Month: October 2025

Friday 10th October 2025

Royal Albert Hall, London, England

The day starts and ends with the sound of Billy. At six in the morning my dog wakes me up with barking and a flurry of face licks, thoughtfully determined that I shouldn’t miss my train down to London in… checks clock… three and a half hours. I groan and roll over. Billy huffs and lays down next to me.

I named the now two-year-old cavachon Billy because he came into our home as a puppy shortly after I last saw Billy Strings live, at the Manchester Academy in November 2023. Since that time the two Billys have been ever-present in my affections; one with pats and belly rubs and the other… without any of that, because that would be weird. I will forever associate the Billy Strings song ‘Enough to Leave’ with my Billy, because it was the song I played to soothe the pup to sleep on his first night with us in his new home.

As for the other Billy, he’s grown even more remarkably than the puppy has. When I first saw Billy Strings at the Manchester Academy two years ago, he was already a star, playing intensely liberating music to a crowd of adoring thousands. Largely embraced by both the traditional bluegrass scene and by the more progressive crowd, he plays and records music that can’t help but strike a chord with people. Alongside his own albums, he has collaborated with legends like Willie Nelson and, more recently, Ringo Starr, and it’s not too hard to imagine that his own name will be spoken about as a legend in the years to come. When the taxi driver arrives to take me from my home to the train station in Manchester (don’t worry, my Billy is not left alone), he asks me why I’m heading for London. I say I’m going to see Billy Strings at the Royal Albert Hall, and just as I’m about to explain who he is and what bluegrass is, I find there’s no need. The taxi driver is already a fan.

But for all his talent and all the success he’s enjoyed over the last few years, even Billy Strings must have struggled to ever imagine himself headlining at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ve attended some impressive venues over the years, from cavernous arenas to intimate churches to charming, dimly-lit back-rooms, but this is the first time I’ve attended one of the world’s truly special, iconic venues. The Royal Albert Hall is a vast, opulent colosseum, an exquisite piece of imperial architecture that in its every detail and coalescence reflects the power and prestige of the Victorian era in which it was built.

My eyes struggle to take in the vastness of the dome, which is peppered with large purple-lit acoustic discs drooping from the ceiling, and I find myself thinking that the deadheads in the pit tonight would no doubt be amused to learn that the Royal Albert Hall can only achieve its sound with the help of these mushrooms sprouting from the ceiling. I look to the Royal Box where monarchs since Queen Victoria have sat, before my eyes return to the stage where even greater names can be found: Sinatra, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin. Wagner, Verdi and Elgar. A speech by Winston Churchill; a bout by Muhammad Ali. Perhaps most remarkably, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on the same bill in 1963. Behind the stage, the vast organ pipes of the Voice of Jupiter lie dormant, and I turn to look back up at the dome, recalling John Lennon’s lyric from ‘A Day in the Life’. “Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire… Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” The line is even more of a trip when you’re there and you try to imagine filling the room with holes yourself.

The Beatles song ‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’ plays over the tannoy as I take my seat in the stalls, following on from the end of a Paul McCartney song I couldn’t quite catch. Later on there’s the Tom Petty song ‘Hard on Me’ – he also played at the Royal Albert Hall. I adore Tom Petty, placing him second only to the Beatles, and I reflect on how, in some ways, I see Billy Strings as the man’s successor. While their sound is different, their approach is not. Like Petty, Billy has that knack of making you feel like everything will be alright. Perhaps it’s just the natural overflow of witnessing someone who seems like a genuinely good person create art to a high level on their own terms, and having people respond to it. That’s creative expression at its peak, in integrity, behaviour and ambition, and it soaks into the notes of their music.

And like Petty, Billy Strings came from a difficult background, a hard life that would have sunk most people unseen and unheard, and he rose above it to become truly, generously remarkable. Shortly before the concert, Billy posts a photograph of his childhood home on Instagram, followed by another of tonight’s prestigious venue during soundcheck. “From the meth den to the Royal Albert Hall,” he writes.

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Everyone knows how special this night is, then, even before it begins and Billy remarks on it from the stage, looking around the hall and taking it all in. This, of course, is where the Last Night of the Proms is played; they know how to shoot music here and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the hope and glory of Billy’s own set released on film at some point. Everyone here knows this will be a moment, a milestone, in Billy’s growing legend. A night when it will be, in the decades to come, a genuinely awesome flex to be able to say: I was there.

Because to match the specialness of the historic venue, Billy and his band provide a set for the ages. I’ve previously described a Billy Strings set as a moveable feast, but this was the feast of all feasts, a 10 out of 10 show on 10/10/2025. A one-off UK date (this is not part of any national tour) was always likely to result in a spectacular set-list, but Billy and the band really pull out all the stops here. Even Jerry Jeff Walker would want to be in London tonight, not home with the armadillo.

Some concert mainstays get definitive takes; some lesser-played and never-before-played songs are not only aired but billow like sails filled by a trade wind. Those long, frenzied bluegrass jams that catch and release, which are like a moreish drug… well, there’s not just the usual one or two songs for that tonight but three or four at least. The crowd is fantastic too; we’re locked in, deathly silent when Billy sings a cappella in the darkness and roaring like a storm when we know the band is pushing it higher and higher and yet somehow keeping it together. And then there’s the release, the break, like crashing waves. The Royal Albert Hall gets it all. Four thousand holes might fill the Albert Hall, but there’s not a single hole to be found tonight.

You might ask, then, whether there’s even any need for a review or commentary from myself. Billy Strings certainly needs no introduction, not when the mere sight of him walking onto stage tonight generates a roar among the thousands present that most bands could not raise with their finest song. And unlike some of the smaller, special gigs I’ve been to over the years, there’s no high-minded compulsion to blog and diarize this concert for posterity. It’s recorded, as every Billy Strings gig is, on Nugs.net and perhaps also in the film cameras that zero in on the man on stage tonight.

But even a recording of the highest fidelity cannot capture the atmosphere in a room, or properly convey which songs garner the most emotion in a performer and in an audience. Because silence and song has a weight as well as a resonance, and the weight can only be felt in the moment, in person, as it crushes and lifts and ripples through a crowd.

This review, then, is the weighing of the night as I remember experiencing it from the hall, after Billy Strings walks out onto the stage and looks around and laughs in disbelief. His eyes take in those of us in the stalls and loggia before wandering up undaunted to the gallery and the Rausing Circle. “Well, howdy!” he says.

The first song, ‘Red Daisy’, is a fine stage-setter for the night, a fast bluegrass number right out of the blocks that not only introduces us to Billy’s sometimes-underappreciated singing voice and one of his distinctive fast-pickin’ acoustic guitar solos, but also to the four members of his band. Billy harmonises with his namesake Billy Failing on banjo. Jarrod Walker, who wrote the song, provides some fine mandolin, trading solos with the fiddle of Alex Hargreaves. The Hall’s namesake Royal Masat holds it all together with his large upright bass.

The band show they mean business with their second song, an imperial ‘Gild the Lily’ worthy of this storied hall. Introduced by Royal’s bass, which remains prominent throughout, the band feel themselves into the set with this song, a keening if conservative fiddle solo from Alex bringing cheers. Billy allows himself a long, dreamy guitar solo, switching into a psychedelic electric sound via the pedalboard at his feet and drawing the night’s first primal roars from the crowd. “I’d sing along with the birds, if I only knew the words,” Billy sings, his long hair blowing in the artificial wind. It’s the first transcendent moment in a night that will prove to be full of them.

The band move into the next song without stopping, ‘Hellbender’ played as conventional bluegrass with the band passing off the music to one another to play their solos. They trade with one another in a similar way in the follow-up, the fan favourite ‘Dust in a Baggie’, which Billy introduces as being probably his own favourite song of those he’s written. As the band play, Billy dances before turning to play directly to the fans standing in the balconies of the choir behind the stage.

The night is special for other reasons too. The crowd spontaneously sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a bashful Billy Failing after ‘Hellbender’; he’s 36 years old, “the birthday boy tonight,” as Billy Strings says, laughing. There can surely be few better ways to spend your birthday than as part of the headline act at the Royal Albert Hall, and Billy Strings agrees. “You’re the present,” he says to the cheering crowd. “You’re IN the present, man,” he adds, cosmically. After ‘Dust’, Billy Failing leans in to speak with him while he’s tuning his guitar. “It’s your birthday,” Billy replies playfully. “I’m not gonna screw it up.”

Speaking of births, Billy tells us that he’s a dad now, and that the first record he played for his son when he took him home was Doc Watson’s Portrait, an album he “commandeered from my dad’s own collection” and which he loves. “It was so warm… Jerry Douglas’ big ole warm dobro slidin’ on there, it’s just beautiful.” Now he plays ‘Leaving London’ from that album for those of us in London tonight, “not quite as good as that, but the best we can”. The song’s played straight, a nice cut of bluegrass with the band providing some great old-timey harmonies on the line “I’d fly to my own true love again.” For all their musical prowess, the band are also capable of bringing out goosebumps with their harmony vocals.

Those harmonies return on the following song, ‘Show Me the Door’ creating ripples of excitement as soon as Billy sings its opening line, “She ebbs and flows like water.” A long, thoughtful guitar solo from Billy wanders around the storied Hall before falling into one of Jarrod’s mandolin flourishes. Jarrod’s solo takes over; the song by this point having become increasingly gentle, the crowd in the pit bobbing, ebbing and flowing like water in the cool turquoise stagelight.

It’s followed by a sprawling ‘Dawg’s Rag’, starting with a fast mandolin riff immediately and keenly picked up by Alex Hargreaves’ fiddle. The two instruments repeatedly pass off to one another as the song builds, with Billy Failing’s banjo also getting in on the action. For a time it becomes almost a soft and pensive song, more silk than dawg’s rag and the moment when Alex really kicks into top gear for the night, the classically-trained violinist beginning to relish playing in this historic venue. His fiddle draws cheers, the crowd appreciating how the five men on stage each pull the song in their own directions before coming back together again. The song seems to be ending with some slightly foreboding chords, before it picks up again and Alex bursts into a prime, spirited fiddle straight out of the free-breathing hills.

For the next song there’s a change of pace, as Billy hands off his guitar to a roadie and switches to a double-necked Martin Grand guitar. His phrasing sounds uncannily like the spaced-out psychedelia of John Lennon as he sings the opening lines of ‘Stratosphere Blues’. The song glides into ‘I Believe in You’, the vocal phrasing and the construction of the song now reminding me more of Tom Petty. The performance of the two united songs has been delivered primarily by Billy, with the band’s light touches only becoming more prominent as the song progresses.

Billy switches back to his normal guitar, thanking us for being here. “I truly cannot even believe that I’m standing here right now, saying this,” he says, with genuine awe in his voice. “This feels like a special night here with these fellas, on Bilbo’s birthday and with all of you.”

To end their first set, the band effortlessly deliver a crystal ‘In the Clear’, before Billy walks to the front of the stage and plays the opening bars of ‘Turmoil & Tinfoil’. It’s an epic, generational rendition of the song, the concert mainstay building and building as the band trade lines – a proper, vintage B.M.F.S. concert jam. The jam spreads around the room as Billy and Alex build each other up higher, the crowd roaring when they recognise the precarious peaks they are daring each other to scale. But they don’t fall apart; the jam sticks, with Billy Failing’s banjo joining in and taking a prominent role. Billy Strings’ own acoustic solo morphs into an electric one by way of the pedal, and he strolls to the front of the stage again while playing, sending the pit wild. The solo becomes thrillingly electric as he stalks about the stage and shreds heavily, before returning to the band and introducing some wah-wah from the pedal. The ghost of Jimi Hendrix sits up, his ears burning, and the Voice of Jupiter nods mute approval. Billy announces they’re taking a short break, and the crowd roars their exit from the stage.

When they return after the intermission, Billy and the band pick up where they left off. ‘The Fire on My Tongue’ is played conventionally, with fine harmonies and the trading of solos across the five men on stage. The song ebbs to catch its breath, before Billy tear into a longer, fast-pickin’ solo. Billy is dancing, the crowd bouncing now too as though they’d never been away. The song builds and builds, Billy letting out a long “Welllll” that draws cheers and crashes straight into ‘Ole Slew Foot’. The ‘Foot’ is fast and fun, with Billy stalking to the front of the stage. He starts singing from a microphone which has been strategically placed there, his ole left foot resting on a speaker.

After the familiar return, Alex’s fiddle now starts off a cover of the Jim Croce song ‘Age’, something Billy says he’s been “fixin’ to do”. It sounds like classic country, a wonderful moment as Billy Failing and Jarrod Walker harmonise with him. It’s the first time they’ve ever played the song live, and it doesn’t deserve to be the last. They follow it with ‘My Alice’, the song from the latest Highway Prayers album drawing cheers of recognition from the crowd from the very first notes. It’s a moment for the band to let us breathe – and we’ve needed to catch our breath, because next up is ‘Away from the Mire’, its distinctive opening riff causing frissons of excitement through the Hall.

People know what’s coming; like ‘Gild the Lily’ and ‘Turmoil & Tinfoil’, ‘Away from the Mire’ is one of those songs that Billy and the band can expand and contract at will into memorable, profound jams, a song that even if you’d never heard it before you would know it’s building to something epic. Mandolin and fiddle solos give us a taste of what’s to come, before the song retreats into a dreamy instrumental soundscape, as though summoning the energy it knows it will need. A long solo from Billy becomes a wailing electric with the use of the pedalboard, a sort of gentle frenzy. A possessed Billy moves to the front of the stage, closer to my side, during his epic, almost unbelievable solo. We can’t help but cheer its conclusion. In such a moment you marvel at the journey this band is capable of taking you on within a single song, let alone how they help you glide along that journey so effortlessly. Listening to a ten-minute Billy Strings jam live is as undemanding as a two-minute pop song, and more rewarding by orders of magnitude. It’s one of the night’s best performances.

It’s followed by another, though one in complete contrast to what we’ve just heard. The four members of Billy’s band leave the stage and Billy unslings his guitar. He approaches a microphone that has now been placed for him at the front and centre of the stage. He looks around, taking in the cheers and the applause.

“This is such a beautiful room,” he says. “I want to sing a song here without the guitars barking.” What follows is astonishing: a solo, a cappella delivery of the mournful hymn ‘And Am I Born to Die?’ The crowd are instantly, respectfully silent, and you could hear a pin drop as a single spotlight descends on Billy. Only a few months removed from the death of his mother, one of the heaviest and most profound losses a man can bear, Billy sings of a “trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown. A land of deepest shade, unpierced by human thought.”

I don’t know if this loss is what he holds in his mind as he sings the hymn. But it’s clear he digs deep to sing it. It’s note-perfect and deeply resonant. It’s brave; the young man singing alone and without instrument under the spotlight in the silent, darkened colosseum on a milestone night in his career. None of the classical giants who have graced this hall since its Victorian genesis could have delivered it better, and if Billy’s guitar abilities often overshadow his vocal talent, his singing can never again be knowingly undersold by me or anyone else who hears ‘Born to Die’ in the Royal Albert Hall tonight. This is what I meant when I wrote earlier in my review that silence and song carries a weight, indescribable and only fully understood in the moment. When the song ends and the lights come back up, the silent crowd begins to roar with pent-up release. It’s a moment of music I think will stay with me until I die.

No doubt feeling the need for release himself, Billy straps his acoustic guitar back on and – still playing solo – sings a fun, routine version of ‘Brown’s Ferry Blues’. “Hello there,” he says as he starts to play the song, perhaps recognising that we are all different people meeting again on the other side of ‘Born to Die’.

He replaces his guitar with a banjo, and Billy Failing walks out to join him with his own. The banjo strings of Strings succeed in teasing Failing with an impromptu playing of ‘Happy Birthday’, before the two decide to play ‘Dos Banjos’. The crowd begin to clap and stomp their feet as Dos Billys play, cheering as Billy teases Failing further, stalking in a circle around his friend as they play.

Taking a big swig of his drink, Billy slings his guitar back on and the rest of the band come back out. Billy introduces them all by name, garnering applause, and the five reunited musicians break into ‘Escanaba’. The instrumental’s a good reintroduction to what they’re all capable of, with solos from Jarrod’s mandolin and even from Royal’s upright bass. The bass provides some regal backing to a long fiddle solo from Alex, drawing more worthy cheers from the crowd.

It’s followed by a fine, swaying cover of ‘Nights in White Satin’, the Moody Blues hit fitting Billy and the band like a glove. Billy’s fast guitar then hoists ‘Pretty Daughter’ high, the man stalking to the front of the stage as he plays before returning to the rank of five to harmonise energetically on the chorus. A mandolin solo from Jarrod draws cheers, and Billy dances as he sings. An incredible fiddle solo from Alex sees the crowd roaring as it catches fire, and even Billy can’t resist letting out a yell and dancing with delight. The crowd is delirious, and Billy takes another big swig of his drink.

“I don’t even… I don’t know how to thank y’all for coming out tonight,” he says. “But this has been such a magical evening that I will always remember.”

As a thank you to his English audience, he alters the opening lyrics of his next song, a cover of Leon Payne’s ‘Psycho’, to “Can Mary fry some fish – and chips?” The song is knowingly disturbing – “you think I’m psycho, don’t you, mama?” goes the harmonised refrain – and ends with a foreboding sound that reminds me of the rising orchestra in the Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’, the song whose holes could fill this Hall.

But just as that song’s orchestral build broke into Paul McCartney’s upbeat middle-eight (“woke up, got out of bed”), tonight’s ‘Psycho’ reveals ‘Hide and Seek’, the fourth and final of those great majestic jams Billy and the band deliver to us live tonight. Those distinctive notes kick the band into gear and the crowd erupts. “Well, it’s a dark time, I do believe,” the band harmonise.

‘Hide and Seek’ builds and pauses and then builds again, the band in complete control of the music. Their ebbs and flows crash against the crowd like waves, making even the most reluctant body in the Hall move in a St. Vitus dance. The song builds again as Billy steps out to the front and the crowd roars. Even the stagelights get in on the action, composing a frantic lightshow as Billy shifts again into an epic electric solo and the music continues to build. As the solo and the song ends, Billy yells – a cathartic release.

It feels like a finale, and the band stop to take in the extended applause and cheers at the end of the marathon song. And while there’ll be no encore tonight – the band play right up until curfew – it feels like we’re at that moment. The band have peaked and everything that happens from now is a bonus, a de facto encore.

Billy and the band, sans Alex, gather around a single mike that a roadie places at the front of the stage. Billy plays a harmonica note to help get the four of them in tune, before they begin to sing ‘Richard Petty’ a cappella. In contrast to ‘And Am I Born to Die?’ earlier, the crowd cannot contain their delight, roaring and stomping their feet and clapping. It seems to throw the band off – ‘Richard Petty’ is a difficult harmonic feat – and they struggle to stay in key. To their credit, the audience recognises this and tones it down, the stomps fading to a minority. ‘Richard Petty’ is able to “carry on without the strife” and it becomes a perfectly fine rendition, if not the transcendent experience the song has proved capable of being.

Billy and the band put their instruments back on, with Alex and his fiddle now joining them at the single mike. ‘Tennessee’, their final song, is a straight cut of bluegrass, with harmonies on the chorus and Royal Masat thrilling the crowd by coming in deep with “I hear her calling me.” The Royal Albert Hall is treated to a final flurry of solos from guitar and mandolin and fiddle, before the band’s harmonies end the night.

“Thank you, folks!” Billy says, handing off his guitar to a roadie. He stands alone, the man from the childhood meth den now taking in the roaring applause of London’s Royal Albert Hall. His band join him and, arm in arm, they soak it all in and take a theatrical bow before exiting the stage.

Jimi Hendrix’s song ‘Fire’ plays over the tannoy as they leave. We’ve certainly been privileged to stand next to their fire tonight. As the crowd filters out, I stay seated for a little while longer in the stalls of the Royal Albert Hall. I look over at the balconies, up at the dome, back to the now-emptying stage. Someone once sat in this seat in 1963 and watched the Beatles from this same distance. They watched legends being made. And as I look I can almost manifest their four silhouettes on the stage close by, imagining how real they must have once been stood right there.

Tonight I can say without hyperbole that I’ve watched another legend in the making. No one can hit the matchless heights of the Beatles. It is impossible. But having witnessed Billy Strings live with his band, playing brilliant, imaginative bluegrass music to a crowd of thousands, and learning something of the journey that brought him here, I can say that his is also a story that you can scarcely believe is being written, and tonight was an illustrious chapter in it. If I ever have grandchildren, I might well find myself bragging that I was there when Billy Strings played the Royal Albert Hall. And I will be able to draw on this review I have written, a week removed from the event, to recall some of its intangible weight from the mists of time and memory. That silence in ‘Born to Die’ is one of the most exquisite sounds I’ve ever heard.

Stepping out into the night, I walk around the outside of this beautifully composed piece of architecture, taking it in from all sides. Finally satisfied, I walk back to the road and stand on Kensington Gore, looking across to the Gardens at the opulence of the Albert Memorial. At a taxi rank that’s comically small for a venue of this grandeur, I finally manage to hail a passing taxi.

A man behind me is also waiting for a taxi, and I ask him where he’s going. “Euston Station,” he says. That’s also where I’m going – my hotel is close by – so I invite him to join me. In the ride that follows it turns out that, remarkably, he came down to London for the concert today from Kearsley, only a few minutes up the A666 from where I began my own journey this morning in Salford. From my taxi driver this morning, things have come cosmically full-circle. But then perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise. Billy Strings fans are everywhere, and we’re growing in number. The man’s just that good. Dogs find themselves named after him. From Manchester to London, from meth dens to the Royal Albert Hall, everybody loves Billy – and rightfully so.

Setlist:

(no opening act; two full Billy sets with intermission after ‘Turmoil & Tinfoil’)

1. Red Daisy (Jarrod Walker/Christian Ward) (from Renewal)
2. Gild the Lily (William Apostol/Walker) (from Highway Prayers)
3. Hellbender (Apostol/Aaron Allen/Jon Weisberger) (from Renewal)
4. Dust in a Baggie (Apostol) (from Billy Strings EP)
5. Leaving London (Tom Paxton) (unreleased)
6. Show Me the Door (Walker/Ward) (from Renewal)
7. Dawg’s Rag (David Grisman) (unreleased)
8. Stratosphere Blues/I Believe in You (Apostol) (from Highway Prayers)
9. In the Clear (Apostol/Allen/Weisberger) (from Highway Prayers)
10. Turmoil & Tinfoil (Apostol) (from Turmoil & Tinfoil) [End of Set #1]
11. The Fire on My Tongue (Apostol/Allen/Weisberger) (from Renewal)
12. Ole Slew Foot (James Webb) (unreleased)
13. Age (Jim Croce/Ingrid Croce) (unreleased)
14. My Alice (Apostol/Allen/Weisberger) (from Highway Prayers)
15. Away from the Mire (Apostol/Weisberger) (from Home)
16. And Am I Born to Die? (Charles Wesley) (unreleased)
17. Brown’s Ferry Blues (Alton Delmore/Rabon Delmore) (from Earl Jam)
18. Dos Banjos (Apostol) (from Billy Strings EP)
19. Escanaba (Apostol) (from Highway Prayers)
20. Nights in White Satin (Justin Hayward) (unreleased)
21. Pretty Daughter (Danny Barnes) (unreleased)
22. Psycho (Leon Payne) (unreleased)
23. Hide and Seek (Apostol/Walker/Billy Failing/Royal Masat) (from Renewal)
24. Richard Petty (Apostol) (from Highway Prayers)
25. Tennessee (Jimmy Martin/Doyle Neikirk) (unreleased)

Note: An official stream of tonight’s show is available on Nugs.net here.

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My fiction writing can be found here.