For any Telluride prognosticators looking to the headliner at Planet Bluegrass’ yet-to-be determined, yet-to-be approved new summer event on Aug. 22-23, it’s worth keeping Billy Strings in mind as a potential pick.
As the Telluride Commission for Community Assistance, Arts and Special Events prepared for a Feb. 5 meeting to consider the Aug. dates, Strings played a three-night stand in Colorado to close out January and launch his Winter Tour, packing a 21,000-seat arena a little over a decade after first blazing into Colorado via tiny brewpub stages in May of 2014.
“This is really tripped for us — it’s probably the most people we’ve ever played for inside of a building,” Strings told his opening night crowd.” For me in 2025, I just think it’s crazy that this many people are into bluegrass music.”
As essentially the only bluegrass musician filling arenas these days, he seems like a logical choice for a stand-alone summer concert Planet Bluegrass hopes to bring to the Fred Shellman Stage in Telluride’s Town Park in August.
Strings’ schedule is announced through July, when he heads to Australia and New Zealand for the first time, but August is not yet posted. If you heard there’s a million-to-one odds against him booking a pair of dates in Telluride this summer, you’d be justified in replying, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!”
With his annual Buena Vista “Renewal” gig off the schedule this year, there’s plenty of room for another Colorado appearance by one of Telluride’s favorite pickers.
Another card up Strings’ sleeve is the fact that, as Telluride Bluegrass Festival Director Craig Ferguson pointed out, he is the only headliner from the 2020 festival – cancelled due to COVID – that has not yet been back in Telluride with his band.
Strings was back in 2024 without the band, opening the festival with a duet set alongside Chris Thile and sitting in with The Telluride House Band.
“We’re so proud of this fella,” Bush said when he brought Strings on stage with the House Band. “He is literally taking these bluegrass instruments that we love to play and turning on thousands of people, perhaps each night, that have never seen or heard these instruments before.”
While Telluride has been bursting with bluegrass that belongs beside Billy in a place like Ball Arena since Bush broke through with New Grass Revival and found it too late to turn back to Barren County, there have been very few TBF regulars that could routinely fill arenas. So maybe the question has never been properly asked. If you can fill arenas, and you’ve got a good juggernaut going, would you skip it to play Town Park?
Strings did.
“After two or three years of seeing the festival lineup come out and me not being on it, I said, ‘I don’t care, I’m coming any way!’” Strings told the crowd at the start of his noon Thursday opening act set with Thile.
Determined not to let success spoil him, Strings showed his true chops before ever returning to the stage for Saturday’s second night, spending his time between shows volunteering in the kitchen at the Denver Rescue Mission.
It fits a pattern, modeled before him by musicians like Phil Lesh, who rarely missed an opportunity to join in a blood drive when he came to Colorado for a show. Strings paid homage with an offering of “Wharf Rat” at the Friday night pre-Grammy MusiCares Person of the Year tribute concert honoring the humanitarian work of the Grateful Dead before grabbing his second Grammy when “Live Vol. 1” won for Bluegrass Album.
Strings provided another under-the-radar highlight of note to Telluride audiences, crashing Zach Top’s set at the Grizzly Rose the night before Strings’ opened his weekend run. The two have history, performing and writing together and releasing a three-song EP last fall. Now Top, who Planet Bluegrass called “as country as country gets,” is set to make his Telluride debut in June.
Telluride tends to be un-country, setting the standard as the epicenter for revolutionary newgrass. Strings has embodied the bridge spanning what was once a chasm, and if Top can be judged by the company he keeps, Telluride audience are in for another installment of the annual leveling up.
Strings’ first trip Telluride was slightly less auspicious, playing the free pre-festival Wednesday warm-up in Mountain Village seven years ago.
“You guys have been doing a good damn job,” Strings told the Telluride crowd when he first met them. “I don’t know of a better festival, I really don’t.”
On the verge of breaking through that year, you could hear the promise already fulfilled in the Strings set – almost entirely covers, including a vintage New Grass Revival inspired version of “Proud Mary” – and you could see it evolve a day later on the main stage when he covered NGR’s “This Heart of Mine” and then welcomed Sam Bush to the stage for a blistering “Freeborn Man.”
Colorado shows have felt like family affairs ever since, and for Sunday’s closing show at Ball Arena, Strings found a few more extended family members for a fitting finale, bringing Greensky Bluegrass’ Paul Hoffman and Dave Bruzza on stage for the kind of jam that has long-defined Telluride Bluegrass.
“I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be standing here right now if I hadn’t ran into these guys around 2013,” Strings told the crowd. “They’ve always been like my big brothers. They’re cool because they’re like a bad influence sometimes.”
The influence was unmistakable as they played a three-song set together, with Hoffman and Strings trading verses on Greensky’s “Reverend,” Bruzza embodying John Hartford’s “Joseph’s Dream” and the sentiment of the lyric, “Just when you think it can’t get no better then it does,” and finally offering some “Courage for the Road” before leaving Strings and his band to quietly close the weekend around a single microphone on the edge of the stage.
Perhaps the most mind-blowing characteristic of Strings’ musical evolution is that it’s still unfolding. These days, Strings is a festival unto himself.
What’s next? A Billy Strings stadium tour? A return to Town Park? Never bet against the latter, where just when you think it can’t get no better then it does.
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