OPE! Mixtape #66: Finally "getting" Billy Strings

Reporting on Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, and (finally) being won over by Billy Strings, at Outlaw Music Festival 2025

Welcome to OPE!, the newsletter by writer and music journalist Brady Gerber. This is where I curate the week’s best links, songs, and muses on life. All typos are intentional.

Well, hello there. How are you?

Editing note: last week, I spelled “Sleep Token” as “Sleep Sotken.” Whoops. But as I say, all typos are intentional.

A lot of last-minute work came up last week, so no podcast this week. However, I already know what’s coming out this Monday. It’s an incredible song. Can’t wait for you to hear it.

For my new subscribers: the OPE! Music podcast, which is an extension of this newsletter, is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Like and subscribe, as they say.

But anyway, Billy Strings.

Over the weekend, The Hollywood Reporter assigned me to cover the Outlaw Music Festival’s stop in LA. You can read my recap here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/willie-nelson-bob-dylan-outlaw-festival-hollywood-bowl-1236219388/

The show included Bob Dylan (whom I’ve written about a few times), Willie Nelson (whom I interviewed a few years ago), and the person I was most interested in seeing: Billy Strings.

Billy has been on my radar for many years. He’s always been highly recommended by my fellow-recovering-Dave-Matthews-fan peers as a dude who wrote bluegrass jams about meth and can play the guitar like no one else. This is not an endorsement of meth but of bluegrass jams by someone who may seem atypical of the genre, if you haven’t been paying attention to bluegrass or Americana in the last few decades or only know bluegrass from that one (albeit still good) Coen Brothers soundtrack.

For folks within the jamband extended universe, studio albums tend to be more miss than hit too. (I would know, since I reviewed a Goose album for Pitchfork.) This can make it hard to get into new artists, and I was predictably underwhelmed by Billy’s studio albums, even as I was repeatedly told to catch him live to see him at his best.

Y’all, he crushed it.

I didn’t have space to include as many Billy details in my Hollywood Reporter recap, but I’m won over. I’ve been in an indie rock rut lately, so switching up my usual rotation for more bluegrass and Americana has been nice.

The first album I would recommend is last year’s Grammy-winning Live Vol. 1. Billy looks like a doofus, so feel free to play this video but just focus on the music.

While I’m in this bluegrass mood: If any of y’all have any good bluegrass recommendations, let me know.

But enough about all that. Here are this week’s best links and songs …

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