Photo Credit: Stevo Rood

Over the weekend, Billy Strings shared a highlight in his summer series with a return to Los Angeles’ Kia Forum. Through a two-night stand at the hallowed coliseum on Aug. 23 and 24, the progressive bluegrass trailblazer closed out his seasonal tour with a high-octane finale, delivering two nights and four sets of rip-roaring thrill rides and potent, soul-stirring meditations. Friday’s performance set the tone for this two-night event, showing Billy and his band of Alex Hargreaves, Royal Masat, Jarrod Walker and Billy Failing thriving in a precise, artful and communicative improvisational flow that only comes after months on the road. Together, the unit issued top-tier treatments of originals like “Seven Weeks in County,” “Red Daisy,” “California Sober,” “Hellbender” and “Love Life Me,” alongside tried and true genre standards like “East Virginia Blues,” “Feast Here Tonight” and “Reuben’s Train.” These gems aside, some of the finest moments from Strings’ show came in his eclectic range of covers which, taken as a whole, aptly reflect his genre-bending style; between The Doors “Hyacinth House,” New Grass Revival’s “Whisper My Name” and Alice in Chains’ “Nutshell,” which landed as an explosive first track in the encore, a profile of the endlessly innovative artist emerges. With a hell-raising closer of “Wargasm,” Strings sent fans out into the night with an appetite for more destruction–which he gladly fulfilled on night two.

Get an inside look at Strings’ second-to-last performance of the summer in the gallery below, courtesy of photographer Stevo Rood. For more information on the artist and his upcoming appearances, visit billystrings.com/tour.

Billy Strings
Kia Forum – Los Angeles
8/23/24

Set I: Seven Weeks in County, Home Of The Red Fox, Ole Slew Foot, In The Morning Light, Red Daisy, Meet Me At The Creek, Hyacinth House*, Meet Me At The Creek+, East Virginia Blues^, Freedom^, Feast Here Tonight (Rabbit In A Log)^
Set II: California Sober, Pretty Daughter, Hellbender, Love and Regret, End Of The Rainbow, Taking Water, Ice Bridges, Love Like Me, Whisper My Name , Fire Line, Reuben’s Train
Encore: Nutshell, Wargasm

Notes:
* Last Time Played 2023-09-27 | 68 shows
+ w/ “Hyacinth House” (The Doors) lyrics
^ Band around single mic front of stage, Billy on his Old Martin — 1946 D-28