If you haven’t heard Billy Strings perform, you haven’t been to a recent Americana music festival. This uber talented 24-year-old tore up stages last year at Rooster Walk Music and Arts Festival, Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion and Appaloosa Roots Music Festival, just to name a few.
Strings became a sensation in his home state while still in his teens. “He has an almost supernatural ability on guitar, banjo and mandolin that has set the region’s bluegrass and folk scene on fire,” according to a profile published in 2012 in Northern Express, a Michigan arts weekly.
He eventually moved to Nashville to further his career. Strings released a self-titled, six-song EP in 2016, which contains an eclectic and foot-stomping mix of originals and traditional songs such as “Black Mountain Rag,” also covered by Doc Watson.
Strings, né William Apostol, will demonstrate his unique brand of bluegrass at The Rives Theatre on Saturday, April 1, in uptown Martinsville, Virginia, at a Rooster Walk 9 preview show. ShadowGrass, a group of young musicians from Western North Carolina and Southwestern Virginia , will open.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 day of show. Season passes are accepted. Tickets available online HERE and available locally at Daily Grind and Rising Sun Breads in Martinsville. Music starts 8:30 p.m. with Strings taking the stage around 9:15 p.m. NCAA basketball fans take note: The Rives will also be showing the UNC/Oregon Final Four game on the upper theatre’s movie screen beginning around 8:50.
You can also catch Strings at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 31, at the Duke Energy Center in Raleigh, North Carolina,
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