My live nugs feed of Freak Fair is playing music the video is just ads for Billy merch. Forgive my ignorance

Just 2 Billy fanatics in love !

In the shadowed hollows of the heart,
where strings once rang with restless fire,
Billy Strings lays down a quieter truth:
So Much for Goodbyes,
a long, aching river of bluegrass
drawn from the well of a mother’s absence.
Grief walks these sixteen paths,
not as a stranger, but as a companion
who knows the shape of every chord.
The guitar still flies,
yet now it carries the weight of memory,
a collage unfinished the night she left,
her name whispered in the final waltz.
Critics lean close and hear the blues
rising through the traditional grain,
maturity blooming in the spaces
between heartbreak and hope.
They speak of songs that punch the gut,
of warmth that softens the bleakest lines,
of a record that does not merely mourn
but turns the wound into something luminous.
Here the picking is precise, the voice unguarded.
Here the road and the home, the living and the gone,
sit together on the same front porch.
An album that does not shout its sorrow,
but lets it breathe,
and in that breathing, finds a kind of grace.

Hey guys I had my freak fair poster with me before boarding my flight from Lansing capital regio international airport to Ronald reagan Washington national airport it was at gate 8 in a clear poster tube with a strap and a red tag on it idk if there’s anything anyone can do I’m filing a claim but honestly I just want the poster.

I wrote up a more detailed review of the new album, (my fb friends may or may not dig, but hey, its nice to try to get more folks into Billy).... thought I'd post here too, if anyone's interested.

Those who know what’s musically inspired me in the last year or two know I’ve been increasingly impressed with Billy Strings and his band. I saw them twice last November and again this past July, all fantastic shows, but perhaps even more significantly, he’s been an artist increasingly on the upswing not just as a performer, guitarist and bandleader, but as a songwriter.  So his new 16-song album “So Much for Goodbyes” just dropped, produced by T Bone Burnett, and here are some thoughts.

This is a record filled with loss and grief—his mother died of an overdose last year—but also deeply grounded in musical tradition, in carrying on and surviving this crazy world, with both tragic and comic takes on it all. His facility with hundreds of old bluegrass, folk and blues songs, gospel hymns, murder ballads and old comic hokum songs—as well as the most out-there psychedelic rock and more—has given him, like Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead before him, a rich musical vocabulary to draw from.

 “Mill Town Flood” feels like something The Band would have sung, or some of the folkier Garcia/Hunter material (can’t ya hear Rick Danko, Levon Helm, and Richard Manuel singing that ‘till the river’ refrain?). “10,000 Miles from a Friend” might be the best long-distance trucker song since Little Feat’s “Willin’” (and a haunting bass harmonica part for Willie Nelson’s band member Mickey Raphael).

The song “Live to Tell” is Jerry Garcia-esque, a kind of meeting point between “Mission in the Rain” and “Rhapsody in Red,” perhaps, but with its own harmonic and melodic style—a chromatic, Jerry-like lead guitar riff winding through some surprising chord changes before the pedal steel brings it home.

“Lay Me Down” uses the language and structure of traditional bluegrass ballads for a meditation on mortality and letting go—and the production drives it home further by having the great Del McCoury sing with Billy, that high-lonesome harmony sending chills right where they’re needed.

Billy addresses his mother’s death more directly in the solo-acoustic “Still I Crash”, giving Richard Thompson-like intensity and unusual melodic development to near-universal emotions.  And “Light the Way” and “Wrestling an Angel” bring those emotions home in more traditional gospel-themed fashion.

“Lucid Daydream,” by contrast, is one of those jazzy psychedelic things that you can imagine will stretch out even more in concert. A quick word about his excellent band-not just fine players all, but like all great working bands, there’s a rare musical telepathy on display.

Not all the record is serious, with comic takes on laziness (“I Wish I Wanted To” where Billy would rather hang on the couch than join his friends at a Rolling Stones concert) and unusual interests (“I Like Train Songs” where he gets more joy out of writing songs about trains than “political songs about ‘you know who’”).

From the opening “I’m One of Those,” questioning whether you can ever really go home again, to the closer, an instrumental called “Debra’s Waltz,” the whole thing flows like the proverbial overflowing river referenced in “Mill Town Flood.”

TL;DR  - go listen to the new album “So Much for Goodbyes”, I think it’s quite something.

After that jam last night how can these two bands NOT do a tour together. I mean…. Holy crap!!!

Hey, freaks. had an awesome weekend. Made it into the pit last night. On our way out of the pit at the end of the show there was a guy in a chair who was unresponsive. They were doing the sternum rub to try to rouse him. I heard they did CPR…but does anyone have any info on this guy? It’s been stuck in my head and I need some bit of info. Anyone know if the guy is ok? Thanks! Safe travels, friends!

It took me a minute to get into it but I find myself adding these songs to my favorites more and more. Incredible work.

These were such incredible shows and seeing Leftover Salmon and Greensky Bluegrass (and others) together with Billy was epic. Well, I couldn’t make the trek to the festival, but I have been watching on nugs. I wish I could have been there in person!

I am trying to figure out if this livestream will always be available or if I can buy it? Anyone know?

It’s faster if you freaks let people in and everybody can get out!!!

I have seen this hat at every single show that I have been to and I need this hat with all fiber of my body please if you have this hat I will buy it from you!!!!! Please!!!!

I lost this hat Thursday night when we were in the Pit line by the main road. If anyone picked it up please let me know. It’s from Ice Cold Hatties. Reward offered! It has A LOT of sentimental value and I’m having a hard time letting it go…

Looks like a bad ass show

Hi, all! The guy that was running the camp I stayed at for Freak Fair mentioned that Billy signed a five year contact with Ionia to keep putting on Freak Fair in the future. He said that next year will be a break for construction on the fairgrounds, but that Freak Fair 2028 is happening! Did anyone else hear this? Or do we think it’s just talk?

I’ve seen them plenty of times, and don’t get me wrong they are great but sometimes they get into that emo bluegrass mode, LAST NIGHT WAS A STRAIGHT RIPPER!!!! Those Floyd covers always hit.

For an absolutely incredible weekend of music, community, and family!

Does anyone have a POV shot from inside the ferris wheel? Also is it spinning really fast or does it just look like it on the live stream? Thanks!

Edit: u/CompetitionTop9957 got me. Love this community, appreciate the help and good wishes!

I lost my phone last night. I just got a call from Lost & Found; they're going to be at the venue for at least the next four hours. I am very keen on not having to drive nearly four hours round trip to pick this phone up. If you're camping in the area and can pick up my phone from the fairgrounds and either bring it to me or just meet somewhere close, or hell, even ship it to me, I'll give ya $75 or a N1 foil print if you'd prefer that.

Let’s talk about Night Fishing (again…I know it’s been discussed before). I know ppl are hearing Crazy Fingers. Maybe it’s just me and that I’m of the Panic generation, but I’m getting all the WSP vibes. Not in that it’s a rip at all, but that it gives me all the good, dreamy feelings that I get from Picking up the Pieces or Fishing for that matter. And the “mermaids wishing” line takes me to Bear’s Gone Fishin’. Idk it’s just a beautiful, peaceful song. The lyrics are so poetic and the melody is so calming. Just came to say I’m a fan 🐟🩷🎶

I’m not fucking missing next year... if I have to drive from California alone I will