David Marchese, The Interview: Billy Strings Escaped the Darkness. He’s Playing to Not Go Back. NYTimes, August 10, 2026.
Billy Strings has drawn from something old to do something entirely new. The singer and virtuoso guitarist, who is 33, has broken ground by using the elements of traditional bluegrass to become an arena-filling, chart-topping phenomenon, straddling the worlds of roots music and jam bands. Along the way he has also acquired a Deadhead-like legion of fans who follow his tours from concert to concert.
As improbable as it is that Strings can sell out cavernous venues across the country while playing bluegrass classics — in addition to his own introspective compositions, which he and his drummerless band often spin into long improvisations — it’s even more surprising when you know the path he took to get there. Strings, whose real name is William Apostol, was surrounded by poverty and drug addiction in his family growing up in small-town Michigan. Those demons have continued to haunt him: Strings’s mother died from a drug overdose last year at 64 years old. That loss inspired much of the music on his beautiful new album, “So Much for Goodbyes,” due out Aug. 28. He discussed the genesis of that album, among many other things, in our heart-wrenching conversation, which took place during a rare day off from his summer tour.
Well into the interview:
How does playing music help process the feelings that you have, whether it’s about your mom or anything else? It’s always been my coping mechanism, survival strategy and my medicine. Playing bluegrass music, it’s like a portal back to my childhood, back before I knew anything dirty about the earth. And it’s a way for me to go back to a time that was just beautiful and full of light, growing up playing music with my dad. And then songwriting is my cathartic and therapeutic way of dealing with things. I think sublimation is one of my main characteristics. Instead of letting this hard stuff drag me down, I try to make art from it, make lemonade, if you will.
A bit later:
When did you realize that you had a real gift for the guitar? That was early on. I started playing when I was about 4 years old. By the time I was 6 or 7, I could carry a tune, and I was my dad’s rhythm player. He would play all the lead and do all the fancy picking and singing, and I would hold down the rhythm. One of the biggest moments for me was I was sitting in my dad’s bedroom with him, as I would basically do every night, and he was teaching me the song “Beaumont Rag.” We would play the tune and I would mess up the second part every time. And I stopped us right in the middle of the song and said, “Why don’t you just play it and let me listen?” And so that’s what we did. Instead of trying to count, I listened to what he was playing. I listened to the melody. Then I was like, “All right, let me try it again,” and I nailed it. He was awful proud. He called my grandma, made her listen on the phone. That was a big moment for me. That’s when this listening thing started: I was able to listen to the music more intently and I could tell what chord was coming next. I used to think it was magic or something. I had no concept of music theory or anything. But my dad would play a G chord and then he would play a G seventh and my ear would just lead me. I’d be like, Well, the next chord’s probably going to be a C, and then it would be. It’s better to learn bluegrass and folk and hillbilly music that way than to try to learn from some academic point of view. It’s better to learn it on the back porch and to let it get under your skin, because then it’s not some equation, it’s a feeling. It comes from your soul.
Before shows:
I read an article about you that talked about how before shows, you used to get real anxious and have stomach pain. Is that still an issue? I definitely get nervous before a show. Sometimes moments before I’m walking onstage, I feel like I might pass out. I’ve just got to get into the first song or two, and halfway through the show I’m the complete opposite. I have all this energy. I feel great. I feel super confident, almost cocky even. There is that expectation from the crowd to do something amazing, and also that expectation from myself to always do better than I did the night before, because this is my livelihood and this is my life, and deep in the back of my mind, I’m scared that this is all going to go away, and maybe I’ll have to go back to the way life was when it was really hard. There’s this little devil on my shoulder that tells me I don’t deserve any of this, and thinks that I should be in some little trailer somewhere addicted to drugs, not a penny to my name. So it does feel like I’m playing for my survival a lot. Each time I walk onstage, I’m playing so that I don’t have to go back there.
Of course there is more at the link.
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