THE BILLY STRINGS INCIDENT - by Billy Heath
One fall day in 2016, I was looking for some slogans that might be cool for us to make T-shirts out of, and I googled "Meet Me at the Creek" and I didn’t find too many references to it, although there was a song called "Meet Me at the Creek". So while I continued my search, I hit play on the song, and then as the song was playing, I thought to myself… Wow! This is a pretty good tune!
So I clicked the link to the song… and it was recorded by someone named Billy Strings. I had never heard of that name, but I thought it was such a good song that I looked into seeing where he was playing, with the hopes of maybe having him come to the Muddy Creek Music Hall. I noticed that he was playing an afternoon show in Charlotte on December 10, 2016. And I thought to myself… I wonder if we could do a Sunday night show with him?
Taking the Risk
So I decided to look up who his booking agent was and sent him a message. We offered meals and lodging for him and his band, and they responded with a $600 guarantee necessary for us to book him. That kind of stopped me in my tracks, because we had never done a guarantee before, and $600 on a Sunday night for someone that wasn’t that well-known seemed like quite the risk…
So I didn’t respond right away. I slept on it, and the next morning, while we were having our morning coffee, I pulled up that song and asked Shana to give it a listen. She agreed with me that it was a very good song, and so we decided to take a risk and book Billy Strings for a $600 guarantee on a Sunday night in December 2016.
As we got closer to the date, we realized that people did know who he was—it sold out within a couple of weeks of putting it online. The local newspaper had an entertainment section at the time, and they put him right on the front of it. I had made a connection with Presley Barker, who wasn't even a teenager at the time yet, but I thought he would make a nice opener.
Soundcheck and Showmanship
When Billy got there with his band and they started setting up, I noticed that one of the bandmates was tuning his guitar for him, and I was thinking, Wow… this guy must be something special!
As we did the sound check, I got them dialed in, and then I got Presley up to do his sound check. I remember asking Billy, who was standing there beside me while I was sound checking Presley, if he thought I should give him a mic and maybe he could come out and do a song with Billy towards the end of the show. Billy looked at me and said, "That kid can already outplay me… don’t give him a microphone!"
After the show—which was stellar—we headed toward the house, although Billy and the band went out partying and finally came in around 3 AM, as I was waiting like a parent waiting for his teenager to come home after borrowing the car!
The next morning, we were all hanging out and I got to jam with Billy a little bit on guitar, and he explained to me how he came from the heavy metal school of playing and now he translated it into bluegrass, which I thought was brilliant! As he was holding our cat Linus, he got a little close to the fire with him, and Linus still only has a few whiskers from that incident!
The Bethania Mill Explosion
The next time he rolled through was on June 4, 2017, and by that time, he was well on his way to stardom. I remember he walked into the mill where the music hall was, flopped down on a sofa in the hallway, and said, "Billy… I’d like to be at home on my sofa surfing the tube… I’ve got so many people following me around that I have no idea who they are… one of them claims they’re my manager!"
That night, the Bethania Mill was elevated to a new height! His performance was absolutely stunning. I’m pretty sure that everyone in there was a couple of inches off the ground from the energy of that place! Shana said that was the only time that she had thought about calling in security, because it was a madhouse!
I think it was around a year later, and he was playing Red Rocks. Like many other performers that came through, he said he would come back…
We’re still waiting!