Having worked alongside fiddle and mandolin player Don Julin along with other apprenticeships in the past, this new album is Billy Strings spreading his own wings for the first time, and soaring. This is what come of age prodigy and revered bluegrass player Billy Strings does in his debut solo LP Turmoil & Tinfoil. While some try to sell you on the idea that adhering to certain genres or traditional instrumentation is a severe limitation on creativity, some of the most brilliant musicians are the ones who are able to work within the confines of severe limitations and still tap into originality and undiscovered musical vistas that dazzle the spirit in unique ways. Songwriting is one way you can delineate yourself and find a space unique in the genre, like we’ve seen from younger stars like Sarah Jarosz and Sierra Hull.
#Turmoil and tinfoil professional
With so many young students of bluegrass benefiting from the access to instruction and instruments these days, and the abundance of established maestros at every station in scores of professional bluegrass outfits, it really takes something exceptional to separate itself from the norm of blinding extemporaneous mastery that persists in the discipline. Though this may seem the polar opposite of the perfectitude of Del McCoury’s hairdo, it’s the ability of bluegrass to unlock certain realms of your mind that make this very strict art form a portal to endless sonic possibilities. While the top names in country have virtually no commonality with where the genre started, you can still hear the ghost of Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys in the turns of the mandolin and the fiddle in a bluegrass reel, and feel the primordial pull of wood and wire articulating rhythms and melodies that are both delightfully arcane and infinitely timeless, reminding you of days past, yet still prescient in their scope and importance as the days they were first discovered.ĭespite the buttoned-up, strict adherence to certain guidelines and instrumentation that bluegrass complies to, it is the complexity of the art form that has always made it a springboard to even greater musical landscapes, becoming a starting point for jam bands and psychedelic explorers to set off in expansive journeys to the edges of recorded music. In a word, Billy Strings is a modern-day musical virtuoso.If you’re looking for the sphere of country music where the most strict adherence to the roots of the genre still reside, it’s most certainly in bluegrass. The compositional fortitude is so soaring, it opens up recess in your mind that are otherwise inaccessible. "The only way to describe the Billy Strings live experience is like tripping without acid. while this latest effort does boast chops and energy in spades, he's also a talented lyricist, telling honest, often painful tales about addiction, incarceration, racism, and remaining positive in the face of negativity and, of course, turmoil." - American Songwriter, by Brittney McKennaīilly was also named one of Rolling Stone Country's "10 New Country Artists You Need to Know: August 2017", received the IBMA 2016 Momentum Awards Instrumentalist of the Year (for guitar, banjo and mandolin) and was voted #1 in The Bluegrass Situation's Top 16 of (20)16. living, breathing thing with the scorching technicality of speed metal or jazz and the raw ferocity of punk rock." - No Depression, by Corbie Hill Of special note is a virtuosic duet between Billy and bluegrass guitarist Bryan Sutton on "Salty Sheep" that shows the speed, precision, and creative craftsmanship of bluegrass when it's done right. Rich with special guests, Turmoil & Tinfoil shows off Billy's East Nashville community of picking friends, among them Miss Tess, Molly Tuttle, John Mailander, Shad Cobb and Peter Madcat Ruth. Returning to his home state of Michigan, Billy enlisted acoustic roots wizard Glenn Brown (Greensky Bluegrass) as producer, and centered the music around his new band, featuring Drew Matulich on mandolin with banjo prodigy Billy Failing and much-loved Nashville bassist Brad Tucker. The tricky part of making the new album, Turmoil & Tinfoil, was translating Billy Strings' incendiary live show into the studio. He's one of the most beloved young bluegrass guitarists today within the bluegrass community, and his front porch in East Nashville is constantly filled up with Nashville's best roots musicians just picking up a storm. His new album, Turmoil & Tinfoil, taps into a deep vein of psychedelia in Americana, referencing everything from the Dead to Sturgill Simpson, but all underlaid by Billy's undeniable virtuosity and his knowledge of the roots of American music. Billy Strings plays hard and he lives hard, picking so fast and intensely that he's known to break multiple strings per song, and basing the songs he writes on the hard lives he grew up around in the abandoned rural communities of America.
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