A Railbird crowd favorite comes back to Lexington with a new album

The scene was a comfortable Saturday afternoon at the inaugural Railbird festival last summer. Situated between the event’s two mainstage areas (Robert Earl Keen was winding down on one, Brandi Carlile was about light to a performance fuse on the other) was the compact Burl stage where Billy Strings was playing away like a bluegrass fireball.

There were certainly bigger acts on the bill. But Strings, a new generation guitarist with a flair for progressive phrasing and ensemble improvisation, was a clear crowd favorite. That could be credited, in part, to familiarity. He had already established a sizeable Lexington following through frequent club appearances. But there was clearly something else in the air, a sense that Strings’ cross-generational string music was about to bust open in a big way. For the moment, though, Strings was tearing through the Johnny Horton classic “Ole Slew Foot” with the speed and vigor of a Ramones classic.

All this helps explains why his Feb. 6 concert return to Lexington at Manchester Music Hall became a sellout months ago.

“I love getting to play bluegrass in Kentucky,” Strings said. “I mean, that’s where it’s from. You get in front of an audience down there and they know the songs as well as the history.”

Curiously, Strings – born William Apostol – discovered the roots of bluegrass not in Kentucky, but as a child growing up in rural Michigan. There were would be eventual detours into electric music as his school years progressed, but what struck him initially as a guitarist were the traditionally rooted bluegrass records of Bill Monroe, the folk variations of Doc Watson and the more progressively minded acoustic music of mandolinist David Grisman. Strings also had an integral guide through these sounds - his father, a gifted amateur guitarist by the name of Terry Barber.

“You don’t see people play like him anymore,” Strings said. “My father is a rare breed. He fully embodies the emotion of a song when he plays it, and he’s not even a professional musician. He just does this out of the love of music. I’ve played with a lot of the best musicians in the world and I have never really come across anybody that truly has what my dad has. He comes from that old guard.”

Perhaps fittingly, Strings has titled his second and newest album, “Home.” While the record reflects a few dark themes and storylines, the music is wildly varied, from the bittersweet traditional turns of “Must Be Seven,” to the Eastern overtones, electric augmentation and orchestral colors of the album’s title song. Helping out on two tunes, though, is a bluegrass journeyman from another generation – dobro great Jerry Douglas, whose late 70’s residency in Lexington coincided with a tenure in J.D. Crowe’s first New South band. A six-time Grammy winner since then, Douglas’ music would eventually explore new stylistic ground in folk and jazz phrasing. Such experimentation is carried on by the kind of genre-hopping Strings indulges in today.

“It’s always an honor to make music with Jerry Douglas and people like him – guys like Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Del McCoury, Bryan Sutton – people who came before me. All these guys were my heroes growing up and now they’re my friends and almost my peers.

“They have all been super kind to me, whether it’s just through support or advice or actually teaching me licks to play, so having Jerry Douglas come in the studio was awesome.”

In the end, though, Strings has found almost as much comfort in his music as his friends and fans have. He cites “Away from the Mire,” one the more plaintive tunes on “Home,” as an example. Strings wrote it as a meditation on a troubled family member but wound up turning some of the song’s inspiration inward.

“A lot of the message of that song is about letting go of pain. Last year, I was struggling myself with some acute anxiety. We’re on the road so much. I was just getting really stressed out and started having anxiety attacks. It was really kicking my ass for a while there. One night, I was singing that song onstage and realized that when I wrote it, I was writing a subliminal message to myself. It was like, ‘Just calm down, man. You’ll be okay. Take it step by step and everything thing is going to be fine.’ I was talking to this family member in the song, but also to myself.

“A lot of times you feel like you’re writing music for whatever reason. Just to have songs to sing, I guess. But a lot of times it’s very therapeutic. It can be a good thing for my mental health to get some of those things off my chest.”

Billy Strings

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 6

Where: Manchester Music Hall, 899 Manchester St.

Tickets: Sold out

Call: 859-537-7321

Online: manchestermusichall.com