Highway Prayers, the major-label studio debut from Billy Strings, is a coming out party for the bluegrass wunderkind. Not that Strings necessarily needs an introduction. Over years of touring punctuated by a handful of acclaimed records on the legendary Americana imprint Rounder, the Michigan native has developed a quicksilver style that has earned him widespread appeal and industry recognition: Home, his second record, won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2021, right around the time his fleet flat-picking found an enthusiastic reception among jam band freaks. Without ever abandoning his roots in traditional bluegrass, Strings ventured into other musical styles, demonstrating his facility with rock, metal, and blues, sounding equally at ease with bluegrass legends Béla Fleck and David Grisman as he is with rapper Post Malone or jam titans Phish.
Strings didn’t extend invitations to high-profile guests to appear on Highway Prayers, although he did choose to enlist one prominent collaborator: producer Jon Brion, whose extensive resume includes classics by Fiona Apple and Kanye West, along with ornate film scores for Paul Thomas Anderson. Brion’s expertise lies in using the studio as a canvas, a skill he imparts in subtle ways to Strings, who adds painterly nuance to his bluegrass. The expanded palette, along with the record’s rambling double-album length, reflects a musician who is happy to experiment—but the key to the success of Highway Prayers is that he never roams too far from home.
The picturesque detours are crucial to the album’s character, though. Brion brings sly studio wizardry to Highway Prayers, looping bong rips and ignited lighters for the rhythm track of “MORBUD4ME” for a stoner joke that’s subtle enough to slip underneath the radar of a less discerning listener. A similar trick is pulled on “Leadfoot,” where the pair samples a vintage Chevy, its growl subsumed into a charging getaway anthem. Only a handful of tracks were recorded in Los Angeles with Brion at the board, yet his guidance and occasional instrumental contributions lend the record sweetness and a subtle sense of cinematic scope. “Gild the Lily” glides by like a sweet summer breeze, while the jailhouse tale of “Seven Weeks in County” has its plight undergirded by ghostly strings wailing in the background.
Strings’ time in the studio with Brion inspired the guitarist to head to his home turf to construct “Stratosphere Blues/I Believe In You,” a mini-suite where echoey vocals and keyboards combine into a pulsating astral lava lamp that then gives way to an aching, direct plea for connection. This duality captures the album’s aesthetic in miniature: All of his external explorations drove Strings to turn inward, to apply what he’s learned to bluegrass, the music he loves most.
Earlier this year, Strings released Live Vol. 1, a collection of concert highlights that emphasized the outer limits of his onstage jamming. Compared to that release, Highway Prayers can seem relatively staid. Where the live compilation teems with flights of fancy spiraling upward, the studio set is proudly anchored in bluegrass, where each shift of mood is accentuated by the lonesome harmonies and dexterous picking of Strings and his regular road band. The decision to augment, not expand, his bluegrass on Highway Prayers helps illustrate his mastery: He’s finding new aural and emotional textures within a familiar genre.
Those fresh sounds are married to the sturdiest set of songs Strings has written, with defined melodies distinguished by flashes of empathy and wit. The plaintive lament “My Alice” cuts as lasting an impression as its opposite “Catch and Release,” a clever talking blues where a state trooper pulls over the narrator. As sharp as these songs are, Strings sometimes can still seem most comfortable playing, not singing: “Escanaba” and “Seney Stretch” both carry a sense of understated grace whose beauty lingers long after the album stops playing. Highway Prayers’ long runtime allows for these moments of quiet reflection to feel as integral to the album as the spirited picking from Strings—an impressive emotional evolution that mirrors the artist’s divergent, yet rooted, musical progression.
