After shaking off any dust by sitting in with Zach Top on Thursday, Billy Strings launched his winter tour on Friday with his first of three nights at Ball Arena in Denver. The well-oiled touring band staged a warp-speed-paced performance, already appearing in mid-tour form despite a three-week absence from the stage following Strings’ three-set New Year’s Eve spectacle in New Orleans. Friday also saw Strings and his band bust out The Beatles‘ “Rocky Racoon” for the first time since August 9th, 2023, per BMFSDB.

The first-ever “Wargasm” opener, usually a late set anchor, was a bold start to the weekend and gave a palpable sense that this was going be a wild one from the get-go. While Strings is not overtly political in his personal or artistic personas, the rumination on the futility of war could have been construed as a (not-so-subtle) nod to the incoming presidential administration.

Billy Strings — “Wargasm” [Pro-Shot] — 1/24/25

Once finished, Strings stretched, craned his ear to the crowd’s cheers, and smiled broadly at the heartfelt and thunderous welcome from the audience. The first set was a fine assortment of familiar Strings standards, mixed with plenty of kind words for the Mile High City including some wistful words reflecting on a 2014 gig at the Twisted Pine Brewing Company, as Strings recalled, one of his first performances in the city. Attesting his love for the area, Billy vowed to make the weekend something to remember. Later noting “This is probably the most people we’ve ever played [to] before, inside of a building,” that promise to give it his all is one Billy and his band seem to make to themselves, and keep, night in and night out.

Their comfort together showed throughout the set. With such talented and steady support from Jarrod Walker on mandolin, Royal Masat on bass, Billy Failing on the five-string banjo, and fiddler Alex Hargreaves, it’s not as if Strings ever has any reason to doubt their chances for success. Whether it was one of the many cover tunes from the first stanza such as “The Likes Of Me” (Jerry Reed), which Strings and his band quickly followed with a free-flowing journey through originals “Pyramid County”, “Know It All” and “Show Me The Door”, the tempos pulsed and ebbed in an amazing display of precision and confidence.

Billy Strings — “Show Me The Door” — 1/24/25

[Video: steelemedia]

Following a swift but enjoyable run through David Grisman’s “E.M.D.”, the band reeled off another multi-song chunk that included more originals “Doin’ Things Right” and “Living Like an Animal” ahead of The Emmitt-Nershi Band’s “New Country Blues”. After a final one-two punch of “On the Line” and The Osborne Brothers’ “ Ruby Are You Mad”, Strings and company retreated backstage to gather themselves for the second stage of acceleration towards orbit.

Though the tunes in the second round were slightly more cover-heavy with songs from Bill Emerson (“Home of the Red Fox”), The Stanley Brothers (“How Mountain Girls Can Love“), and The Beatles (A rollicking “Rocky Raccoon”), Strings managed to inject each tune with plenty of his own special musical mixture of raw energy, talent, and heart. “Rocky Raccoon” last appeared in Hamburg, Germany on Billy’s 2023 international summer sojourn, and hasn’t been seen on American soil since August 10th, 2022 in Montana.

Billy Strings — “Rocky Raccoon” (The Beatles) — 1/24/25

[Video: MrTopdogger]

If Billy Strings wasn’t lighting the night on fire with his high-wire pyrotechnics, he was tripping the light fantastic in psychedelic breaks from time and space, such as the always enjoyable “Meet Me At The Creek” jam section. Coupled with Strings’ six-string prowess, his emotive voice works equally well on cold-hearted murder ballads like “My Alice” as it does with more fierce originals like “The Fire on My Tongue”.

The timer running out on the evening, Strings and company decided to forgo the somewhat tired pretense of leaving the stage as if done for the evening and simply ran out the clock with a few more choice covers, Johnny Horton’s “Ole Slew-Foot” and a show-closing “Drifter’s Escape” from Bob Dylan. Promising plenty more where that came from, Strings and his band closed out the night with everyone cheering madly at the magnificent display of musical mayhem they had just witnessed, and rightly so.

If Billy Strings and his band intended to start the weekend off with a bang then he and his musical compadres managed to hit that mark and soar beyond. The opening night trajectory was aimed for out of this world and far from any sort of musical apex…much like Strings and his band themselves. In one of the earliest tunes of the night Strings lyrically nodded to the “speed of sound” but in the end, the better measurement of their speed is probably the speed of light.

As Billy noted during the set, it’s just wild that in 2025 enough people are interested in bluegrass music to pack a massive venue like the Ball Arena. Strings, ever humble, was kind to say that so many folks had gathered for the genre itself and not to just watch in disbelief as he blasted up and down the fretboard with delirious delight. Judging from the steady rate of ascent there is no outer limit yet found for where he and his band might revel, and his fans are the lucky ones, strapped down and completely committed to enjoying the ride.

Billy Strings returns to Ball Arena in Denver tonight, January 25th, for his second of three shows. Find tickets on Ticketmaster and tune in for a subscriber-exclusive livestream on nugs. Not a nugs subscriber? Start with a seven-day free trial. [Editor’s Note: Live For Live Music is a nugs affiliate. Ordering your nugs subscription or purchasing a download via the links on this page helps support our coverage of the world of live music. Thank you for reading!]

Billy Strings — “Drifter’s Escape” (Bob Dylan) — 1/24/25

[Video: MrTopdogger]

Setlist: Billy Strings | Ball Arena | Denver, CO | 1/24/25

Set One: Wargasm, The Lonesome River (The Stanley Brothers & The Clinch Mountain Boys) The Likes of Me (Jerry Reed) > Pyramid Country > Know It All > Show Me the Door, E.M.D. (The David Grisman Quintet), Doin’ Things Right, Living Like an Animal > New Country Blues (Emmit-Nershi Band), On the Line > Ruby Are You Mad (The Osborne Brothers)
Set One: Home of the Red Fox (Bill Emerson) > How Mountain Girls Can Love (The Stanley Brothers), Rocky Raccoon (The Beatles) [1], Escanaba, Gild the Lily, Meet Me at the Creek, Ashland Breakdown (Bill Monroe), My Alice, The Fire on My Tongue > Ole Slew-Foot (Johnny Horton), Drifter’s Escape (Bob Dylan)

[1] LTP 8/9/23

Words: Rex Thomson