The musician performed “Red Daisy,” “My Alice,” “Malfunction Junction,” and “Gild the Lily”
Michigan bluegrass phenom Billy Strings and his band stopped by NPR’s Tiny Desk for a performance more than a decade in the making. Backed by his band — Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, backing vocalist Billy Failing on banjo, backing vocalist and bassist Royal Masat, and Jarrod Walker on mandolin and background vocals — Strings and Co. opened with a lively “Red Daisy” from his 2021 album Renewal.
The affable Strings chatted with the audience between songs and tuning. “We’ll do this one here, soon as I get this thing back in gear,” he said as he tuned his guitar before launching, eyes closed, into “My Alice” from 2024’s Highway Prayers. They also performed that album’s “Malfunction Junction,” and closed with the beautifully harmonized “Gild the Lily.”
The band also shared some of their favorite Tiny Desk performances that they’ve watched along the way, with Masat saying a favorite was Anderson. Paak’s set, and shouting out the recent PinkPantheress performance. Strings named “the late-great Mac Miller” set; Phish; and 2011’s Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, Stuart Duncan, Aoife O’Donovan’s performance of their The Goat Rodeo Sessions, calling it “super sick.”
“We kind of, like, grew up on this,” Strings said. “I remember back in the day submitting my audition to be on here,” he added, teasing that “it only took like, I don’t know, 12 more years or something.”
“We’ve been lucky to play a lot of pretty cool venues,” Strings said during their four-song set. “But this one is different … It has that same soul to it because like I’ve said I’ve seen so many amazing performances that have happened right here and I kind of believe that love and spirit kind of soaks into this environment, so even just standing here feels like a special thing.”
