Graham Reid | | 2 min read
Dealing Despair
His father died when he was two, his mother remarried but the couple fell prey to meth addiction. The boy left home at 13 and went through his own dependencies.
And that could have been where the film reached an abrupt ending.
However the boy – born William Apostol but known professionally as Billy Strings after the nickname his aunty called him – is now 32, a successful musician, married with a baby son and our call catches him at home in downtime.
Not that he has much of it these days because guitarist Strings – bringing his band to Auckland in July – is a Grammy-winning bluegrass player who has integrated that traditional country music learned from his stepfather Terry Barber (who he calls his dad) with the heavy metal he also grew up with.
His shows can be like bluegrass-meets-Grateful Dead as he peels off guitar licks like early Eric Clapton raised in an Ozark holler. This is jam-band bluegrass rock which pulls big and diverse audiences.
“Yeah, sometimes I look out and see guy in a Slayer t-shirt with long hair,” Strings says in a languid drawl, “or an old white-haired lady enjoying the show. Or some 15-year old kid just getting into bluegrass.
“It's a beautiful thing that they could find interest in my show, that's pretty cool.”
Strings is modest, relaxed and these days is “California sober” (no hard drugs, just marijuana and psychedelics) to quote his 2023 song recorded with Willie Nelson: “I've had years I don't recall, but I'm told I had a ball, at least someone did who looked a lot like me”.
Strings has come out the other side of a life that could have killed him and has always, even as a child, been respectful of the bluegrass tradition he carries. Repeatedly he namechecks his illustrious predecessors: Doc Watson, Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe and many others.
“There are so many great artists I grew up on, and it's sentimental to me because the music reminds me of my dad and my childhood, of when I was a young kid before I knew anything bad. It's a portal back to before I knew anything dirty about the world.”
The bad'n'dirty certainly came but he went back home to Michigan and his parents cleaned up. Of as much interest is how this unexpected mix of metal and traditional music came about.
“I grew up playing bluegrass with my dad and a lot of folks we were playing with were way older than me, I was just a kid.
“When I was a teenager I just wanted to play with people my age and interested in the same things. And the only music folks in my school were interested in was heavy metal.
“I didn't like it at first but then started digging it. So I didn't play bluegrass for quite a few years.”
After failed attempts at starting rock bands, he turned back to bluegrass “where my heart and soul was”. When recording his 2017 debut studio album Turmoil and Tinfoil he . . .
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