Billy Strings At the Wang

Wunderkind Billy Strings has impressed me, playing with Bill Kreutzmann's band and also on bluegrass tunes I've heard.  He's an incredibly talented young musician who's won a Grammy and who covers a range of music.  So we were psyched to see him at Boston's Wang Theater (whilom Music Hall) on November 17th.

Dave was sick and had to miss it, but friend L came down, and we drove into crowded and under construction Boston in plenty of time for the show.  The scene was what we've come to expect: dentists on every corner, lots of crowds milling around, and when we got into the beautiful Wang, long lines for bad beer.  The place was packed, and we were glad they had a vaccination requirement.

We were in the middle of the balcony but somehow the place seemed more jammed with people than I've ever seen it.  And these people were psyched: they shouted and talked throughout the show, the beer lines featured some people drinking one while they waited to get another (at $15 a pop!), and there was an amazing amount of indoor pot smoking.

Billy came out and they lined up with mandolinist, bassist, Strings on guitar, and banjo on the right ... they all sang, though Strings had the lead on every song.  The band played two hefty sets and thoroughly delighted the crowd.  This was a great concert but I was a little dismayed by the dearth of real bluegrass.  They only played one song that stayed a bluegrass song (which was the least popular of the show, from the crowd's reaction); almost every song started with a good bluegrass riff but then evolved into a jam band frenzy.  I'm totally in favor of crowds being delighted, genre being turned on its head, and long jams, but was not having as good a time as almost all of the people there!

The mandolinist was great and some of the jams between him and Strings especially were astronomical.  The group singing was also very good and the bluegrass fan in me was pleased with the harmonies ... wish they'd done that more often.  But the sound was just wrong for me and Sarah.  It was hard to identify what was wrong and we discussed it a lot afterwards.  I think the best explanation was that it was too loud.  Now, I like volume in a concert and have complained in many blogs about things not being loud enough.  But each instrument seemed to be miked in a narrow range, none of them could achieve a warm feeling.  When one musician soloed it sounded all right but too trebly, but when several jammed together they sounded muddy and almost crackly, like acoustic instruments being turned up as loud as they could get, which in fact was the story.

Enough criticism, as I've said this was a very well received concert.  Here's the setlist:

• Set 1:
• Red Daisy
• I'll Remember You, Love, in My Prayers (William "Billy" Hayes)
• Bronzeback
• Must Be Seven
• Fire Line
• Running the Route
• Peggy-O
• Boston Boy (David Grisman)
• Watch It Fall
• The Likes of Me (Jerry Reed)
• Meet Me at the Creek
• Set 2:
• Fire on My Tongue
• Taking Water
• End of the Rainbow (Frank Wakefield)
• Thirst Mutilator
• Dust in a Baggie
• Love Like Me
• Highway Hypnosis
• John Deere Tractor (Larry Sparks)
• In Hiding (Pearl Jam)
• Hide & Seek
• Encore:
• Big Ball's in Cowtown

The opener, Red Daisy, was great and I also really liked Dust In a Baggie.  Only one Grateful Dead song, and the crowd would have loved more ... GD gear was ubiquitous.  And he did a very good and faithful cover of John Deere Tractor, though as I say this was a sleeper for most of the crowd.  And in the encore he substituted "Boston" for "Cowtown," so everyone got a chance to roar.  This was a lot of fun!  Great musicianship (Strings is an astounding guitar player) and great crowd, though I had a few nits to pick.

The Theater District was just as packed when we got out, and the parking garage was too.  Oh well, got out of there finally and soon home with no problem.  Glad I didn't have to go to work the next day!