Billy Strings settled into his temporary Home on Friday with his second of six shows in Asheville, NC. The penultimate show of Strings’ first of two, three-show weekends at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena highlighted the vast stylistic diversity that has made the guitarist a crossover star in the jam band and traditional bluegrass circles.

Though Strings and his bandmates Billy Failing (banjo), Royal Masat (bass), Jarrod Walker (mandolin), and Alex Hargreaves (fiddle) came charging out of the gate with the trad-grass instrumental “Bronzeback”, set one’s style saw the bandleader leaning on some of his more contemporary influences. After adding a new train song to the arsenal with The Stanley Brothers‘ “I Hear A Choo Choo Coming”—the only train song of Friday’s show—Billy got a bit more with the times via Pink Floyd‘s lofty “Fearless”. The serene Meddle track was the second Floyd cover in as many days, following Thursday’s “Brain Damage” which recalled memories of Billy’s Wizard of Oz Halloween run at the same Asheville arena in 2021.

Billy Strings — “Bronzeback” > “I Hear A Choo Choo Coming” (The Stanley Brothers And The Clinch Mountain Boys), “Fearless” (Pink Floyd) [Pro-Shot] — 2/7/25

“Bride” Preston-Thompson D-SBA custom acoustic guitar in hand, Strings took an eerie amble down the title track to his 2019 album Home—the first of six songs in the 30-track show from the Grammy-winning breakthrough album. As the song opened up into a bit of brooding psychedelia, Strings reeled off a guitar solo that would’ve been right at home on an electric guitar in a regular jam band. This style of playing, as opposed to traditional bluegrass flatpicking, would be ever-present throughout the first set and shape the improvisation on “Running The Route” > “Running” and the explosive set-closing “Thunder”.

Between Guitar Hero moments, Strings sent his bandmates off for a solo, seated interlude. The quick hits on “Catch and Release”, “Lonely At The Top”, “Brown’s Ferry Blues”, and a belated holiday celebration on “Groundhog”—intermittently interrupted by an uncooperative guitar that required consistent tuning—offered a chance for some fancy pickin’. With the band back, the group’s full instrumentation was brought into focus on “Running The Route”, particularly Jarrod Walker’s structural runs up the mandolin.

Billy Strings — “Lonely At The Top” (Don Cook, Chick Rains, Keith Whitley) — 2/7/25

[Video: Billy the Kid]

Billy Strings — “Browns Ferry Blues” (Delmore Brothers) — 2/7/25

[Video: Billy the Kid]

Despite picking up plenty of speed on “Running The Route” > “Running”, Strings decided to hit the breaks for Turmoil & Tinfoil rarity “All of Tomorrow”, a decision that halted the set’s growing momentum and would be an unfortunate harbinger of things to come in a show that felt energetically uneven. That down-shift in inertia notwithstanding, the titular guitar player and his band built things back up to a roaring peak with a patient, 18-minute take on the Robert Hunter-penned “Thunder”. The lengthy intro once again gave Billy Strings a chance to work out his fretboard with playing that would’ve been just as natural on a Les Paul or Stratocaster, and some “Voodoo Child”-reminiscent palm-muted riffing previewed a full-blown Jimi Hendrix tribute to come. Improvisationally, “Thunder” marked a high point of a show that featured some stellar playing throughout, though never quite took from a jamming perspective.

Set two witnessed a complete change of pace, starting with single-mic versions of”Richard Petty”, “Standing In The Need Of Prayer”, and “Uncle Pen”. Whereas the first set was largely geared toward Billy’s playing—both electric and acoustic—the second frame put the spotlight on the full band’s playing in a traditional bluegrass context. In the ethereal ambient jam of “Away From The Mire”, the band moved as one as each member fed off one another to push the song forward, a theme they picked back up on a delightfully chaotic “Highway Hypnosis”, pressed toward calamity by blinding flashing white strobe lights.

A nice nod to Townes Van Zandt on “Don’t Let the Sunshine Fool Ya” provided a sweet singalong while a cover of Leftover Salmon‘s “Down in the Hollow” proved to be the sleeper pick of the set, waking up the second half of the show with barn-burning bluegrass fueled by Jarrod and Failing. Outside of Billy himself, Jarrod emerged as a star of the second frame by serving as an integral instigator for the orthodox around-the-horn bluegrass vamps, including on Béla Fleck‘s “Slipstream”.

To cap off his Hendrix-reminiscent playing all night long, Billy Strings offered the seventh-ever performance of Jimi’s “Love Or Confusion”—a first for the Eastern United States, per BillyBase. Ironically, however, the song was kept to a lean 3:30 minutes as the band continued dishing out songs in what felt like a search for proper punctuation to end the set. When in doubt, Billy went back to the basics for John Hartford‘s “With A Vamp in the Middle” and Bill Monroe‘s “Southern Flavor” to close the set. With just a few minutes left on the board, the band came back for an encore of “Be Your Man” and a farewell “I’m Gone, Long Gone” to end at the stroke of 11 p.m.

Tickets for Billy Strings’ Asheville run are quite sold out, but you can always try CashOrTrade. If you can’t make it to the show, nugs is streaming the entire run to subscribers at no additional cost. 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!]

Setlist [via BillyBase]: Billy Strings | ExploreAsheville.com Arena | Asheville, NC | 2/7/25

Set One: Bronzeback > I Hear a Choo Choo Coming (The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys) [1], Fearless (Pink Floyd) [2], Home [2], Dig A Little Deeper In The Well (Roger Bowling, Jody Emerson) [3], Catch and Release [4], Lonely At The Top (Don Cook, Chick Rains, Keith Whitley) [4], Brown’s Ferry Blues (Delmore Brothers) [4], Groundhog (Traditional) [4], Running The Route > Running, All Of Tomorrow [5], Thunder (Robert Hunter)
Set Two: Richard Petty [6], Standing In The Need Of Prayer (Traditional) [7], Uncle Pen (Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys) [7], Nothing’s Working, John Deere Tractor (Lawrence Hammond), Away From The Mire, Long Forgotten Dream, Don’t Let the Sunshine Fool Ya (Townes Van Zandt), Down In The Hollow (Leftover Salmon), Highway Hypnosis, Slipstream (Béla Fleck), Enough To Leave, Love Or Confusion (Jimi Hendrix Experience) [8], With A Vamp In The Middle (John Hartford) > Southern Flavor (Bill Monroe)
Encore: Be Your Man, I’m Gone, Long Gone (Don Reno) [9]

[1] FTP
[2] Billy Strings on his “Bride” Preston-Thompson D-SBA Custom guitar
[3] Last Time Played 2024-03-01 | 55 Shows
[4] Billy Strings solo on a stool, front of stage
[5] Last Time Played 2024-04-19 | 50 Shows
[6] Full band, minus Alex, around single mic, front of stage
[7] Full band around single mic, front of stage
[8] Last Time Played 2023-10-06 | 89 Shows
[9] Last Time Played 2023-12-31 | 62 Shows

Train songs: 1 (I Hear A Choo Choo Coming)