This is a great interview. It should also put to rest any discussions of him being the best guitarist in the world, or even in bluegrass.

He obviously doesn’t think he is as good as Bela Fleck, or even his band members.

This isn’t a knock on him, he’s obviously great. I’m impressed that he recognizes his shortcomings and is working on them to be even better.

Great interview. I’m impressed with him even more.

quote:

“I’m someone that can obviously play. I’ve made a career out of it. It sucks to know that I really don’t know what’s going on. I’m winning Grammys and shite and selling out venues. And then I go to a session and I don’t know what harmonic minor is. I don’t know what that means, but I can sorta hang on the song.

I’ve literally made it this far just winging it.

It got to a point where I felt like I was fooling myself. I got sick of that. I thought “you need to put in some work. You’re supposed to be a professional musician. You don’t even know what this shite means.”

I feel like if I’m a professional musician, I should know what these terms mean. I should know the chords.

When I’m on stage and I’m improvising and I feel my limit and I’m constantly trying to push past that but I’m scraping my knees”

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Posted by Demshoes

Up in here

Member since Aug 2015

10523 posts

Posted on 5/16/25 at 5:12 pm to Bjorn Cyborg

New Years Eve show at UNO was awesome. Played like 4 hours.

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Posted by cgrand

HAMMOND

Member since Oct 2009

43297 posts

Posted on 5/16/25 at 6:33 pm to Bjorn Cyborg

Billy has a gift and the fact that he is so humble before that gift is a gift to us all. It means he will keep working to get even better.

the man has it all…songwriting, singing and playing chops that make people happy and result in original music that will stand the test of time. Already there are songs in his original songbook that have become standards of the bluegrass repertoire. That’s hard to believe considering the pedigree of that genre.

I tell people all the time that the greatest stroke of luck I’ve ever had in having fun in this life is getting into and traveling to see billy strings play music. I would not trade it for anything

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