Billy Strings Added to Telluride Bluegrass Line-Up

Billy Strings, one of the hottest musicians of the current era, has been added to the Telluride Bluegrass line-up.

He's been nominated for 6 Grammys, and won the Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album of 2021 with Home.

In 2019, Rolling Stone published the article "Why Guitarist Billy Strings Is the Bluegrass Star You Don't Want to Miss."

Listen to this:

Telluride Bluegrass is June 20–23 in Telluride. Some tickets are still available, but word on the street is they're selling fast. For more info on tickets go here.

While I'm picking on Billy Strings (pun intended), the line-up for this year's festival is unbelievable.

It includes Sierra Hull, Charley Crockett, the Infamous Stringdusters, Elephant Revival, Leftover Salmon, Bela Fleck and others, Sam Bush, Punch Bothers, the Fretliners, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, and many, many others. You need to see the line-up here.

Planet Bluegrass, which runs the Telluride Bluegrass Festival is an interesting organization.

It was born in the late 1980s in Telluride. It grew, guided by Craig Ferguson and Steve Szymanski, culminating in its most successful festival of the early years when they landed James Taylor as the headlining act in 1990.

"That success got Craig thinking: 'You get all geared up and you have this team together and you figure we should do something else,'” notes a history of Planet Bluegrass.

"The idea for a second festival came to Craig in a Chicago hotel room, dreaming about trading his law practice for a full-time gig in the music industry," notes the website. "It was a simple idea: songwriters from around the world convene for a summit on the song. Envisioning a community feeling, it would be FolkS with an “s” (early artwork exaggerated the size of the “s” to distinguish the event from another folk music gatherings).

"That simple idea was the nexus for the Ranch in Lyons, for The Song School, for Planet Bluegrass as a year-round business, and for the multiple venues, eras, artists, and musical directions that have steered us to Lyons for this year’s 25th Annual celebration."

Since then, Planet Bluegrass has done festivals in Estes Park, Lyons, and elsewhere, and has featured everyone from John Prine to Norah Jones to the Indigo Girls.

"After 27 years, the Folks Festival has firmly established itself as one of the country’s premiere music festivals—with its own musical genre (“folks”) and its own community of dedicated Festivarians who plan their summer around the festival, independent of specific headliners. Look around you on Folks weekend: the next era of the festival may be shaped by a young musician seated on a tarp near you," the website notes.

Here's a full Billy Strings concert at Red Rocks:

This year's festival looks spectacular. 

See you there!