Songs of the Week: Take 5
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
Neil Morton
FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK
Carry Us Home: Billy Strings
Billy Strings, the ground-breaking totem of bluegrass music, makes a welcome excursion into Americana territory on his latest album, So Much For Goodbyes. The Michigan-born master of the acoustic guitar provides our Song of the Week at herecomesthesong.com with the beautiful ballad Carry Us Home. There are so many strings to this songwriter’s bow.
Strings, born William Lee Apostol 33 years ago, dedicated his fifth studio album to his mother Debra who died last year at 64. Debra, whose collage work contributed to the album cover artwork, died of a drug overdose, just as Strings’ biological father had when Billy was only two. ‘I thought he must have loved heroin more than me,’ he told the New York Times. It is remarkable that such a chaotic back story – Strings himself fell prey to hard drug use after leaving the family home at 14 – could not derail what would become a successful crossover career. A biopic in the making?
Nashville-based Strings, whose stage name was coined by an aunt, has always used his guitar wizardry as a coping mechanism whenever adversity strikes. Fine songs have been created out of the personal wreckage. Many of the 16 tracks on So Much For Goodbyes (which could almost be classed a double album) are a reaction to his mother’s passing. ‘It was a rough thing, losing my mom, and my guitar has always been that kind of friend – where I can lean on it to deal with all these feelings.’
Despite the grieving this is no funeral march; the rapid-fire arpeggio runs and jam-band barn-stormers beloved by his fans are not forsaken. But the quieter, reflective moments are the ones to treasure, as are the powerful lyrics. Carry Us Home features just two acoustic guitars, those of Strings and Bryan Sutton. The way the instruments interweave in a cascade of sound is exquisite, heightening the sense of longing. The song was written in collaboration with Joe Henry whose poetic leanings are evident here:
The iced-over river
Still braiding its chain
The heart will break open
Until it remains
Torn deep and worn
As our father’s refrain:
Oh boys, which side are you on?
We brought down the lighthouse
It fell like a tree
In the grey of the blues
Ever singing in me
The riderless horse
That stands at the sea
Just waiting to carry us home
The previous track, Burn The Other End, could not be more different in style or tone. The incredible Strings band come out to play for a smouldering slice of bluegrass noir. Our virtuoso duels in turn with Billy Failing on banjo, Alex Hargreaves on fiddle and Jarrod Walker on mandolin – with producer T Bone Burnett and Jack White on raucous backing vocals.
Royal Masat is on upright bass but there are no drums; music this percussive rarely needs further rhythmic help. Strings’ innovative guitar picking – the speed is matched by subtlety – is extraordinary. No wonder Willie Nelson described the three-times Grammy winner as the John Coltrane of bluegrass. Again, the lyric is potent:
Guilty, resenting what I’ve done
Traded everything I love for what I have become
Wasted, no wonder I’m afraid
Always struggling to justify the sacrifice I’ve made
This will break
I just can’t
So I will burn the other end
In Mill Town Flood Strings channels his inner Levon Helm in a nostalgic tale of love found and lost, echoing The Band’s The Weight with its call-and-answer chorus augmented by Lindsay Lou’s vocal. I’m One Of Those stays in Muir, the village near Ionia where he was raised – ‘seeing the ghosts walk down the sidewalk’. The gorgeous gospel-flecked, Louvin Brothers-style Wrestling An Angel is another standout: ‘Precious creator/ Maker of time/ Please don’t you let me/ Waste all of mine.’
Strings can certainly thank his stepfather Terry Barber for introducing him to the bluegrass greats Doc Watson, Del McCoury, David Grisman, Bill Monroe, Tony Rice, John Hartford and Earl Scruggs before the boy discovered Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and heavy metal. He is among the greats now. ‘Terry raised me and taught me how to wipe my ass, tie my shoes, and play guitar,’ Strings said of the man he made an album of covers with in 2022, Me/And/Dad.
But mom remains the overarching influence. The raw Still I Crash was written not long after her death and Strings talks directly to her. He is her legacy. ‘She was such a beautiful person, so creative, and I’m her greatest creation,’ he told the New York Times in a fascinating, generously candid interview. Strings has a young son who provides a precious incentive in his continued sobriety. ‘My goal is to be there for him, forever.’
The little devil on his shoulder reminds him that he is playing for his own survival away from those tempestuous times in a meth house – ‘all this generational trauma has to stop with me’.
Whose wall is this
Suddenly stands in my yard?
Aloof and unmoving
And scathing and hard
Like the face of lost time
Embattled and scarred
Dreaming of all yet to come
When the light will play tricks
On the innocent sky
Bring it to close
Like the day by and by
Time will stand still
For both you and I
Just waiting to carry us home
Memories of his mother will always carry Billy Strings home.
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