It took less than one song to turn me into a full-fledged convert. Granted, it was probably 10 minutes long, and it shifted genre several times, so it felt like more than one song to an extent. But the length and breadth of it all was part of the appeal.

Around 8 o’clock Saturday night in Columbus, Billy Strings stepped out in front of a stadium full of people and began summoning sound from his acoustic guitar. He was unaccompanied at first, playing a part that reminded me of jazzy neo-classical fingerstyle virtuosos like Paco de Lucía or Al Di Meola, exploratory and flush with feeling. Gradually, his four bandmates joined in, and the music morphed into a traditional bluegrass ramble. There were five of them total: Billy on guitar plus fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and upright bass. Even in the cavernous coliseum where the Ohio State Buckeyes play football, there was no drummer to make the sound go boom, not even a kickdrum like Mumford & Sons used to use.

The band didn’t need that kind of percussion to make its presence felt at the Horseshoe. As “Away From The Mire” unfolded, Billy stepped to the microphone with a robust voice that belied his slender frame, sweet but hearty, like a welterweight Travis Tritt or Chris Stapleton. “Let go of the pain,” he sang. “Hold on to the rhythm that’s consciously held back in you.” The music kept unspooling, returning to the jazzy classical vibes of the intro, then veered off into a lengthy instrumental passage that reminded me Billy once joined prog-metal icons Tool onstage. (Fittingly, one guy a few rows in front of me was rocking a Tool T-shirt, an exception in a crowd full of sleeveless shirts, cowboy hats, mullets, and other country looks.)





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