Billy Strings

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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, I'm Tom Power, welcome to ToyHeart, a podcast about Bluegrass.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, how are you?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Tom here, I know it has been a minute.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I am jumping back into your feed with a very special episode of the show that we recorded at the International Bluegrass Music Association's World of Bluegrass Conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Last October.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I have spent since I was 16 or 15 years old.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm 39 now, wanting to go to IBMA.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a real honor to be invited, especially to, I mean, to interview the
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[SPEAKER_02]: The Roman robe, the Earl Scruggs, the Ricky's Gags, the, you know, the Alson Krauss of our time, he certainly the most transformative musician in Bluegrass right now.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we'll go down in history.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the most transformative artists in all of Bluegrass history is Billy Strings.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I got contacted, asked if I would come down and do a keynote interview with Billy Strings.
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[SPEAKER_02]: He gave a speech right before.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then I got to sit down and talk to him about his life.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was honored.
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[SPEAKER_02]: give that chat.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Billy has a new record coming out later this year.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's called So Much For Good Bites out in August.
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[SPEAKER_02]: In addition to his meteoric rise playing massive venues, Grammy Awards and IBM A wins, I did find him to be an un-synical smart.
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[SPEAKER_02]: humble guy, you don't get the sense that's got to his head at all.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, if you're listening to this, I'm assuming you're a big deep nerdy bluegrass fan, so is Billy.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And this is a guy who comes from, you know, it'll tell you a tough story himself and found salvation in the music of the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe and Larry Sparks, but also has a lot of ideas about, you know, how everyone should get to play this music and has a lot of ideas about how it should be, even marketed and stuff like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I learned so much talking to this guy,
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a real honor to get the chance to talk to him.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, as opposed to, you know, if you heard this podcast so far, it's a lot of, you know, talking to folks like Ricky's Gags and Del McCurray and Jess McRannell, sort of like looking back at their incredible career.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing to talk to Billy sort of right in the middle of it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's like talking to Bill Monroe while he was still just fielding a baseball team or something like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, here you go.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you enjoyed this special live episode of Toy Heart.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Here's Billy Streets.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Billy, I just want to say, I'll be half of everybody in this room, what a beautiful and powerful speech, and thank you so much for it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm super nervous to be here.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I am petrified to be here.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Me too.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you got to understand, man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm from like an island in the middle of the North Atlantic.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I got into this music when I was like 13 or 14 years old.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was no one else to play with.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was no one else.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's one other person who was into Bluegrass on the island.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it was Neil Rosenberg, the guy who wrote Bluegrass a history, who ran Bean Blossom.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just home not knowing anything about the deftones or anything about limp is good because I was on Napster, Pirating Jimmy Martin songs.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I have done all that from a distance and now I'm in the belly of the beast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm terrified with you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So thanks, man, I appreciate it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So, but it's been really beautiful to see what you've done to the music over the years and to it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: To the music against the music.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I want to fill in some of the blanks around some of the stories you told there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Can we start with the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival in 1997?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Jim and Jesse Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks, he mentioned there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell the story of, like you went there and you thought it was the fair?
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[SPEAKER_02]: And then you saw real Bluegrass musicians and something kind of clicked?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just remember when Bill Clinton was president,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't understand why everybody was mad at the president for going to the fair.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, he's the president.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He can't go to the fair.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why is everybody?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Canadian, man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know any of this.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was having an affair.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I read about that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So we don't have those in Canada.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So hold on, you went to Sherlock and you see Bluegrass musicians in what happens to you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I was four years old, so my memory is a little hazy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just remember how impactful it was seeing these big tall blue grassers walking through the room.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew the music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had heard the music, my dad played it for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was even trying to play myself by that time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I never heard it on stage.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I never saw the suits.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I never heard the three-part harmonies coming out of the speakers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was
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[SPEAKER_00]: It just blew me away, you know, and I was in the next year or something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was in kindergarten and I was drawing bandjows and everything and it was just, you know, I was just, that's what I wanted to do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when I was a little kid, I just wanted to be just like my dad, you know, I told you about how I saw him, people were just standing around and listened to him pick and just, there was so much joy that he brought to the little,
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[SPEAKER_00]: to the little community there and, man, I just, I wanted to do that too, you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you were a ball cap, I wore a ball cap and he wore Levi's, I wore Levi's and he played guitar and that's what I wanted to do, you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to be just like my dad.
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[SPEAKER_02]: When did you have first figure out that you may have an aptitude for it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think that oftentimes in this music, in my case, in Irish music, and in Newfoundland Music, the music that I play, I wasn't very good at a lot of other things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And when I realized that I seem to be able to pick this up, it was a profound thing for me, gave me a lot of confidence.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I heard you talk about how when you were in school, you didn't feel like you were that good at a lot of things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Put music with something you knew you could rely on.
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[SPEAKER_02]: When did you start to realize that maybe you had an aptitude for it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a big moment that sticks out to me when I was about six years old, I was trying to learn Beaumont Reg.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we would play it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when I got to the B part, I screwed it up every time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd write in the middle of the song, I just told my dad, stop, stop, stop.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd just go,
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[SPEAKER_00]: You play it, and I'll just listen, and so I listen to them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And instead of going A1, 2, 3, 4, D, 2, 3, 4, and counting and trying to, you know, I listened to what he was doing instead of trying to count.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he was going, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was too, because I made my dad proud, and he even called my grandma, made her listen on the phone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to this kid, he's getting good, you know, and that was, my dad was proud of me in that moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that, that was another big, big moment for me, you know, just, what did that mean to you in that moment?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I thought I was like magic or something, because I knew what chord was coming next.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just, you know, I didn't know it back then, but my dad would use, you know, seven cords and stuff, and he's playing a G chord, and then he plays G7, and then I'm like, uh, see?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Holy crap, how do I know that?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I just thought I was, I thought I was good or something, I thought I was like magic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm planning song, you know?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I really, a lot of these songs, you know, they have a similar.
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[SPEAKER_00]: kind of thing, there's a language here, and I started to hear that, and I started to just be able to tell kind of where the cord was, I would guess a lot of the times, playing a song maybe that has a six minor, and it was something, and I would surprise myself so much and when I hit the right cord, and I didn't really know how I knew it, but I just listened, you know, and like I said, I played rhythm for quite a few years before I tried to pick anything fancy, and that
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[SPEAKER_00]: that just gave me a chance to just listen to the vocals and deletes and how the music would lead itself into the next chords and stuff, you know?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you talk a lot about sort of when you got to be a little older and you started playing like more prognental and a little bit more heavier music.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Before that, I wanted to ask you about like an early gig.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell me about the maple river strummers?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Who were the Maple River Strummers?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that was at a VFW Hall back in the day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was right down the road from where we lived on the Maple River there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just a group of, you know, kind of older folks, especially to me, I was like seven or something at the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it was like the Mingo crowd, you know?
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[SPEAKER_00]: the Bingo crowd.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was all kind of the old folks that would show up with their hammer dulcimers and their music stands and they'd sing Johnny Cash songs and Hank Williams and stuff like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And my dad would go down there and just blow him out of the water.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everyone's just for fun, I think.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it was, you know, and all those old ladies down there loved me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I first started, I had to stand on a chair to get up to the mic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I went up to the mic and I said,
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[SPEAKER_02]: Are we getting paid for this for crying out loud?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody just lost it, you know?
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[SPEAKER_00]: What were you singing?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I mean, at that time, I was singing Philston Prison Blues.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, right now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, way high.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Went all of a sudden, baby.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And you, I mean, you got attention there, man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like the story I heard is that they offered you a gig, someone offered you $200.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Right, when you were a kid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was at the Hunting and Fishing Club at birth of Rock Park up there in Ionia.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's just a bunch of outdoors men that got some money together, and they wanted to have some blue-rass music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I think that was my first gig, paid 200 bucks, and I only saw about maybe 50 of it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: still have a goes in the music industry by the way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I got used to it there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You learned about commissions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I went back, I actually went on my space and listened to, to one stark in style.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You're junior high high school.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You can go to taking down pretty quickly if you want.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But it's pretty good.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I hope they're already on it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I went looking for a day of moments, which is another band you ran, prog metal.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot about you online, but I can't get a sense of what brought you back to Bluegrass.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You touched on it there that it was some sort of like, I had this realization that this is the music that I love, but what was it that brought you back to Bluegrass when you were playing all this different music?
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there wasn't an exact moment that I had like this,
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[SPEAKER_00]: total realization.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And my life at the time was pretty hectic.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I was only 15, but I was already not living at home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents were struggling with addiction.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was just couch surfing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I would go over there sometimes, because my parents' house became this lawless area, where we could do whatever we wanted, because there's drugs everywhere.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What are they going to do called the cops?
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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so I would bring friends over there, a bunch of minors, and we'd drink and party and stuff, and I'd go over there and just hang out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there was one time where I was over there, and my mom was sleeping, and after a bender, you know, she'd sleep for a couple of days.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I went in the room and took her keys one time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She had this 72-shavelle with a 354 door.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we lived out in the country, and I got drunk one afternoon, just by myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's how bored I was, nothing to do in this town except drink or something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was drinking.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I grabbed a keys, and I stole this car, and I went down Hayes Road.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I hit the gas, and there's just corn fields on either side.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember that corn just turned into a blur.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just seeing what that old thing could do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a tape hanging out of the deck.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I pushed it in, and I decided to see what my mom was listening to.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And rank stranger came on.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I started slowing down that old car, and I just eventually pulled over.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And kind of it was just like, that music hit me so hard in that moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because my life was felt like just going down the drain,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was kind of playing in these heavy metal bands and stuff and they kept breaking up and you know I couldn't keep a band together you know and so when that song hit me it really hit me and in that moment I'm just like what am I doing?
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[SPEAKER_02]: What was it?
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[SPEAKER_02]: Was it the song?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was deja vu.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was my childhood.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was like I said, my life was a mess and it hit me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It gave me the sunshine that I had before when I was a little kid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When everything was good, we were just picking by the creek.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if anything, it was a couple beers and a couple of joints.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't all hard stuff, you know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was good times.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We had food in the cupboards, you know, we had everything we needed, it was, you know, and so when that music hit me it brought me back there to when everything was good like I said before I knew anything bad about the world, you know, and I just got totally obsessed with it again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't even have an acoustic guitar at the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My friend Zach had this really crappy Ibanez guitar that he got from Goodwill or something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I had pretty much borrowed it from him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I started going back over to my dad's house.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How do you play Salt Creek?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because like I said, I played rhythm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when I first started trying to play lead, I was doing more Hendrix electric guitar, blues, kind of stuff, classic rock.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I never picked fiddle tunes or anything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just played rhythm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, when I was 15 or so, 16, and got back into it real heavy, I started going back over to the house and, man, how do you play Salt Creek?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't understand how that my dad was playing the melody.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to just play these blues, licks over the chords and it just was not working.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How come it sounds so cool when you play it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when I play it, it sounds like junk.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a profound thing, man.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I remember taking a banjo lesson and someone said, yeah, it's fine, man, but Earl played the song.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Like Earl played the song first, you know?
15:01.746 --> 15:04.647
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is also explained to me the Doc Watson thing.
15:04.967 --> 15:15.149
[SPEAKER_02]: Like why you may have gravitated to Doc Watson as a musician, because that was someone who played, I mean, he's really a musician in one of the greatest of all time, but Melody based of the Phil tunes that he was playing.
15:15.950 --> 15:17.070
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
15:18.864 --> 15:29.693
[SPEAKER_00]: That was definitely where I started, when I tried to go back and check stuff out and start picking some leads on stuff, one of the first tunes I learned was nothing to it.
15:30.354 --> 15:32.216
[SPEAKER_00]: And from there, yeah, just keep going.
15:32.756 --> 15:37.280
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard you love Doc so much that you used to practice with your eyes closed.
15:38.401 --> 15:39.182
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably, yeah.
15:40.610 --> 15:41.010
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that true?
15:42.070 --> 15:45.171
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where you heard that, but I'm sure, you know, there's some truth to that.
15:45.191 --> 15:46.912
[SPEAKER_00]: I still play with my eyes closed all the time.
15:47.292 --> 15:47.792
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I got.
15:47.812 --> 15:51.013
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looking at an old interview of you and you were talking about that, but I don't know.
15:51.213 --> 15:51.574
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
15:51.694 --> 15:52.214
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just, you know.
15:52.514 --> 15:56.475
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't believe everything you read on the internet bill, you'll tell you that much.
15:56.875 --> 15:57.435
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you can.
15:57.836 --> 15:58.176
[SPEAKER_02]: You meet?
15:58.196 --> 15:59.996
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all true.
16:01.017 --> 16:01.697
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all I want to hear.
16:02.655 --> 16:06.340
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my journalism done, as a naive Canadian right there.
16:07.801 --> 16:11.285
[SPEAKER_02]: You meet Don Julian, who is a sort of this legendary mandolin player, played a lot of jazz.
16:11.566 --> 16:16.291
[SPEAKER_02]: He talks about meeting you at this coffee shop because he heard there was this sort of guitar phenom kid there.
16:16.832 --> 16:18.774
[SPEAKER_02]: When he saw you with the coffee shop, were you playing bluegrass?
16:18.794 --> 16:19.895
[SPEAKER_02]: Were you already back to playing it?
16:20.035 --> 16:20.476
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:22.537 --> 16:32.202
[SPEAKER_00]: I graduated, I squeaked through high school, a lot of alternative education thing and a year late, and I finally did get a little diploma, though, and then after that, what am I gonna do?
16:32.242 --> 16:37.585
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to get the heck out of this town, because it just felt like it was gonna drag me down into a lot of darkness.
16:38.206 --> 16:42.188
[SPEAKER_00]: So, friend of mine said, hey, I got an apartment up here and I need to roommate and travel city.
16:42.908 --> 16:45.050
[SPEAKER_00]: And I moved up there and all of a sudden, it's technical there.
16:45.410 --> 16:47.952
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like beaches and the great lakes.
16:48.012 --> 16:58.500
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's little coffee shops and micro breweries and art galleries and people were like into art and stuff up there and it was just this whole different scene.
16:59.321 --> 17:06.567
[SPEAKER_00]: And I moved up there and I worked at a hotel for a little bit and one day I got a call from this fella, just on my phone randomly,
17:07.448 --> 17:07.768
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello?
17:08.248 --> 17:09.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, this is Kurt Westy.
17:10.149 --> 17:13.330
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard you moved up here, and I'm a mandolin player.
17:13.830 --> 17:15.731
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to pick with you.
17:16.331 --> 17:20.232
[SPEAKER_00]: Sweet, you know, it's hoping I was going to meet somebody to pick with up here.
17:21.473 --> 17:24.394
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went over and I met this fellow named Paul Kirchner.
17:24.894 --> 17:28.095
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's kind of a main stay around Northern Michigan.
17:28.135 --> 17:29.035
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a banjo picker.
17:29.075 --> 17:31.756
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been around a lot of the Michigan festivals for a lot of years.
17:32.336 --> 17:34.357
[SPEAKER_00]: Started a band up there called Full Coord.
17:37.387 --> 17:43.554
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're still going, you know, Todd Kirchkiners on base, those are my buddies from back home.
17:44.875 --> 17:49.199
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I met Paul, and then we kind of started a little thing called M23 strings.
17:49.259 --> 17:51.682
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we were picking on some stuff up there.
17:51.722 --> 17:54.084
[SPEAKER_00]: And starting to learn how the vocal harmonies work.
17:54.104 --> 17:58.109
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I learned a lot from Paul about dynamics, about the harmonies and about...
17:59.338 --> 18:02.779
[SPEAKER_00]: how these instruments really work together and picking with them was good.
18:03.579 --> 18:11.601
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, we were at that gig at the little coffee house there in In Walks Don, Julian, who I had seen in YouTube videos playing with David Drizman.
18:11.961 --> 18:15.302
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, this guy plays with dog, man, he must be good.
18:16.422 --> 18:17.562
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, well, we should pick.
18:17.622 --> 18:18.743
[SPEAKER_00]: So we got together and picked.
18:19.563 --> 18:22.004
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was around the time, Doc died, right?
18:22.044 --> 18:26.205
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, Doc had died, and you guys got together and listened to a lot of LPs of his.
18:26.225 --> 18:27.945
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like a, it feels like a form to moment.
18:28.528 --> 18:40.174
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I remember I saw Doc in through 2010 and a couple of years later he died and it was also around the time that Thiele and Michael Daves did that thing.
18:40.274 --> 18:41.155
[SPEAKER_00]: Sleepable when I opened.
18:41.475 --> 18:44.076
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we were listening to that a bunch.
18:44.096 --> 18:46.457
[SPEAKER_00]: That was our whole, we wanted to do that.
18:46.477 --> 18:56.502
[SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to just, just the two of us guitar and mandolin step up to a large diaphragm condenser and just play bluegrass tunes with teeth, you know, and just kind of really get after it.
18:58.573 --> 19:01.657
[SPEAKER_00]: We were inspired by that the Alien Dave's thing for sure when we first started.
19:02.518 --> 19:06.163
[SPEAKER_02]: So when I guess what I'm trying to map out here in my own mind is
19:08.668 --> 19:19.416
[SPEAKER_02]: When I read interviews with you from around then or even when I read Don talking about you then, he would say things like Billy was this incredible phenom, Billy was this unbelievable musician.
19:20.396 --> 19:21.677
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, how do I put this?
19:22.057 --> 19:29.403
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he, we were just doing gigs and he was just not working at the hotel, like you were working in a hospital or a hotel or something like that.
19:29.803 --> 19:31.564
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was just like happy to not be there.
19:32.385 --> 19:34.806
[SPEAKER_02]: But at some point, something switches,
19:35.848 --> 19:43.853
[SPEAKER_02]: And you get a drive-in, yeah, about wanting to make music and a career for yourself, wanting to do something bigger with it.
19:44.433 --> 19:46.935
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've been searching for when that happened.
19:47.295 --> 19:55.940
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I read was that you guys went to IBA, and went to Folk Alliance, and you started, even like, at IBA, started seeing, like, okay, this is a world that can be, and this is a business, this is something.
19:56.381 --> 19:57.161
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, right?
19:57.561 --> 20:01.944
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it all goes way back to even elementary school,
20:05.325 --> 20:22.754
[SPEAKER_00]: looking at Jimmy Hendrix records and watching the Woodstock performance and learning about the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and you know by the time I was in sixth grade I was walking around with a Janice Joplin booking my back pocket and I had long hair and circle glasses and peace sign patches and I look like I just got back from NOM or something you know
20:24.230 --> 20:27.712
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was in six, my teachers were like, who the heck is this kid, you know?
20:28.513 --> 20:43.461
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, so no, I think back then, you know, I was learning a lot, I would read books about people like Janice Joplin or Kurt Cobain or Bob Marley or I would read about these larger than life cats, you know, and I had this dream of like being one of those people one day, you know.
20:43.481 --> 20:45.042
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I'm gonna be a rock star one day.
20:45.082 --> 20:49.045
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, that was like I said, I would mention school, and by the time I get to middle school,
20:49.765 --> 21:02.092
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sitting around playing guitar or something, and I just didn't, the town that I was in, it seemed like the furthest possible reality to make it in music.
21:02.152 --> 21:02.772
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you kidding me?
21:03.393 --> 21:09.256
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, even my teachers were like, yeah, I mean, that's cool, but you ever thought about,
21:10.059 --> 21:11.840
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you should be a journalist or something.
21:11.860 --> 21:13.700
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, don't do that, man, don't do that.
21:14.120 --> 21:14.881
[SPEAKER_00]: I like it.
21:15.981 --> 21:21.242
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, because it was maybe something, you know, well, I definitely wasn't going to be anything that I had to do math for.
21:21.302 --> 21:22.083
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
21:23.143 --> 21:27.564
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, that was a really weird thing.
21:27.584 --> 21:29.405
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all the grownups around me being like,
21:30.829 --> 21:45.858
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I'm going to be the pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, you know, even my principal last school, I remember one time at lunch, I was sitting there playing the banjo, trying to learn how to play old slewfoot, just like Jim and Jesse, and, you know, and he walked up and said that.
21:45.898 --> 21:48.199
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what are you going to do when you get out of school, you know?
21:48.219 --> 21:51.901
[SPEAKER_00]: You ever thought about being a journalist or something, I'm sitting there with a banjo on my hand going.
21:55.964 --> 21:57.685
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, no, I don't know if that's a good call.
21:58.380 --> 22:01.222
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so it just didn't seem like a possibility.
22:02.062 --> 22:05.224
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also had failed all through high school.
22:05.805 --> 22:07.086
[SPEAKER_00]: I barely squeaked by.
22:07.126 --> 22:09.767
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, I cheated to get through, you know.
22:09.968 --> 22:10.368
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
22:11.903 --> 22:13.864
[SPEAKER_00]: I just knew I was never going to go to college.
22:13.964 --> 22:15.545
[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't like school.
22:16.645 --> 22:19.647
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just thought I was going to never amount to anything, honestly.
22:20.187 --> 22:22.809
[SPEAKER_00]: If it wasn't with music, I didn't have any other skills.
22:23.389 --> 22:27.171
[SPEAKER_00]: I was, you know, I had nothing else to fall on.
22:27.211 --> 22:28.592
[SPEAKER_00]: If I don't make it with this guitar.
22:28.992 --> 22:30.633
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, back then, it was like,
22:31.576 --> 22:33.197
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're not going to make it with this guitar.
22:33.257 --> 22:39.059
[SPEAKER_00]: So might as well just become an alcoholic or end up in prison, or addicted to drugs, like all my friends or something.
22:39.539 --> 22:42.480
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when I moved up to Traverse City, like I said, it was technicolor.
22:42.860 --> 22:47.101
[SPEAKER_00]: I did a couple open mic nights up there, and I played black mountain rag, and I got a standing ovation.
22:47.641 --> 22:51.223
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you never heard doc before?
22:52.503 --> 22:55.824
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just everybody started losing their mind for this flat pick and stuff.
22:55.884 --> 22:57.625
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was going, man, there might be something here.
22:58.657 --> 23:00.039
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe I could actually do this.
23:00.540 --> 23:01.741
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was Trevor City, man.
23:01.761 --> 23:06.829
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the people up there that encouraged me and convinced me that I could actually make a go of it.
23:06.889 --> 23:15.100
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Don Julian, who has, you know, bit of making a living off music since the 80s, he was like, yeah, man, you might.
23:15.943 --> 23:20.505
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you're not gonna be Jimmy Hendrix, but you could do a workshop on Tuesday.
23:21.265 --> 23:24.706
[SPEAKER_00]: We could play at the library and the basement for tips on Wednesday.
23:25.086 --> 23:26.547
[SPEAKER_00]: Thursday will play at the coffee house.
23:26.807 --> 23:30.608
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a private concert on Friday and Saturday, they booked a set of festival.
23:31.529 --> 23:35.950
[SPEAKER_00]: So next thing I know, like, you know, he was like, you can be a working musician.
23:36.870 --> 23:42.753
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, sick, you know, I don't have to like, scrub toilets and clean up people's puke,
23:45.205 --> 23:47.566
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, that's what I realized.
23:47.586 --> 23:52.647
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like that dream of when I was in middle school of like being a guitar god or something.
23:52.667 --> 23:54.267
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, that's not gonna happen, dude.
23:54.287 --> 23:57.208
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can, you don't have to work at the hotel.
23:57.968 --> 24:00.329
[SPEAKER_00]: You can be a working musician.
24:01.449 --> 24:04.770
[SPEAKER_02]: There is clearly a point though where it goes try to spirit.
24:04.810 --> 24:07.750
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, you moved in Nashville.
24:08.251 --> 24:13.432
[SPEAKER_02]: When I say it goes try to spirit, it just feels to me and I could be wrong and I only just met you 20 minutes ago.
24:14.207 --> 24:20.051
[SPEAKER_02]: But it just feels to me that there's a moment where you go, you get really serious about it.
24:20.611 --> 24:23.833
[SPEAKER_00]: I think when Don and I split ways, you didn't move to Nashville then?
24:24.133 --> 24:27.996
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we just, man, we were working really hard.
24:28.776 --> 24:30.917
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love him and I got all this, you know.
24:32.018 --> 24:32.818
[SPEAKER_00]: He taught me a lot.
24:32.838 --> 24:33.699
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned a lot from him.
24:33.719 --> 24:36.260
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the time, we just kind of stopped getting along.
24:36.820 --> 24:37.621
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it happens.
24:37.861 --> 24:38.401
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it happens.
24:39.322 --> 24:45.044
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just got gnarly to where it was like, we just weren't even playing, we were playing music against each other.
24:45.464 --> 24:45.665
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
24:46.325 --> 24:50.707
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was just, I would like take a break and he would just like go have a drink of his beer or something.
24:50.947 --> 24:54.230
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only two of us up here, man, like, you know, like, come on.
24:55.491 --> 24:57.774
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but, and I was doing the same stuff, too.
24:57.834 --> 24:59.495
[SPEAKER_00]: I was being a jerk to him as well.
24:59.555 --> 25:03.599
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like, but yeah, we just stopped getting along.
25:03.639 --> 25:06.842
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it was spite.
25:07.303 --> 25:07.683
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
25:07.923 --> 25:08.904
[SPEAKER_00]: I just had this burning
25:10.204 --> 25:34.716
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll show you kind of thing like I'm going to take this thing to the stratosphere and I don't, nothing's going to stop me and I still had that and it's also, I don't want to go back to where I was to the poverty and the substance abuse and the, you know, waking up in the morning sleeping in a winter coat, sleeping with a dog that has flees and going across the house and getting in a shower and drying off with a towel that smells like mildew, you know.
25:36.477 --> 25:40.820
[SPEAKER_00]: not having hot water anyways, or electricity, or, you know, I didn't want to go back to that.
25:41.801 --> 25:42.542
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still don't.
25:42.582 --> 25:43.422
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm running from that.
25:43.462 --> 25:44.803
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not running towards success.
25:45.104 --> 25:46.265
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm running away from poverty.
25:47.486 --> 25:49.987
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
25:50.067 --> 25:53.790
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not on the gold chalice.
25:53.830 --> 25:55.932
[SPEAKER_02]: Your eyes not on the Grammy.
25:55.952 --> 25:57.633
[SPEAKER_02]: Your eyes not on the aspiration.
25:57.653 --> 26:03.658
[SPEAKER_00]: Your eyes, like sometimes I pour myself a bowl of cereal and I almost cry because it's there.
26:06.208 --> 26:10.607
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just got, I mean.
26:11.457 --> 26:14.839
[SPEAKER_02]: Just a couple of sort of lessony things I want to get to before we go.
26:15.659 --> 26:23.803
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never really got the full story on when you started incorporating the jam, the more expanded jamming into the music.
26:24.904 --> 26:26.104
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a couple of stories around it.
26:26.124 --> 26:28.565
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew that green sky bluegrass was really influential to you.
26:28.966 --> 26:31.267
[SPEAKER_02]: I know in 2011, I'm a nerdbilly.
26:31.327 --> 26:35.429
[SPEAKER_02]: You watched a video of string cheese incident at red rocks.
26:35.449 --> 26:35.849
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
26:36.069 --> 26:37.290
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was meaningful to you.
26:37.890 --> 26:39.995
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it tripped me out, you know, my whole life I had.
26:40.316 --> 26:42.962
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the reason I got into heavy metal and stuff in the first place.
26:43.484 --> 26:45.528
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to play music with people that are my age.
26:46.513 --> 26:50.817
[SPEAKER_00]: My whole life I had grown up playing with my dad and his older friends playing bluegrass and stuff.
26:50.857 --> 26:54.620
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the time I got into middle school, it's not that I was embarrassed about it or anything.
26:54.640 --> 27:09.733
[SPEAKER_00]: It just, I didn't go around telling everybody I played bluegrass because it was just something I did with my dad and his friends, you know, and I had this urge to play music with people that were my age that were into similar stuff, you know, skateboarding and video games and whatever was going on at the time, you know.
27:09.833 --> 27:14.037
[SPEAKER_00]: I, yeah, it was a similar thing, even then,
27:15.170 --> 27:40.698
[SPEAKER_00]: up in Traverse City when I first heard of, you know, I grew up on Bill Monroe and Osborne Brothers and Larry Sparks and them and Jimmy Martin stuff and I never, I never had any idea that left over salmon or green sky bluegrass or infamous string dusters or any of these bands that were kind of more on this, I had no idea about this like hippie barefoot scene.
27:41.518 --> 27:42.659
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea about it.
27:43.770 --> 27:47.972
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I moved up to Traverse City and I started here and that stuff, I hated it.
27:49.833 --> 28:13.185
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was like, yeah, it's just, that guy's just going, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da
28:17.223 --> 28:17.823
[SPEAKER_02]: So what happens?
28:17.843 --> 28:22.986
[SPEAKER_02]: What happens is that your mind gets open and you look at that and go, a lot of people stay there forever and no shame to them.
28:23.206 --> 28:27.809
[SPEAKER_02]: What happens is that your mind gets open and goes like, that's cool, not only that's cool, I kinda wanna do it.
28:28.629 --> 28:34.552
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, like you mentioned, I saw that video and it was kind of like, it was a string cheese incident library.
28:34.612 --> 28:45.058
[SPEAKER_00]: It was string cheese incident and they were playing a song called Black Clouds and I saw Bill Nershi on stage, flat picking guitar and then I saw the audience.
28:46.133 --> 28:51.438
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw Bill flat picking and I saw this huge audience of 10,000 people wearing tie-dye spinning and dancing.
28:51.458 --> 28:55.882
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all young and they look just like me and my friends.
28:56.603 --> 28:58.505
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, like, what is going on here?
28:58.525 --> 29:00.707
[SPEAKER_00]: This is kind of like Bluegrass, but there's a huge crowd.
29:09.627 --> 29:13.711
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I was just like, huh, and then again, I started kind of going down that rabbit hole.
29:14.192 --> 29:18.316
[SPEAKER_00]: There were bands that I said at first, when I first heard it, I didn't like it.
29:18.556 --> 29:20.478
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't like John Hartford when I first heard it.
29:21.679 --> 29:31.389
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, there's so many times where my favorite artists and my favorite bands, it takes a second.
29:32.351 --> 29:38.073
[SPEAKER_00]: to acquire, when I first heard Hartford, I just was like, this is just kind of goofy, and I don't really know, you know what I mean?
29:38.093 --> 29:38.973
[SPEAKER_00]: It's John Hartford, you kidding me?
29:39.474 --> 29:41.334
[SPEAKER_00]: But it just took me a second.
29:41.754 --> 29:43.235
[SPEAKER_00]: Same thing with that heavy metal stuff.
29:43.295 --> 29:44.215
[SPEAKER_00]: I hated it at first.
29:44.956 --> 29:46.596
[SPEAKER_00]: But then eventually I got used to it.
29:46.636 --> 29:48.057
[SPEAKER_00]: Next thing, you know, I'm in a band, you know?
29:48.657 --> 29:53.259
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I started hearing this stuff and the same thing, I didn't understand the grateful dead.
29:53.879 --> 29:59.101
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounded like five people playing five different songs, all the same time.
30:00.485 --> 30:01.445
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just didn't get it.
30:02.125 --> 30:07.467
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't understand why you have to play a song for 30 minutes and not do anything.
30:09.768 --> 30:18.270
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started, I was playing out playing gigs and I got booked on a couple of gigs with Green Sky Bluegrass and they had invited me up to play with them.
30:18.830 --> 30:20.591
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when we played a song.
30:21.611 --> 30:25.232
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember I did, my rows of old Kentucky with them.
30:26.303 --> 30:30.546
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they had me on another song which was stop that train, which is I think of Bob Marley thing.
30:31.327 --> 30:34.930
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that, I think they were like, yeah, just take it for a while.
30:34.970 --> 30:41.715
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, just, we'll see what happens when we get up there.
30:41.755 --> 30:45.098
[SPEAKER_00]: See out there, all right, see a champ, like, what do you mean?
30:46.199 --> 30:49.481
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get out there and I kind of just get on this big one chord and we're vamping.
30:49.501 --> 30:53.624
[SPEAKER_00]: And the next thing, you know, I play a little something and then Anders goes something back to me.
30:54.901 --> 30:56.602
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we start having this conversation.
30:56.622 --> 30:58.743
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god, this is kind of fun.
31:00.124 --> 31:01.845
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually, I have to do it right in these four bars.
31:03.946 --> 31:05.947
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can only play the melody.
31:08.468 --> 31:10.830
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started to, I was like, well, that was kind of fun.
31:12.271 --> 31:14.412
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, I mean, this is gradual over time.
31:14.432 --> 31:14.972
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
31:15.212 --> 31:17.253
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a couple of psychedelic experiences.
31:17.533 --> 31:20.295
[SPEAKER_00]: There were like wild camping or whatever.
31:24.550 --> 31:25.551
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going, wait, I get it.
31:29.515 --> 31:33.780
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're all just playing all this stuff and then Jerry Garcia's going.
31:35.842 --> 31:43.050
[SPEAKER_00]: And then everything's playing and swirling like this big thing and Jerry's going, being like, oh, he's the lighthouse.
31:44.431 --> 31:45.913
[SPEAKER_00]: I understand this music now.
31:48.158 --> 32:00.406
[SPEAKER_00]: But really, you know, Jerry coming from a bluegrass kind of background too and you know it's like bluegrass or it's like jazz where the instruments talk to each other and I just acquired a taste for it.
32:00.586 --> 32:02.127
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I went from not understanding
32:02.947 --> 32:06.368
[SPEAKER_00]: these big, long improvisational movements.
32:06.768 --> 32:12.370
[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing would happen if I heard Bebop or Jazz or listen to Cold Train or it's over my head, man.
32:12.410 --> 32:13.130
[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't get it.
32:13.190 --> 32:16.051
[SPEAKER_00]: It just sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
32:16.372 --> 32:17.832
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what the heck's going on.
32:19.132 --> 32:19.453
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
32:20.433 --> 32:26.715
[SPEAKER_00]: But I, after kind of getting more into improvisational music and understanding, oh well,
32:27.969 --> 32:32.115
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, these guys are blowing over these changes and it just realizing how incredible it is.
32:32.676 --> 32:34.338
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you acquire a taste for it.
32:34.399 --> 32:41.249
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, it's like I said, a lot of my favorite music, I just at first, I'm like, what the heck is this, you know?
32:41.787 --> 32:43.228
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think that goes for the audience too.
32:43.368 --> 32:44.789
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know if I have a question around this.
32:45.109 --> 32:51.032
[SPEAKER_02]: But one thing I find really interesting about you, and I'm doing my best not to talk about any other bands or you guys versus any other bands, I'm not going to do it.
32:51.413 --> 33:07.182
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not all jamming, and what I find really interesting is that you have arenas full of people, and we are kind of told in the music, that's not possible to play a three and a half minute, bluegrass song.
33:07.942 --> 33:18.281
[SPEAKER_02]: to play on my way back to the old home, to play John Deer Tractor, that you would have to do something different to it, that you'd have to turn it into a different groove, that you'd have to make it 25 minutes.
33:19.688 --> 33:26.969
[SPEAKER_02]: But you do just sometimes just play it a song and I think the thing that I love the most about you in addition to your musicianship and all this stuff I love about you.
33:27.029 --> 33:38.331
[SPEAKER_02]: But I just love that you're showing the value and beauty of this music as it is to an audience that may have walked in not knowing it and you're kind of going, this is good enough.
33:38.572 --> 33:40.332
[SPEAKER_02]: This is good enough for 30,000 people.
33:40.392 --> 33:41.472
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is good enough.
33:41.592 --> 33:43.953
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's power in this music.
33:44.213 --> 33:45.493
[SPEAKER_00]: It's better than good enough.
33:47.163 --> 33:49.064
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think we can be in here.
33:49.084 --> 34:06.491
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's nothing I love more than going on stage at Lala Palusa right before Metallica or something and seeing all these or opening for post-malone and seeing all these teeny bubbles in the crowd and just cram and Robin made a nest on daddy's grave down their throat.
34:09.492 --> 34:15.235
[SPEAKER_00]: Why, why, why is that why you love because, man, it just feels so good, I don't know.
34:16.300 --> 34:30.742
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, do I remember you loving my prayers and just crash that downbeat and like a big festival or some big place where we're the only bluegrass band there a lot of the times and I'm so proud of that, you know.
34:34.912 --> 34:40.476
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, I got some sort of less-any questions before we go, and you've been really generous.
34:40.496 --> 34:45.118
[SPEAKER_02]: And the last thing you played at the Rhymen and Sam Bush got up with you and Brian.
34:46.419 --> 34:54.204
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard a great story about that you were playing with Sam somewhere, and you learned a lesson about dedication to the moment and to the music.
34:54.324 --> 34:55.245
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you set up that moment?
34:55.265 --> 34:58.227
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it would be something people would enjoy here and maybe learn from.
34:59.227 --> 35:01.429
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was one of the moments
35:03.307 --> 35:08.228
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's kind of changed how I play when I go on stage.
35:09.529 --> 35:21.472
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember I was young, I was early 20s, and I was still drinking, and we were on stage down there at Bean Blossom, or at the John Hartford Memorial Festival there.
35:22.355 --> 35:24.596
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was about 20 people on stage or something.
35:24.616 --> 35:26.577
[SPEAKER_00]: We're playing role into my sweet baby Zarnson.
35:27.397 --> 35:28.938
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Sam Bush is back there.
35:29.338 --> 35:30.098
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's up there.
35:30.858 --> 35:35.520
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the mic and I took my little break and I circled around to the back and I was standing there by the back wall.
35:36.640 --> 35:37.441
[SPEAKER_00]: And I figured, well,
35:38.356 --> 35:39.837
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even near a microphone.
35:40.517 --> 35:42.238
[SPEAKER_00]: So nobody can hear me anyways.
35:42.858 --> 35:44.699
[SPEAKER_00]: So I reach over and I take a drink of my beer.
35:45.619 --> 35:50.781
[SPEAKER_00]: And right as soon as I take a drink of my beer, I look over and there's Sam Bush standing right next to me.
35:51.882 --> 35:53.022
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not near a microphone.
35:53.263 --> 35:54.623
[SPEAKER_00]: He's at the back of the wall.
35:54.723 --> 35:55.804
[SPEAKER_00]: He's already took his solo.
35:56.424 --> 35:57.744
[SPEAKER_00]: But he has his eyes closed.
35:58.385 --> 36:02.507
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's playing that chop for the sake of the song.
36:03.227 --> 36:05.248
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, hey, we're playing a song here, man.
36:06.197 --> 36:09.039
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're gonna just stop in the middle of the song and take a drink of your beer.
36:09.379 --> 36:12.202
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you care about the song enough to just at least wait till it's over?
36:13.823 --> 36:18.807
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just like, I felt like such a kid, you know, such a dumb kid, you know?
36:18.847 --> 36:22.630
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, I was like, wow, like, it doesn't matter.
36:22.710 --> 36:24.371
[SPEAKER_00]: Sam's playing for the song, man.
36:24.391 --> 36:24.992
[SPEAKER_00]: He's in it.
36:25.352 --> 36:26.413
[SPEAKER_00]: He's fully there.
36:26.733 --> 36:27.373
[SPEAKER_00]: He's committed.
36:28.094 --> 36:30.015
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a big lesson for me.
36:30.076 --> 36:33.798
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, it made me feel like a, I was like, whoa, okay, like,
36:36.322 --> 36:36.742
[SPEAKER_00]: Finish it.
36:37.622 --> 36:38.823
[SPEAKER_02]: I heard that about Doc Watson too.
36:38.843 --> 36:40.883
[SPEAKER_02]: That like he wouldn't have play.
36:40.903 --> 36:42.443
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he wouldn't be again if he was going to play something.
36:42.463 --> 36:43.664
[SPEAKER_02]: He would play to the very end too.
36:43.684 --> 36:44.764
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I finished that song.
36:45.004 --> 36:45.224
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:46.484 --> 36:50.365
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, Bluegrass always been a fam-based culture.
36:50.425 --> 36:52.046
[SPEAKER_02]: People feel really close to the musicians.
36:52.486 --> 36:54.106
[SPEAKER_02]: You would see them at the merch table.
36:54.126 --> 36:55.546
[SPEAKER_02]: You would pick with them in the parking lot.
36:55.566 --> 36:56.287
[SPEAKER_02]: They would show up.
36:56.427 --> 36:57.367
[SPEAKER_02]: Come, shake and howdy.
36:58.371 --> 37:04.135
[SPEAKER_02]: But it feels different with you, the level of loyalty your fans have towards you, the sense of community.
37:04.576 --> 37:05.877
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been compared to the grateful dad.
37:05.897 --> 37:07.898
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been compared to fish.
37:08.018 --> 37:09.299
[SPEAKER_02]: How intentional was that?
37:09.319 --> 37:14.584
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I've heard stories about people in line in the cold and you'd come out and serve them hot chocolate.
37:15.384 --> 37:16.425
[SPEAKER_02]: How intentional was that?
37:16.485 --> 37:21.629
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there lessons for bluegrass musicians in the way that you cultivated fans around the music?
37:23.138 --> 37:32.053
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, well, I appreciate my fans a hell of a lot, and if I can bring them some hot chocolate, of course, I will, um, you know, but You know what I mean?
37:32.073 --> 37:37.281
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the one thing that I thought when you just said that was, maybe not as much about the fans.
37:38.509 --> 37:52.420
[SPEAKER_00]: and more about, like, I noticed, one thing I did notice about bluegrass coming up and, you know, I also listened to a lot of other music and stuff too, and I'm like, I'm not like tapped into it, but I see what's going on in the hip hop world and stuff like that.
37:53.461 --> 37:59.546
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe not so much anymore because we're getting better as a whole.
38:00.427 --> 38:06.112
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I just remember 10 years ago or so, and I'd see a festival flyer come out,
38:07.055 --> 38:09.276
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it looks like an elementary school news letter.
38:11.157 --> 38:13.918
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you look at some hip hop artists or something.
38:13.938 --> 38:17.560
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've got a full, they filmed a movie to promote their show.
38:18.840 --> 38:22.782
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's on, you know, it's like, edited, and it's all cool looking.
38:22.822 --> 38:26.244
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, man, maybe we should try to do some of that.
38:26.644 --> 38:28.885
[SPEAKER_00]: I just always, I paid attention to what other
38:29.921 --> 38:34.684
[SPEAKER_00]: genres we're doing to promote themselves too and just try to pay attention, you know.
38:34.724 --> 38:37.606
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, how do these hip hop artists getting so big?
38:38.046 --> 38:46.271
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, honestly, even right now, there's so many big rap artists that I play bigger shows than them, they have so much more money than me, though.
38:46.611 --> 38:49.593
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how.
38:50.694 --> 38:57.758
[SPEAKER_02]: But you're looking around and going, what can I take from others, other ways of getting the music out there that I might be able to apply to this music that I love so much?
38:59.541 --> 39:18.683
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like maybe like the social media thing, you know, I look more at like a what are You know rappers doing or what are these cats doing or the rock and roll folks or you know What are these cats doing or like from the jam ban community like I won't repeat a song for like multiple nights, you know We don't play anything
39:19.664 --> 39:21.365
[SPEAKER_00]: that we played the last two nights.
39:21.465 --> 39:24.566
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you see us for three nights, you're not going to hear a single song repeated.
39:25.226 --> 39:35.049
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that I learned from the dad and fashion, the jam-band community and going out opening with green sky bluegrass and stuff, opening for them and stuff.
39:36.009 --> 39:41.131
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that's like, if I go sit in somewhere,
39:43.310 --> 39:45.850
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've always just, every day is a lesson.
39:46.251 --> 39:56.332
[SPEAKER_00]: If I, throughout my whole career, if some artists invites me up on stage to sing a song, and I spend time to learn that song, I'm gonna play that song in my show.
39:57.332 --> 39:57.652
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
39:58.032 --> 40:00.353
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm gonna do it, you know?
40:00.393 --> 40:03.974
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I take things that I've learned along the way, and I just keep doing that, you know?
40:04.774 --> 40:07.114
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you feel about Bluegrass in 2025?
40:07.154 --> 40:09.874
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you feel about the state of it?
40:09.895 --> 40:11.455
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's doing pretty dang good.
40:11.495 --> 40:12.255
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's cool.
40:13.948 --> 40:31.141
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I was saying earlier, I think there's, we just said a point where there's a lot of stuff happened, and there's a lot of new bands coming out that are killing it and that are, you know, like I see like mountain grass, you need in shadow grass, and these bands that are kind of coming up, and they're just killer pickers, man.
40:31.181 --> 40:33.483
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love it.
40:34.103 --> 40:36.965
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so, just glad to be a part of it.
40:37.346 --> 40:39.127
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't believe I'm already like the old guy, but,
40:42.985 --> 40:56.221
[SPEAKER_02]: You gave great advice, I think, to some of the folks behind IBM and some of the folks within the Bluegrass community about being more inclusive about making sure that everyone's welcome at the table.
40:56.701 --> 41:01.667
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm thinking about a lot of people I saw in the lobby this morning with fiddle cases on their back.
41:02.448 --> 41:19.755
[SPEAKER_02]: and guitars in their hands, and stocking to someone outside, you know, having a smoke, and there's the first ever IBMA, and they were definitely too young to be smoke, and then we were having a grand old chat, you know, you were once that kid at IBMA, with a guitar case, what would you tell those folks here in that same spot?
41:20.395 --> 41:23.997
[SPEAKER_02]: Starting out here at IBMA, you know, wanting to do something.
41:25.232 --> 41:27.053
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I remember my first time here.
41:27.373 --> 41:32.016
[SPEAKER_00]: I got first by police out right off front of the Marriott, down there in Raleigh.
41:32.276 --> 41:32.556
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
41:33.437 --> 41:35.098
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I came there trying to get gigs.
41:35.138 --> 41:37.760
[SPEAKER_00]: And here I am with my hands up against the dam.
41:38.260 --> 41:39.981
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's looking at me filming and stuff.
41:40.361 --> 41:41.462
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, this isn't a showcase.
41:41.522 --> 41:43.623
[SPEAKER_00]: That was my first time at IBM A.M.A.
41:43.703 --> 41:44.544
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, God.
41:48.406 --> 41:51.648
[SPEAKER_00]: You should have seen Robert Greer change his costume in two seconds.
41:54.150 --> 41:55.690
[SPEAKER_00]: He took his shirt and hat off.
41:56.191 --> 41:59.731
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked like some Carl from Aquatine Hunger Force or something.
41:59.771 --> 42:02.992
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, I was the only one left.
42:03.032 --> 42:04.052
[SPEAKER_00]: All my friends scramed.
42:04.092 --> 42:04.652
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting there.
42:05.913 --> 42:08.873
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to IBM Inc. Yeah, no, I don't know.
42:09.033 --> 42:12.474
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first time I came here, we didn't have any showcases.
42:12.514 --> 42:13.434
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we had one.
42:14.474 --> 42:20.816
[SPEAKER_00]: My good friend Dustin Boyd hooked it up to play for Craig out at Tell You Ride and Stuff and those cats.
42:23.161 --> 42:23.821
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all we did.
42:23.842 --> 42:24.642
[SPEAKER_00]: We had one little thing.
42:24.702 --> 42:30.106
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, me and Dan, what we did is we just got a booth right at the show room thing.
42:30.126 --> 42:32.268
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all the, you know, the guitar companies aren't shit.
42:32.628 --> 42:37.211
[SPEAKER_00]: We got one of those, and we handed out cards, and CDs, and everything, you know?
42:37.592 --> 42:38.492
[SPEAKER_02]: So, what's the advice?
42:38.532 --> 42:40.894
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the advice to the first time I be a mayor?
42:40.914 --> 42:41.354
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that that?
42:41.395 --> 42:42.575
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it be doggy?
42:42.635 --> 42:43.716
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it, is it be?
42:45.297 --> 42:46.999
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I mean, watch out for cops.
42:51.364 --> 42:53.906
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what solid advice regardless of the industry billy really?
42:53.926 --> 43:01.292
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you have to know, get out there, man, do some picking, get into the rooms, check some stuff out.
43:01.712 --> 43:03.333
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it's about, it's about the picking.
43:03.673 --> 43:12.380
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's about getting up into them hotel rooms and getting into some late night jams and starting off fast and staying there all night and ending up on the
43:13.272 --> 43:14.173
[SPEAKER_00]: The slower songs.
43:14.193 --> 43:21.559
[SPEAKER_00]: I always notice that about nights of picking, you know, you start off and everybody wants to rip these tunes and then by the end of it, we're bringing Mary home, you know.
43:25.662 --> 43:29.265
[SPEAKER_02]: Last thing, you've said, Bluegrass has saved your life.
43:30.266 --> 43:30.466
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:31.627 --> 43:32.028
[SPEAKER_00]: For sure.
43:33.709 --> 43:34.670
[SPEAKER_00]: Music in general did.
43:36.013 --> 43:42.840
[SPEAKER_00]: As I mentioned earlier, it's always been a coping mechanism and survival tactic and it's the only thing I got.
43:43.260 --> 43:47.385
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any other skills, I mean.
43:48.686 --> 43:49.527
[SPEAKER_00]: I know how to make a bed.
43:51.389 --> 43:52.450
[SPEAKER_00]: From working at the hotel.
43:52.530 --> 43:55.153
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess I could go back to working at the hotel if this thing don't turn out.
43:58.599 --> 44:12.404
[SPEAKER_02]: I was talking to so many people who on the way in here who were telling me that they just kind of wanted to thank you, people who've been in the music industry for a long time and bluegrass for a long time and they just wanted to thank you for bringing so much attention to the music.
44:15.425 --> 44:19.827
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, thank you.
44:22.318 --> 44:27.681
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, you know, and I really appreciate that, but I don't really see myself as like that way.
44:27.921 --> 44:34.425
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's just because I'm me, but I just, you know, there's so many great bands out there that are doing amazing things.
44:34.705 --> 44:49.934
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always just wanted to be a part of a community, you know, and I'm so grateful for, you know, I'm stoked to see, like I said, all my peers and people that I grew up picking with, out there on big stages, working, doing good work, you know?
44:51.218 --> 44:56.061
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it's my honor and duty to wave that flag as high and wide as I can.
44:56.121 --> 45:01.765
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, that's my whole purpose, I think, in life.
45:02.025 --> 45:07.448
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I'm a father now that's kind of taken the first spot.
45:07.748 --> 45:07.988
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:08.629 --> 45:11.190
[SPEAKER_00]: But behind that, I'm an ambassador of this music.
45:11.350 --> 45:17.214
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's always been the main thing in my life till I had my son.
45:18.585 --> 45:20.325
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I got a lot of admiration for you.
45:20.586 --> 45:22.746
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of people in the room have a lot of admiration for you too.
45:22.766 --> 45:25.867
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean that, um, thanks so much for your time today and, uh, thanks so much for the keynote address and thanks for everything, man.
45:25.907 --> 45:26.327
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, guys, man.
45:26.387 --> 45:26.907
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for having me.
45:26.927 --> 45:27.147
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
45:27.167 --> 45:38.450
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
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[SPEAKER_02]: My thanks to Billy Strings, Bill Orner, and the International Bluegrass Music Association for facilitating this conversation.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks a lot for having me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'll come back down whenever you want.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Toy Heart is co-produced by Stephanie Coleman and Me Tom Power in partnership with the Bluegrass situation podcast network.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Our executive producer is Amy right now where Jacob is with help from the entire BGS team, including podcast director Cindy Hous, creative director Shelby Williamson, an editorial director Justin Holtner who I went out for biscuits with the next day.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This episode was edited by Chris Jacobs, our theme song Toy Heart by Bill Monroe was performed by Chris or Critter Eldridge and Christian Andreas.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And you can check out all episodes of Toy Heart and so much more at thebluegrassitueration.com.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Tom Power.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for listening.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you all.