A few day ago, Kindra called to ask what I thought was an odd question: “When you go to a concert, how close do you like to sit to the front?”
As it turns out, she was buying tickets for the two of us to go see Billy Strings at the BOK Center in Tulsa next summer.
I was hugely excited by this news. Unless you are a fan of acoustic music in general or bluegrass music in particular, you may not know about Billy Strings.
He’s an under-30 guitar player and singer with a ripped-out ear where a gauge used to live. And he has stirred up the dust that has settled in Bluegrass music in the quarter century since Bill Monroe died.
He channels the heart and soul of traditional Appalachian music while looking like, as the New York Times described him, “the thoroughly tattooed brother of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.”
Cool description, but how does a gray-haired old guy like me from the heart of redneck Oklahoma get excited about going to see an ex-tweaker like Billy Strings in concert?
Pretty simple. The things that create Bluegrass music are the recurring themes of loss and restoration, separation and reunion and accepting the wages of one’s lifestyle. More than banjos and acoustic instruments or the high lonesome singing, that’s what makes a Bluegrass song a Bluegrass song.
That’s why the music was so popular with the hillbillies who left Appalachia to work on Detroit and Chicago assembly lines. And with the Okies, including all four of my Dad’s brothers, who went to the West Coast in search of better times.
Songs about the old home, about sweethearts left behind, about missing Mother and Dad. Regret over bad decisions. The music rang true to them.
I started listening to Bluegrass music as a 12-year-old when I heard Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs on the Grand Ol’ Opry.
Their music made sense to me. It was about things I understood, played with virtuosity and honesty and presented without pretense.
But, sadly, in the last 25 years, Bluegrass has stagnated, with bands and musicians pursuing a style more than the content and honesty that created the style. They have the appearance of tradition, but not its power.
I was the outlier as a kid, a high-schooler in the ‘60s who listened to Bluegrass instead of rock. But I haven’t been to a Bluegrass festival in years and don’t have anything on my playlist from the last two decades And suddenly, here comes Billy Strings, a kid whose dad died from an overdose, who has been strung out on meth, a kid who used to drink too much. And who plays the guitar and sings with the honesty that pulled me into Bluegrass music all those Saturday nights ago.
I don’t much care what he looks like. He’s the real deal, cut from the same cloth as the oldtimers who created Bluegrass music, channeling their values and tradition.
I can’t wait to him see in person.