High praise for Highway Prayers

Billy Strings and the Best Bluegrass Album of the Year

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If you ever have the good fortune to become a close acquaintance of mine, one of the first things you will discover is that I’m a devoted fan of Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline. My love and esteem for them goes beyond enjoyment of their music; it is a sincere admiration and trust in their character, in everything I have ever heard them say, or seen them do.

Through Willie and his joint work on the song *California Sober, I discovered the music of a more contemporary country musician– who I’ve since come to play almost as regularly. At the Grammy Awards this past Sunday, his album Highway Prayers was *deservedly pronounced the Best Bluegrass Album of the Year. He picks his acoustic named Frankenstein with outrageous dexterity and can lend his voice as easily to strong, sonorous ballads as to the sweetest melancholy melodies.

The man of whom I speak is: Michael Bolton.

… I jest, of course. Billy Strings is the man, and like Willie, he has a few different styles of sound.

His 2016 release *Billy Strings EP* features finger-picking at a tempo so fast, it completely exuses those ridiculous facial contortions, and the unity between him and his fellow band members – Jarrod Walker on the mandolin, Billy Failing on banjo, Royal Masat on double bass, and Alex Hargreaves on fiddle – is tighter than a sports cigarette rolled in Willie’s left hand.

His alternative sound, featured through many tracks on Highway Prayers and Renewal, slips between genres with serene vocals and crisp, cosmic guitar over streams of lilting fiddle. It’s a softer, more versatile sound and I believe, the most accessible for beginner Billy listeners. It’s what I gravitate toward most and what I’d reccomend to anyone interested in discovering the magic of Mr Strings.

So to close, here are my slightly-more-than-eight Desert Island Discs of Billy Strings.

• Stratosphere Blues / I Believe In You
• Show Me The Door
• Gild The Lily
• Don’t Be Calling Me (at 4AM)
• Away From the Mire
• Must Be Seven
• Taking Water
• Enough To Leave
• Love And Regret
• In The Morning Light
• Watch It Fall
• All the Luck in the World
• This Old World
• While I’m Waiting Here

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For those baffled by the Michael Bolton reference…

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