Respect, Psychedelics, and the Future of Bluegrass With Billy Strings
Wong Notes
Premier Guitar
4.9 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The ascendant roots shredder shares intimate details from his musical upbringing and gets philosophical on the past and future of bluegrass.
Millennial folk philosopher Billy Strings joins this episode of Wong Notes. The Grammy-winning acoustic picker is an open book—nothing is off limits with Billy, from recounting his days selling magic mushrooms in exchange for passing grades in math class, to an emotional drunk-driving revelation that might have saved his life.
Now, Strings can recount war stories of playing with his heroes in the bluegrass scene, and learning important lessons from the greats about respect while onstage. Strings is at the intersection of the old and the new, often stuck between the traditionalists and the new era of American folk music. He says he doesn’t belong to one or the other; his music is more of “a goulash of all the things put together.” Speaking of which, Billy and Cory connect for a brilliant mashup of Cory’s funk stylings and Billy’s bluegrass flatpicking, proving that music really can be a universal language.
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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong
Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger
Presented by DistroKid
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's happening? Welcome to Wong Notes podcast. I'm your host, Corey Wong. I'm sitting in the back of the bus right now. I'm out on tour. If you're out on the Western Conference of the U.S., you've got to come check this tour out. It is killing right now. Got my whole band out, 10-piece band, Monica Martin, a special band la loam is opening up these cats are dope |
| 0:24.7 | super cool music it's been fun to watch them every night so check it out if i'm coming to a city |
| 0:31.0 | near you you better be there also very special thing this weekend chinese new New Year, February 10th, in Denver, Mission Ballroom, we're doing a huge Chinese |
| 0:43.5 | New Year party. |
| 0:44.7 | Gong He Fa Choi, we're getting it in! |
| 0:47.5 | I got the lion dancers, the dragons coming out, we got a whole thing, we got the acrobatts, |
| 0:52.7 | I'm dead serious, it's going to be dope, It's going to be fun. Putting the community together. Reached out to some of these cats. They're like, yeah, we're down. Let's do this. Let's throw the dopest Chinese New Year party in all of Denver. And also, for the occasion, we're going to be doing choice cuts from the Wong's Cafe album that was released a little over a year ago. |
| 1:15.4 | Why don't you send me a DM or something? |
| 1:18.0 | Let me know which songs off the Wong's Cafe album you want to hear. |
| 1:21.7 | If you're not familiar, Wong's Cafe, it's an album that put out part of my Wolf Vault. |
| 1:27.1 | Everybody in Wolfpack has been doing a Wolf Vault album. |
| 1:31.0 | This one was named after the restaurant that my family had in Rochester, Minnesota. |
| 1:37.3 | Started decades ago. |
| 1:40.3 | And the album cover is actually a picture of the restaurant from the 1950s, I believe, is when that photo was taken. |
| 1:47.2 | Anyways, come to celebrate Chinese New Year with us in Denver. |
| 1:50.8 | It's going to be fun. Fly in for it. Come on. |
| 1:54.2 | Today on the show, we got the incredible Billy Strings. |
| 1:58.8 | Billy is a great friend, incredible guitar player, singer, songwriter. |
| 2:03.4 | This guy is sick. |
| 2:06.1 | It's been so insane to see the rocket ship that has been his career and artistry over the last several years. |
| 2:13.6 | This is somebody who has so much musical depth and wisdom beyond his years. |
| 2:17.7 | It's just, it's so fun to watch. |
... |
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