WSTB

Quite the weekend coming up. The Billy Strings shows at the Joel--Friday and Saturday night--are basically sold out (Saturday is a full sellout and Friday has a handful of tickets left). The concert is a big deal for the artist alone, as Strings' current tour includes sellouts at Red Rocks, the Hollywood Bowl, and a host of other major venues across the country, but Friday also marks what would have been the 100th birthday of bluegrass legend Doc Watson.

Ramkat is hosting preshow and post-show music on Friday and all day Saturday leading up to the Billy Strings show, and an afterparty later both nights. Big Winston Warehouse (home of Fiddlin Fish, Broad Branch, etc) is hosting the Red Daisy Festival in honor of Doc all day Friday and Saturday with programming wrapping up before the Strings show. The OG Ziggy's folks are hosting an afterparty at the Millennium Center after the show. Aperture is screening a concert film with Doc, Earl Scruggs, and Ricky Skaggs filmed in 2003 at Reynolds Auditorium ("The Three Pickers") tomorrow night (3/1) and The Ramkat is hosting a smaller tribute show for Doc Thursday (3/2).

Big weekend for bluegrass! Winston has always been well-positioned to be a major bluegrass, folk, Americana, etc. hub, and this weekend could be a good example of that. I hope the WSPD and other folks involved are prepared for an influx of people.

Camel City’s on fire this weekend!

Also, The Last Resort next to the coliseum will also have live music 2pm-2am Friday and Saturday.

After this latest event I'm getting really excited about the future events coming to the Joel. Downtown was packed with tourists. I'm guessing his 2 sold out concerts brought millions to the city that weekend. It didn't hurt that many folks attended both concerts.

I got home from Ikea Saturday and the area around Ramkat and Wiseman was insane! It was really neat to see how many local places downtown did events to support the Billy Strings event. Every brewery I visit was doing some sort of tribute from Wednesday on as well as Ramkat. Would be nice to see everything come together like that more often to make a concert become a whole event. I didn't see anything like this for even Paul McCartney, and I had to Google Billy Strings to see who he was.

I heard some of the breweries downtown had their all-time best day on the Saturday of the concert. Fiddlin' Fish, especially, since they essentially hosted an all-day companion festival.

I'm aware that Billy Strings isn't a household name, but he's big among two sets: hardcore bluegrass fans and the jam-band, Phish-adjacent set. His Friday night show catered to the former (3.5 hours of old time Bluegrass in honor of Doc Watson) and his Saturday show catered to the latter (long, virtuosic jams of his original music and a few covers, with a "crowd around the mic" encore set during which he played Tony Rice's guitar).

It was a perfect event for Winston, scale-wise. Two nights of an artist that is somewhat niche but can still easily fill an arena, drawing crowds that fill downtown without shutting the whole city down.

Oh, and kudos to the LJVM staff, etc. I heard there were some issues Friday, but the event Saturday was smooth. Lines were short and moved quickly. Plenty of staff.