to know your show neighbors, especially if you all have three-day passes and sit together in the same section on a three-night run gives you the chance to meet new people and get to know them, creating friendships. The sharing of space and our stories is part of the reason that makes these tickets so attractive and valuable. People feel the excitement and passion that fans have and want to share in the experience. It's just not the same on your couch watching a livestream as it is to be a part of the magic. Now, I have new friends from the weekend, my new friend from South Carolina, as well as my show neighbors some from Florida, some restaurant owners in Asheville, and a young woman named Dominique, there celebrating the music thinking about her mother who she had recently lost, wearing a hair barret that obviously had a lot of sentimental value as her mother had made it for her as a gift one of a kind, with her name on it. At one point on one of the nights, she told me that she thought that it had fallen off and we each took a moment to search for it on the floor under the seats where she had been dancing all night, and just when we both thought it was lost, we discovered that it was just on the other side of her head and not lost and the sadness just evaporated when that moment quickly turned to joy and more dancing.
The sense that each of us all is caught up in our own world, with all of our differences, spinning in our own universes find ourselves one night in the same venue, listening to the same songs, in the same moments, celebrating together, creating these one-time experiences of fleeting joy, working together was for me fully realized during the Sunday night show when the band played that amazing second set that included Wargasm>Spinning>Planet Caravan>Wargasm that was a reflection of this community that exists surrounded by the outside world and its problems, lessons that we all should have learned in Kindergarten about how to live with each other but somehow we find ourselves repeating the mistakes failing to overcome the flaws of human nature, yet knowing that we can if we let love win.
Thanks to live music we can find a few hours to let go of our troubles to sing and dance with our neighbors. Just a decade ago Billy was working a full-time job, and he was encouraged to quit his hourly wage gig and pursue music. We all know the wisdom found in his songwriting, how burning the minutes of our lives every day by the hour is enough to make anyone turn sour. How some people choose to escape from the mire, and won't let the world's troubles stop them from dancing or feeling free. This is why this band speaks to so many of us, and the fan base just keeps growing. It's what has led them to have to play larger and larger venues, now we find ourselves in the world of arena grass with a growing fan base. This is why we share the discovery of the joy that Billy and his band bring to us with anyone who will listen. I just want to say to the band and the fan base; y'all are beautiful, keep it up and I hope I get to celebrate again with you soon.
Also, I really can't recommend enough, checking out all the news, setlists, and other data available. Thanks to all the people who helped launch, organize, and maintain Billy Base. As fan bases grow larger it's nice to see this kind of resource available to aid fans in tracking set lists, the number of times a song has been played, the number of days since a song was last played, etc... It's a great resource.
Words and Photos by Jerry Friend
