At a venue where Billy Strings has been known to throw out a surprise or two, the bluegrass guitarist did the most surprising thing of all by including no covers or special guests. Sunday’s tour closer at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium saw Billy Strings and his band play an entire show of originals, celebrating the ever-expanding songbook that has brought them Grammys and sold-out stages worldwide.
In years past, Strings has staged full-scale tributes to MTV Unplugged and traditional church music, complete with added instrumentation and appropriate wardrobe. Other times, he’s welcomed cavalcades of special guests, including Les Claypool and the late Bob Weir. With this history of spectacular unpredictability and the Mother Church of Country Music’s intimate 2,362 capacity, Billy Strings’ Ryman shows are the most coveted tickets on his touring calendar, fetching outlandish prices on the secondary market and ridiculous trade offers in his myriad online fan pages.
So with all of that in mind, the most unexpected and punk thing Billy Strings could do at the Ryman was to play a straight-ahead, no-theatrics show of all originals. In many ways, the setlist looked like it could have come from any of the eight regular shows that preceded it in Athens, GA; Asheville, NC; and two sold-out nights at Nashville’s nearby, 20,000-capacity Bridgestone Arena, featuring guest appearances from Edgar Winter and Ronnie McCoury.
While Sunday’s tour closer lacked any overt setlist frills, it featured plenty of the open-ended improvisation that has made Strings (one of) the heir apparents to Phish and the Grateful Dead. The second set saw just eight songs in 65 minutes, centered around a 31-minute run of “Fire Line” > “Thirst Mutilator” > “Running” that epitomized why kids and old heads alike follow Strings from town to town, amassing miles, (virtual) ticket stubs, and so many damn clothespins along the way.
Strings filled the sinister “Fire Line” with the sharp, distorted guitar soloing of his heavy metal days. From the song’s outro, Strings, Billy Failing, Royal Masat, Jarrod Walker, and Alex Hargreaves meandered in a shapeless, ambient psychedelic bridge out of the Grateful Dead “Space” playbook, emerging into intricate instrumental “Thirst Mutilator”. The clean tones and guitar, mando, and fiddle runs contrasted the hard edge of “Fire Line” and the freeform “Thirst Mutilator” intro, before finally settling into the galloping tempo of the traditional-minded “Running”. In the span of half an hour, Strings went from heavy metal “shredding” to Grateful Dead psychedelic wandering to progressive bluegrass breakdowns to trad-grass composition. And that’s all the theatrics you really need at a Billy Strings show.
Billy Strings — “Fire Line” — 2/22/26 — Partial
[Video: Ohio Grown Live Music Archive]
Billy Strings — “Thirst Mutilator” > “Running” — 2/22/26
[Video: Ohio Grown Live Music Archive]
The eight-song second set left plenty of time on the board for the encore, and the band put them to good use on a 13-minute “Hide and Seek”. After one more lengthy jam that stretched the boundaries of what constitutes “bluegrass”—in a room so defined by tradition—Billy Strings’ 2026 winter tour came to a close with the climactic and authoritative final syncopated strums of “Hide and Seek”. The band took their bows, and it was over.
Billy Strings — “Hide And Seek” — 2/22/26
[Video: Ohio Grown Live Music Archive]
Check out video highlights from Billy Strings’ 2026 Ryman show, and stream the full concert on nugs. [Editor’s note: Live For Live Music is a nugs affiliate. Ordering your subscription or purchasing a download via the links on this page helps support our work covering the world of live music. Thanks for reading!]
Strings will return to the Ryman on Saturday for an all-star celebration of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. After that, he is off until April when the band starts a spring tour with three nights in St. Augustine, FL (4/2–4/4). Find tickets and tour dates here.
Billy Strings — “The Fire On My Tongue” > “Bronzeback” — 2/22/26
Setlist [via BillyBase]: Billy Strings | Ryman Auditorium | Nashville, TN | 2/22/26
Set One: The Fire On My Tongue > Bronzeback, Be Your Man, Everything’s The Same > Cabin Song, Catch and Release [1], Dos Banjos [2], Hellbender, Heartbeat Of America, Gone A Long Time, Running The Route > Hollow Heart
Set Two: Leadfoot [3], Fire Line > Thirst Mutilator > Running, Watch It Fall, Leaders, Doin’ Things Right, The Beginning of the End
Encore: Hide and Seek
[1] Billy Strings solo
[2] Dos Billys (Billy Strings on clawhammer banjo and Billy Failing on banjo)
[3] Billy Strings on his Masterton ML-1: Missing Link Béla Fleck Baritone Banjo & Billy Failing on Guitar