Billy Strings - and more - in the May BU

The cover story of the May 2023 issue of Bluegrass Unlimited magazine is on Billy Strings, who played with his band in Dublin on 9 December last. The show was sold out, as his shows are these days - an example given in Derek Halsey's article is an 18,000-seat arena in Nashville which was sold out for two successive nights. Halsey follows this with a further article on the concert two months ago when Billy Strings played the Martin D-28 59857 that belonged to Tony Rice; this legendary instrument was made available to him by Tony's widow Pam, who also advised him on how it needed to be treated.

The many other good things in this issue include Penny Parsons's five-page feature on Zoe and Cloyd, who will be playing at Bluegrass Omagh 2023 later this month; and Chris A. Courogen's article on Paul Beard, his resonator guitars, and his latest improvement to their performance, the 'Vesper cone'. The resonator guitar, as Beard points out, is the only member of the bluegrass family in which newer instruments are preferred to old ones.

© Richard Hawkins