Billy Strings is not your typical ‘bluegrass’ artist. Sporting a number of colored hairstyles in the past with tattoo sleeves, you might mistake him as the frontman of a 90s punk band. While he might not don a cowboy hat, his guitar picking and versatile vocal range competes with the best. Strings’s last album, Home, won Best Bluegrass Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards. His latest single “Fire Line” earned him the spot at Casey’s DJ pick of the week.
After moving to Nashville in 2015, Strings has worked with many great artists and producers to push the boundaries of his ‘bluegrass’ label. Raised on a well-balanced diet of genres such as metal rock and traditional bluegrass, his music and sound has a number of influences. His upcoming album Renewal was Strings’s chance to experiment with a variety of sounds and instruments:
“A lot of people call us a bluegrass band and I don’t even know if that’s what we are anymore. You’ve got to let the song do its thing. So that’s what I try to do – write songs and let them come out however they do.’”
-Billy Strings
Featuring a number of strings, from the banjo and mandolin to the violin, “Fire Line” confronts the price of the oil industry on our environment. Humanity’s dependance on oil creates a never-ending cycle. The music video shows a world on fire as a solemn call for awareness of our environmental crisis:
Tune into 100.1 FM or lightning100.com to hear “Fire Line” by Billy Strings, featured as Casey’s DJ Pick of the Week. Be sure to let us know your thoughts! Tweet at us with #L100DJPick and share your take on the track. To check out more of Lightning Casey’s picks, visit https://lightning100.com/casey.
