ALBUM REVIEW: Billy Strings Takes Us Down a Long Highway
Henry Carrigan
Posted On September 27, 2024
On the high-octane Highway Prayers, multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Billy Strings flies down bluegrass straightaways, careening around curves with blind speed. These songs pay tribute to the backroads and byways Strings barreled down in his youth, and some of them pay tribute to his high-speed heroes (“Richard Petty”). Still others send up prayers that the road won’t age him before his time, or that it might provide some clear direction — if it’s not closed.
Strings and his band launch into an a cappella chorus to open the album’s first track “Leaning on a Travelin’ Song,” then scamper off into a propulsive bluegrass rambler that has echoes of Randy Meisner’s “Midnight Flyer.” The group keeps its pedal to the metal on the rollicking “In the Clear,” with its sobering chorus:
They say heaven knows the road is closed
but how the hell would heaven know
where am I supposed to go from here
how much longer now before I’m in the clear?
The high-flying instrumental “Escanaba,” with its Mexicali meanderings is a paean to Escanaba, Michigan. “Seney Stretch” pays homage to a straightaway in Strings’ home state of Michigan.
“Malfunction Junction” opens slowly, but soon accelerates, mimicking the speed with which drivers might whizz through intersections. The spare “Catch and Release” features just Strings and his guitar, and a story about a fisherman who gets a little more than he’s bargained for. At the end of the tongue-in-cheek song, Strings offers up a few lessons for songwriting and life:
You don’t always need to make the verses rhyme …
by the way, only break one law at a time.
The rollicking romp “Gone a Long Time” is an ode to life on the road and the people, places, and things you leave behind along the way. The bodacious banjo picking that drives “Leadfoot” fuels the comic tale of a driver who puts their foot through the floor in their Chevy Chevelle, speeding all around the county. All 20 tracks on Highway Prayers showcases Strings’ lyrical ingenuity, his humor, and his never-waste-a-note guitar and banjo playing. Right through to the a cappella gospel tune which closes the disc: “Richard Petty” — a brilliant send-up of the classic “Turn Your Radio On.”
Billy Strings’s Highway Prayers releases Dep. 27 on Reprise Records.
