This year marks the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and Michigan-born bluegrass whiz Billy Strings finished his spring tour with a tribute to the Great Lakes marine tragedy. Strings and his band closed out their third of three nights at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary, NC with Gordon Lightfoot‘s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, written for the 29 men who lost their lives when the SS Edmund Fitzgerald freighter sank in Lake Superior on November 10th, 1975.
There was plenty more to like at Billy Strings’ Saturday closer ahead of the Gordon Lightfoot cover. After taking off with “Taking Water” and the instrumental “Ice Bridges”, the band dug deep for a 16-minute take on “Thunder”. The jams sandwiched around Robert Hunter‘s lyrics fluctuated from intense psychedelic psychosis to blissful major chord arena rock soloing. It was a good sign of things to come, followed later with a beastly “Living Like An Animal” > “New Country Blues” and first set-closing trio of “Be Your Man” > “Thirst Mutilator” > “Hollow Heart”.
Strings started the second set solo on “Groundhog” before grabbing his clawhammer banjo for “Country Blues”. Billy Failing, Royal Masat, Alex Hargreaves, and Jarrod Walker then returned for “Secrets” and stayed by Billy’s side for the rest of the show. The centerpiece of the second set, if not the whole show, arrived with a 25-minute “Turmoil and Tinfoil”. The song on the Mount Rushmore of Billy Strings’ jam vehicles allowed the band to run out all the gas left in the tank before the band goes back in the shed until Willie Nelson‘s Outlaw Music Festival next month. The sizable jam gave each member of the band the space to shine, with Failing and Walker making considerable impacts before Strings turned on his distortion and got the last word.
Billy Strings — “Turmoil And Tinfoil” — 4/19/25
[Video: KawnipiLake]
A wholesome highlight of the show arrived a bit later when the band staged an impromptu instrumental “Happy Birthday” after seeing a sign for a boy named Keller’s tenth birthday. Still not quite out of gas, Strings and his band raced across the finish line of the second set with a 14-minute “End of the Rainbow”.
Returning to the Koka Booth stage one more time, the band entered a spacey, etheral introductory jam. It wasn’t until after almost four minutes that it revealed the familiar tide of chords from “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. Saturday marked Strings’ third-ever performance of the song, following its last airing in New Orleans on December 29th, 2024 and its debut in Cologne, Germany on November 10th, 2023—the disaster’s 48th anniversary. Though in recent years the song has become meme fodder for the viral generations, Strings delivered the song with the same reverence he gives to the centuries of bluegrass music he has preserved and introduced to many of those same younger fans.
Watch Billy Strings cover “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and other videos from Cary, NC. The full show is available to stream on nugs. Not a nugs subscriber yet? Sign up here. [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 will return to touring next month when he joins Willie’s traveling Outlaw Festival for a run of West Coast dates. Find tickets and tour dates here.
Billy Strings — “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald” (Gordon Lightfoot) — 4/19/25
[Video: Beth Boylan]
Setlist [via BillyBase]: Billy Strings | Koka Booth Amphitheatre | Cary, NC | 4/19/25
Set One: Taking Water > Ice Bridges, Must Be Seven > Thunder (Robert Hunter) [1], Greenville Trestle High (James Jett) [2], Gone A Long Time, Living Like An Animal > New Country Blues (Emmitt-Nershi Band), Be Your Man > Thirst Mutilator > Hollow Heart
Set Two: Groundhog (Traditional) [3], Country Blues (“Dock” Boggs) [4], Secrets > How Mountain Girls Can Love (The Stanley Brothers & The Clinch Mountain Boys), Escanaba, Turmoil & Tinfoil, Tennessee Stud (Jimmie Driftwood), Happy Birthday To You (Cliff Richard), Running The Route [5] > End Of The Rainbow (Frank Wakefield)
Encore: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot)
[1] “Must Be Seven” teases
[2] Last Time Played 2024-04-13 | 71 show gap
[3] Billy Strings solo front of stage
[4] Billy Strings solo on clawhammer banjo front of stage
[5] After noticing a birthday sign in the crowd, Billy led the crowd and band in a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for Keller’s 10th birthday.