“Will Trade Weed for Ticket!”
How Billy Strings Rose from Campfires to Amplifiers
By: Audrey Ryland
I have the smell of a $2 PBR on my breath and a stranger’s stale cigarette between my lips. My cowgirl boots are getting a workout, dodging empty nitrous balloons and beer cans that lie scattered on the hot ground of the venue parking lot. Cars from the likes of Arizona, New York, Texas, Virginia, and beyond crowd the asphalt. Each one appears to be road-worn and well-traveled; stickers from national parks and concerts, dents and large scratches, and a light film of desert-like dirt coats each windshield and bumper. This is a day I have long been looking forward to, and one I know will evoke this burning and boiling sense of inspiration, a tad bit of jealousy from one musician to another, and absolute bluegrass bliss; I am about to lose my Billy Strings concert virginity.
It’s April 12th, 2025, and Billy Strings and his band are playing two nights back-to-back at the Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia. Despite having more work than I know what to do with plus an old friend visiting me, going to the show is non-negotiable. Tie-dye shirts, magic mushrooms, camper vans, and a 2 for $5 deal on cheap beer from a cracked Igloo cooler is beckoning me. I arrive to the show feeling confident in my status as a fan, only to find out I’ve been missing out on a whole different world. I learn that I actually know very little about the culture Billy and his traveling fans have been cultivating.
Billy’s song “Dust in a Baggie” is how many, including myself, were introduced to the artist. Along with Billy’s frequent performances at local open mic nights in his hometown of Lansing, Michigan, a video filmed in 2012 and uploaded to YouTube of Strings performing the now famous song quickly gained him popularity. At only 19 years old with the sound, skills, and songwriting ability of a bona fide blue grass star, Billy was bound for greatness. “Who is this guy?”
Strings was born on October 3rd, 1992, with the name William Lee Apostol. Billy was gifted his first guitar by his stepfather, Terry Barber, when he was just four years old. His biological father passed away from a drug addiction when Billy was two, making Terry his father figure and biggest musical influence. From then on, Billy grew up strumming around the campfire with Terry and his family. In an interview with Terry Lickona, executive producer of Austin City Limits, Billy states that once his father got him a guitar he played “only rhythm for the first couple years. My dad played all the fancy picking, I didn’t play none of that. Just the chords.”
As a fan, it’s difficult to imagine Billy only playing rhythm guitar and not the intricate and complex flat picking we know and love. Because of how innate playing guitar seems to be for Billy, you would think he was shredding even inside the womb. With the help of Billy Failing on banjo, Jarrod Walker on mandolin, Royal Masat on bass, and Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Billy has become unstoppable. He won a Grammy in 2021 for his album Home and has since earned nominations for Renewal and Me/And/Dad. While Billy’s bluegrass influences include Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, and Earl Scruggs, Billy also cites Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin. On the surface it may not seem like it, but heavy metal and bluegrass have a lot in common. Both genres effortlessly blend speed, technique, and storytelling to create often complex and high-energy music. Billy has impressively taken elements from heavy metal and has seamlessly integrated them into his bluegrass. His lively performances, frequent head-banging, and face-melting solos all prove this to be true.
As I walk through the parking lot just outside the venue which resembles what I imagine a Billy Strings church service to look like, something keeps catching my eye. The amount of Grateful Dead fans is astounding. Tapestries with the iconic Grateful Dead skull and men with beards to their chest wearing old tour shirts are abundant. Both fan bases are so dedicated to the life that they travel from show to show sometimes without guarantee of a ticket, or even a bed to sleep in. Billy has seemingly been passed this unspoken torch.Billy has fostered a nomadic yet tight-knit community built on love for one another and love for good music (and maybe, just maybe, a love for getting high). Billy is what they call “California sober.” After battling addiction in his teens and early 20s, he gave up hard drugs and alcohol for good. He credits sobriety with giving him clarity, focus, and a deeper connection to music, though he still embraces weed and psychedelics. Just listen to “California Sober” featuring Willie Nelson and “MORBUD4ME” — you’ll get it.
Even as a casual fan, I feel right at home and I’m not even inside the venue yet. A child wearing a frog onesie taps me on the arm. I watch as she tussles with a plastic bag until she hands me a wooden clothes pin painted neon green with a small watermelon bead glued to the front side. Next to the watermelon is written four letters: BMFS. Billy Mother Fucking Strings, that is. Curious about the mysterious gesture, I ask a man selling tacos off the back of his truck with a “Will trade weed for ticket” sign what significance the pins have. He explains to me that they’re tokens of love and friendship fans pass around at shows. “It’s about feeling the love, man!”
People of all ages, genders, and races are scattered amongst the crowd. Just before Billy plays, you see a shift. In him, in the audience, in the atmosphere – the kind of shift you might see in a swimmer as they step up to the block to dive in for a race, sending a collective silence across the water. With the strum of a chord, his face melts into melodical bliss. Chaos erupts. You can feel Billy somehow channeling his life’s pain into something monumental. What he produces with the slide of a finger, the strum of a chord, and the tapping of his foot – it’s enough to make a grown man cry. It’s enough to make me cry. Although I am much younger than him and definitely not his parental figure, I feel so overwhelmingly proud of him. I am in the nosebleeds, but it doesn’t matter.
What a kind way to make a stranger feel so loved and appreciated. I believe that good music and good people have the power to do that. This is why I feel like I belong, even just for a night. A lot of Strings fans have faced similar struggles to Billy; drug addiction, alcoholism, death of loved ones, neglect, heartbreak – the list goes on. Today is a break from this. “Ten minutes till fuzzy rainbows!” A loud and unserious voice booms over the arena speakers.I must look confused, because the woman sitting above me asks if it’s my first Billy show. I nod. She explains that when Billy's stage manager used to give him the dreaded "10-minute warning,” he felt like the wording made his stage anxiety worse. So instead, they say “10 minutes till fuzzy rainbows!” Huh.
What a gift it is to be here.