Back in Indy after returning home to pick up the missus, I arrived at Gainbridge Fieldhouse to a huge crowd waiting for the doors to open on Night 2 of Billy Strings' weekend stand. Excitement was high, and dozens could be seen with their fingers in the air, hoping for an extra ticket for sale or a miracle.
My fifteen minutes in the photo pit were greeted by a Billy staple off the Grammy-nominated Renewal, "Know It All" (complete with a tease of the traditional "Sally Goodin") and "My Alice" from the new album Highway Prayers.
My time in the pit exhausted, I returned to the arena's bowels to grab my stuff, escorted by Jeff, the grandfatherly Associate Director of Creative Services for the Pacers who has worked at the Fieldhouse for 26 years and seemed to know every employee he passed by name. After stashing my gear at the hotel across the street, I met some traveling kids who were on tour from San Francisco by way of Chicago.
The first set was over by the time I made it back into the venue. Here's the rest of the 1st set, verified by BillyBase.net:
Escanaba
Gild the Lily
Nothing’s Working
Red Daisy
Home Of The Red Fox>Drifter’s Escape (Bob Dylan cover)
It Ain’t Before
Must Be Seven>John Hardy
After ripping through his high-octane drinking song "The Fire on My Tongue," they slid right into his hit shared single with Wille Nelson, "California Sober." As the crowd cheered, Billy tipped his hat with a, "We love you, Willy!"
Red Allen & The Kentuckians' "Hello City Limits" built the momentum for the crowd favorite "Tinfoil & Turmoil." It slowed down into psychedelic jam before Alex Hargreaves wrangled the band with a machine-gun fiddle lick, handing off to Billy for an overdriven solo before returning to the chorus to close out the tune on a hard stop.
After a long pause for well-deserved applause, the house lights dimmed once again for a ballad of lost love and bad decisions, "Love and Regret."
3-part harmonies were brought to the forefront, briefly urging Katy Daley to come on down the mountain before taking the crowd to the "End Of The Rainbow," paying tribute to its writer, the late Frank Wakefield, who died in spring of this year. The song featured syncopated flat-picking from Billy before soaring off into a distorted guitar solo and colorful visuals from lighting director Roger Gant.
A beautifully arranged cover of The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” helped cool things off a bit, and rather than exiting the stage/returning for an encore, the band chose to drop a gear and break the tires loose with the cowboy prison piece off Highway Prayers "Seven Weeks in County." Fun fact: the music video was filmed at Willie Nelson's house.
With just shy of three minutes of stage time remaining, the band squeezed in the fiddle-heavy "Uncle Pen," bluegrass royalty Bill Monroe's tribute to his uncle who could be heard fiddling from the hilltop over Rosine Depot.
Billy Strings heads next to Huntsville, AL for two nights at The Orion Amphitheater.
