Billy Strings proved bluegrass is arena-worthy at T-Mobile

June 15, 2025

Nick Spacek, Kylee Gregg,

Billy Strings. // photo by Kylee Gregg

Billy Strings
T-Mobile Center
Wednesday, June 11

There is something truly mind-bending about seeing bluegrass guitar virtuoso Billy Strings in concert that goes beyond just seeing the musician and his four bandmates perform with astonishing proficiency. The brain-melting light and video projections are part of the whole getting your jaw dropped to the ground aspect of it all, but what I kept coming back to time and time again was the fact that this was a five-piece roots music band playing bluegrass, mostly acoustically, in an arena.

Looking out, the crowd wasn’t much different than what you’d find in front of the stage at any jamgrass show in the region. There were bucket hats, a ton of tie-dye, people spinning in circles as they danced, and an unfortunate smattering of white guys with dreads, as per usual, but there were just so very many people to see an artist whose media exposure is pretty much limited to community and public radio airplay.

Billy Strings. // photo by Kylee Gregg

For all of the effects pedals through which Strings runs his pedals, taking songs from furious picking to washes of electrified distortion, at its heart, these are bluegrass tunes I’m familiar with from unamplified back patio jam sessions, and seeing thousands of people lose their collective shit to a Johnny Horton song on a Wednesday night will likely never be something I can quite wrap my head around.

On the way back to the car after the three hour, two-set extravaganza, my brother and I were trying to puzzle out just who Billy Strings’ analog might be. Bela Fleck and his newgrass came to mind, as obviously did the likes of Phish and the Dead and their massive fanbases sans commercial mainstream media acceptance, but I can’t help but think that Billy Strings is most similar to Carlos Santana.

Much like Santana, Billy Strings is taking the music on which he grew up and running it through a psychedelic filter, stretching songs to their limits and coming back to the root of them time and time again. With Santana, it was the likes of Tito Puente and with Strings, it’s Doc Watson, but the similarities remain.

Billy Strings. // photo by Kylee Gregg

What made the show so great was the way in which Strings constructs his setlist. For every eight-minute period of stretching out, there’s a straightforward number where he and the band tackle a song in about three minutes, and that was even reflected in how the two sets opened.

The first set’s opening pairing of “Pyramid Country” and “Hide and Seek” were very big and stretched way, way out to kick things off, whereas the second set saw Strings and his bandmates clustered around a condenser mic trading off licks on three traditional bluegrass tunes like they were auditioning to open for Del McCoury. The acknowledgement of traditional styles, while also being willing to push the limits of just what roots music can be, is what has taken Billy Strings from opening a free Split Lip Rayfield concert on Lawrence’s Mass Street to headlining arenas in Kansas City in less than seven years.

All photos by Kylee Gregg

Billy Strings setlist
Set 1:
Pyramid Country
Hide and Seek
In the Clear
Billy in the Lowground (traditional)
My Alice
Freeborn Man (Keith Allison cover)
Don’t Be Calling Me (At 4am)
Seney Stretch
St. James Hospital (traditional)
Hellbender
Heartbeat of America
Pretty Daughter (Danny Barnes cover)

Set 2:
Give the Fiddler a Dram (traditional)
Whistling Rufus (traditional)
Ragtime Annie (traditional)
Catch & Release
Richard Petty
Dark Hollow (Bill Browning and His Echo Valley Boys cover)
Seven Weeks in County
Miss the Mississippi and You (Jimmie Rodgers cover)
She Left Me Standing On the Mountain (Alton Delmore cover)
Malfunction Junction
The Fire on My Tongue
Ole Slew-Foot (Johnny Horton cover)
Psycho (Eddie Noack cover)
Thunder (Robert Hunter cover)
Know It All
Old Mexico (Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives cover)
Dust in a Baggie (Billy Strings & Don Julin song)