PULLIN’ ON MY HEART STRINGS

Darlin’, if you walk beside me, I will be a steady hand/If you need a rock to stand on, honey, I will be your man...

Who is this outrageous woman belting out Billy Strings songs, speeding down 83 to the Giant in northern Baltimore?

Believe it or not, she is me.

Given my role as an editor at a quarterly music magazine, I always believed “What kind of music are you listening to these days?” was an accurate litmus test of my compatibility with a potential romantic prospect. So when I asked my now-partner Cody this over text in the days leading up to our first date and he sent back a Billy Strings record, I was a little unsure. But the date went so well that the next day we ate some mushrooms and he played Fiona Apple and I realized that people can contain multitudes.

If you don’t already know, the dating scene in my former home New York City is trash. It’s a war of attrition: an endless cycle of mediocre Tinder meetups with dudes who “own their own streetwear brand” (read: unemployed) and “creative directors” who “aren’t looking for anything serious right now.”

That said, when I did move to Baltimore, I was a little anxious in terms of my romantic future. Everyone I knew was already wifed up! Likely because the pickings here are much slimmer—people tend to find a good contender and lock that shit down. I remember bemoaning to my buddy Dan, “Who will I date here?” He said, “I don’t know, man, you might just have to date someone who works in HVAC.”

I’m happy to report that I did eventually meet a special someone in the bathroom line at the Ottobar one evening, a real-live country boy (the aforementioned Cody) from Harford County, Maryland (think cornfields), complete with pickup truck. He may not do HVAC, but he knows how to replace a hot water heater, and he put my car back together after my second hit-and-run accident.

The thing is...now I listen to country music. And bluegrass. And “Americana.” In the early days of our relationship, I made us one of those blended Spotify playlists that takes the algorithms of two listeners and combines them. We’d laugh over some of the tracks and guess which profile Spotify pulled them from: “Chicken Fried” by Zac Brown Band was obviously a Cody pick, whereas “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You) by UGK was invariably a Mandy pick.

But since I was generally the one playing music on my phone, Spotify’s brain broke and thought all the Cody songs on the Cody + Mandy playlist were Mandy songs, and now I’m getting served all his music. The entire Cody + Mandy playlist has become a Cody playlist—there are no more Mandy songs! And you know what? I don’t hate it. After two decades of sad indie songwriters and angry punk music, it’s refreshing to listen to twangin’ ditties about the simple joys of throwing back a shot of whiskey.

Fast-forward a few months: We’re still going strong, and Billy Strings is playing at the CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore. And, no surprise, Cody wants to go! And obviously, as CREEM’s managing editor, I was more than happy to pull a few strings and take my sweetheart to the show.

Billy Strings is a bluegrass artist born in Lansing, Michigan, to humble beginnings: When his biological father died from a heroin overdose when Billy was 2, his mother married a respected amateur bluegrass musician named Terry Barber. Sadly his parents eventually succumbed to methamphetamine addiction, and young Billy left home at age 13 and started doing hard drugs himself. As Cody tells it, a 2012 YouTube video of Strings playing “Dust in a Baggie” (about his meth addiction) with his buddy in a dimly lit room went viral and Billy’s been on the up-and-up ever since.

I’m not sure if it’s as simple as that, but the bluegrass impresario has achieved worldwide acclaim: His 2019 album Home won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album of the year. He almost made it into the pages of an earlier issue of this magazine, except for a nay-saying, now-defunct editor killing it because “no one knows who he is.”

Maybe no one in Brooklyn knows who he is, but as is the entire ethos of this issue, Brooklyn isn’t the end-all, be-all of musical taste. When I went to look for his publicist’s contact info, I saw dates for shows all over Europe, in addition to the States, with a sold-out show in Paris. Who knew? And in fact, his Feb. 1 show at Lincoln Center sold out as well, so it’s possible the Brooklynites are Stringheads after all.

Folks in Baltimore certainly know who he is. On that chilly night in early December, downtown was abuzz with Strings fans. We stopped for a drink at a hotel bar near the arena; the hotel was hosting an Army holiday party that evening, so the crowd in the lobby was a mix of dress uniforms, ball gowns, and folks clad in Billy Strings merchandise and denim. It wasn’t hard to guess who was going where.

We walked over to the show and got our tickets at will call; Cody’s eyes grew larger as we descended further and further down the rows till we got to the front. “These are our seats?” he said, “Wow!” I took a swig of my giant $30 beer and smiled: “The perks of running with the press.”

The lights dimmed and the crowd cheered. Strings walked out on stage and launched into his performance, switching between guitars and banjos and plucking three-minute songs into 20-minute guitar solos while his fans blissed out. If we could have done it again, the only thing we would have done differently would be to opt for another dose of mushrooms instead of the fat doink we rolled as we walked from our car to the show, but never mind that—Billy took this into account. The visuals for his gig showed him up on the big screen, edited to replicate the trails you might hallucinate on a heavy dose of drugs.

The vibes were immaculate: positive and full of joy. Cody, as is his modus operandi, made some new friends in the bathroom line, who indulged his nicotine addiction by sharing a cigarette with him in one of the stalls. He returned to our seats renewed for the second half of the three-hour set. He nudged me and gestured to our left, where a boomer-aged couple swayed smiling and stoned to a drawn-out Johnny Cash cover.

“I hope that’s us in 40 years,” he said.

Me too. Thanks, Billy!