How Shrooms Showed Billy Strings That Bluegrass Rocks Harder Than Rock ‘n’ Roll

Billy Strings is the long-haired, guitar-slaying wild child who’s doing God’s work. He is dragging bluegrass, kicking and shredding, into the 21st century. But like any good country tale, his origin story involves a little rebellion, a lot of talent… and yep, a psychedelic breakthrough courtesy of good ol’ fashioned mushrooms.

On Robert Earl Keen’s Americana Podcast, Billy shared how a trippy afternoon at home changed his entire musical compass. He went from worshipping wah pedals to bowing before Bill Monroe faster than a possum crossing a two-lane at midnight.

“It wasn’t ’til I was a teenager that I took breaks on a fiddle tune.”

Billy didn’t grow up totally blind to bluegrass, far from it. His dad, Terry Barber, played the good stuff since Billy was a youngin’ and even gave him his first acoustic guitar around age 4. And there was this one old-timer down by the river who’d catch flatheads and preach the gospel of Johnny Cash like it was Sunday morning.

So yeah, young Billy knew the twang, he was practically born playing it, but there came a time when he wanted to jam with kids his own age… kids who liked skateboarding and video games. That when Billy opted to plug in, and play more rock and roll:

“When I was in middle school I didn’t go around telling people I played bluegrass. Not that I was embarrassed, but it was just something I did with my dad… but there came a point where I just wanted to play music with people my age. I was a kid in middle school and these guys were all in their 40s and 50s… I always got along with older people because I played bluegrass.

Then, one fine day, Billy popped some mushrooms because what else do you do with a free afternoon when you’re a bluegrass prodigy and a little spiritually curious?

“I was watching live performances of The Doors… Jim Morrison doing his thing. I watched a bunch of Hendrix… Led Zeppelin… all this old, awesome rock ’n’ roll.”

As one does. Because let’s be real: shrooms make everything sound transcendent. Even Morrison rambling about snake gods feels like a TED Talk on interdimensional truth.

But then, something wild happened. As Billy took a break from his classic rock YouTube spiral, the algorithm pulled a fast one. Out of nowhere, it queued up some bluegrass.

“My YouTube made it back to ‘Train 45,’ Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker, and that s*** rocked harder than any of that stuff I was listening to. It did, it rocked harder. They were playing more bad***.”

Boom. Cosmic banjo enlightenment.

Listen to the exact bluegrass rabbit hole Billy tumbled down:

“Twin fiddles and just raging tempos… I might rather see this than Jim Morrison talking about three-eyed snakes n’ shit.”

Same, Billy. Same.

That was the moment the lightning struck. Billy realized that bluegrass didn’t just twang, it roared. The genre could be as intense, as technical, and as freeing as anything coming out of a rock n’ roll.

At the time, he was still playing in a metal band. Think lots of screaming, shirtless thrashing, and guitar tuning that was… let’s just say “optional.”

“We were more about jumping around and spittin’ on people than making sure our guitars were in tune.”

Meanwhile, bluegrass guys? Just standing there, stone cold, and absolutely ripping.

“In bluegrass, the guys just stand there, but they play so amazingly.”

Lesson learned: you don’t need smoke machines or a distortion pedal to blow people’s minds. Sometimes, a flat-top and a fiddle can make you see God.

Want to see Billy take over a stage with nothing but talent, timing, and the kind of hands that were kissed by a bluegrass deity?

Now, this isn’t Billy’s first rodeo with substance-fueled creativity. On Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast, he casually drops the fact that he smoked crack at 16. (Yep. That escalated quickly…)

But hey, in his tiny Michigan hometown, that apparently wasn’t all that shocking.

“For two days I sat there playing. I was writing sh*t I never could’ve imagined.”

Look, most of us took bad selfies or bought a fedora at 16. Billy wrote otherworldly tunes while ripped on crack. Not exactly the recommended route, but hey, some folks take the scenic path.

“I can’t sit here and say I’ll never smoke meth again. I might want to do it in a controlled environment… as a creative experiment.”

Honestly, the man might be half outlaw, half wizard.

“I think I could write an album in three days that’s the craziest sh*t ever.”

If that album ever drops and it sounds like nothing we’ve heard before… well, now you know what the secret ingredient might’ve been.

Final Thoughts

Now, we’re not saying a mushroom trip is the recommended path to musical enlightenment, but for Billy, it sure as hell was a turning point. Psychedelics didn’t hand him talent (he already had that in spades), but they cracked open his perspective, revealing that bluegrass could hit harder than any amp-blasted power chord.The post How Shrooms Showed Billy Strings That Bluegrass Rocks Harder Than Rock ‘n’ Roll first appeared on Whiskey Riff.