Watch Billy Strings Jam With Chris Thile & Punch Brothers For 'The Energy Curfew Music Hour' [Videos]

Billy Strings joined Chris Thile and Punch Brothers on Saturday to help kick off season two of The Energy Curfew Music Hour podcast at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City.

Created by Chris Thile and his wife Claire Coffee and hosted by Thile and Punch Brothers (Brittany Haas, Noam Pikelny, Chris Eldridge, and Paul Kowert), The Energy Curfew Music Hour is a musical variety show that takes place in a fictional future “when diminishing resources and extreme weather have ushered in a worldwide effort to ration electricity,” hence the “energy curfew.” The show “hits the airwaves an hour before the lights go out while the nation tunes in and turns off together before the Dark Day,” a 24-hour period where the power grid goes down completely and everyone lives electricity-free.

Tickets for the live recording sold out well before Billy Strings’ participation was even confirmed, with last-minute “rush tickets” disappearing instantly. Resale prices soared, ranging from $226 to a staggering $1,200. Fortunately, fan-shot videos have surfaced, offering fans a glimpse of the electrifying performance ahead of the episode’s official release.

Strings and Thile’s rapid-fire picking styles perfectly complemented each other as they tore through a number of bluegrass tunes, including “Escanaba”, “Make Me Down A Pallet On Your Floor”, “Malfunction Junction”, “Richard Petty”, and more. Thile also took time between songs to ask Billy about his sources of inspiration and life-long love of bluegrass. At one point, he recalled when Strings told him about his plan to jam with fans in the campground at Telluride Bluegrass Festival and how shocked he was when he heard that he had actually done it.

“I found it so inspiring, the joy, the musical joy, the joy of all kinds emanating from this man,” Thile remembered. “And I wanna know from you, where do you think that comes from? Where does this joy spring from?”

“I think a very big part of it is the relationship with my father,” Strings replied. “He taught me the music, and when I was a kid I grew up playing bluegrass, and then I took some different little paths and got into Sabbath and some heavy metal and some different stuff along the way, but I really came back to bluegrass because it’s in my heart and it reminds me of my dad and just being a kid and first learning how to tie my shoes, before I knew anything dirty about the earth.”

After the main Energy Curfew Music Hour show concluded, Strings stuck around for an encore jam session featuring “Doin’ My Time”, “99 Years is Almost for Life”, “Stone Walls and Steel Bars”, and a sequence of “New Camptown Races” > “Pretty Daughter” > “New Camptown Races”.

Check out videos and photos of Billy Strings with Chris Thile and Punch Brothers from The Energy Curfew Music Hour below.

This marks the latest high-profile collaboration between Thile and Strings, who crossed paths several times throughout 2024. First, Strings helped Thile close the book on his last concert series—The 65th Street Sessions—with help from Cory Henry in February. Just days later, Strings and Thile performed together on CBS Saturday Morning. Then in the summer, they linked up one more time for a special duo set to open Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado.