After sitting in with Widespread Panic during all three nights of the band’s New Year’s Eve run in Atlanta, Billy Strings kicked off 2026 at a star-studded, invitation-only picking party in his adopted hometown of Nashville, TN.
The annual gathering hosted by mandolinist Tim O’Brien and his wife Jan Fabricius at their Nashville home brought together some of the finest players in bluegrass and roots music, including Béla Fleck, Michael Cleveland, Sam Grisman, Mike Bub, Shawn Camp, Otis Gibbs, Jeff White, Sam Lock, Colin O’Brien, Robert Bowlin, Maddie Denton, Maddie Combs, and more, along with some of their children, who got to jam along with the masters.
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The evening took an unexpected turn when Nashville guitarist Guthrie Trapp invited another legendary Billy to join—ZZ Top‘s Billy Gibbons. According to Trapp, who documented the evening in a video posted to his YouTube channel, Gibbons entered a room full of strangers and was “flabbergasted by all the music that was going on right there in front of him.”
“I love that the worlds were colliding last night,” Trapp said. “I got to be kind of the facilitator.”
Check out clips from the jam session below. Start the last video from the beginning to here Guthrie Trapp describe how the night unfolded.
Strings is off until February, when he returns to Athens, GA for two sold-out shows, followed by four sold-out shows Asheville’s ExploreAsheville.com Arena and a three-night run in Nashville culminating in his return to The Mother Church of Country Music, Ryman Auditorium. Tickets for Strings two shows at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena are available here. For the sold-out shows, try your luck on Ticketmaster, StubHub, Vivid Seats, or CashorTrade.
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