Highway Prayers

Highway Prayers is an country album by Billy Strings with great musicians and enthusiastic performances. Too bad the style of music is very generic and traditional. You would expect some innovation by such a young artist. Too bad it is just too predictable in a world with many artists doing exactly the same.

Oh man this was a surprise to me. Very very catchy. My toe was tapping the entire time.

I really love this. I've been aware of Billy Strings for a while, seeing clips of him occasionally on social media. I'm always pulling for a fellow Michigander as well. But, I've never listened to a complete album of his material. It's really impressive. 4 stars.

Billy. Bill. Mr. Strings. Billiam. Your music is fine but I'm sorry you can NOT put a song with the lyric "it's the end of the record" as the SECOND TO LAST track on the album. Decent chance this is actually up to a producer or label suit to determine track order but you should've said something Bill. Bill surely you could have prevented this. A third grader listening to this would clown on this obvious oversight.

Stoner music for country folk or country music for stoners.

Bluegrass definitely has a place on this list, and while I’m not expert I have been raised around a lot of classical bluegrass and this was up there as far as I could tell. Bonus star because I’m pretty sure my dad would be thrilled with Billy Strings!

This record is actually incredible 5

Wonderful blue grass from the great state of Michigan. Thanks for introducing me to a cool, talented neighbor!

I had my doubts going in, but this is super solid country! My one critique is that it should have been wayy shorter

Solid bluegrass, and the ventures into less traditional territory hold up and fit well with the rest. I don't know that the lyrics are destined to become timeless classics but they do the job.

You know I think I can be a fan of Billy Strings. This record is too long though so not a 5 for me

December 27, 2025 HL: "Escanaba", "Seven Weeks In County", "Stratosphere Blues / I Believe in You", "MORBUD4ME" First I'm hearing of this Billy Strings. But you had me at "bluegrass". I don't go out of my way to listen to the genre, but I somehow gave the 2-hour Nitty Gritty album 5 stars. What the hell, this has the same producer as Mac Miller's Circles? Never would have guessed. Also, the Eels' Beautiful Freak. Gotta start paying attention to Jon Brion, I guess. Well, I gotta hand it to OP. I've been pretty lukewarm on some of the country picks, but here's one that's traditional but not conservative, emotional but not depressing, eclectic but not disjointed, and long but not tedious. Now I want to hear him do a psychedelic album in the vein of "Stratosphere Blues". Or would that be considered stepping on Sturgill Simpson's toes 4* at least

Sounds like it was written about 100 years earlier, in a good way! Captures the spirit of early country & bluegrass music, but wiyh a few modern touches like the production and a handful of lyrics. A wee cracker I would probably never have heard otherwise - thanks for the suggestion!

This was good. I had heard the name a bunch and had broadly figured out the genre which didn’t do much for me so I never explored. Wow. I was missing out. Great songwriting and clearly a master of his instruments. Well worth the listen.

Bluegrass has had a decent revival over the past decade. When you think bluegrass I’m sure the first city that doesn’t come to mind is Lansing Michigan but the sound is definitely there. I don’t listen to a ton of bluegrass outside of sturgil and a few similar artists on a playlist but this album was pretty good. Very talented while still having good lyricism that makes bluegrass the unique genre it is. The three instrumental tracks may have been overkill but that’s the bluegrass difference. 6.9/10 (nice)

Initially rolled my eyes at having to listen to 75 minutes of twangy pop-country, but this LP did grow a bit on me. When Strings focuses on narrative lyricism or just lets his band rip, the album finds a strong melodic groove and is a treat to listen to. The only bumps in the road tracks like the weed song, which feel like blatant attempts to get the TikTok virality or push a single onto the Top 100 with gimmicky songwriting. Overall a solid listen, doesn't fully cohere as an album but some great tracks for sure.

I'm gonna say this was well-crafted and the guy likes pot. Yep, those are my takeaways.

Nothing remarkable on this bluegrass album

Not a genre I'm fond off, but its really well made and produced. The songs dont really grab me

Billy Strings can hit a twang with the best of them. Some very traditional sounding songs, some less so. Some successful songs, some less so. More aggressive curation would have helped. Favorite track: Gild the Lily. Least favorite: MORBUD4ME

Perhaps I don’t like country music as much as I thought.

Surprisingly nice

Goofy farm music for running away from a wild pack of coyotes, then walking off a cliff, looking down, holding up a sign saying "Uh oh" before gravity finally takes effect and you fall down, hitting the ground and making a perfect human sized hole at the bottom. Actually pretty fun despite the crazy length.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: My Alice

Stellar musicianship here, of course. And an admirable knack for composing platonic ideals of the genre. I've always loved watching a good bluegrass band live, and yet, oddly enough, I don't have any bluegrass act on my shelves, except that Nitty Gritty album. So maybe I could buy a cheap copy of this one if I could get my hands on it... There are also some interesting and evocative dirges into other adjacent genres within the tracklist: folk country, of course, (like the moving "My Alice", or the terrific instrumental "Seney Stretch"), but also into gipsy jazz / tex mex (the other terrific instrumental "Escanaba"), along with Western-like cinematic cuts ("Seven Weeks In County"), "cosmic" Americana ("Gild The Lilly"), psychedelia ("Stratosphere Blues" / "I Believe In You"), or even weird weed-infused experiments ("MOREBUD4ME"). Not that the project is perfect, far from it. There's something a little too "clean-sounding" and generic in the vocals and production values (looks like Jon Brion was involved, and I can recognize his very "professional" input here somehow). Also, the length of this double album sort of drowns the more adventurous forays into the sheer mass of more "by-the-numbers" bluegrass cuts (found either at the center or towards the end of this double LP). And what's the point of "Catch And Release" except making a quick wink towards Johnny Cash when he went through his spoken word routine -- a wink that ironically leads to zero... release? Worse, some compositions cover ground that has already been covered better before (did we really need another gipsy jazz -adjacent instrumental with "Malfunction Junction" when "Escanaba" was already this good?). And consequently, the whole thing lacks some punch and momentum in its last leg. You sometimes wish Billy and his producing team would have picked a lane and stayed there -- which is why some amount of self-editing would have been welcome maybe. It's in the nature of double albums to "lose the thread" at some point, but you gotta find a more dynamic and "spectacular" way to do it somehow -- and make it so that the sum of the tracklist equals more than its discrete parts, as admirable as some of them are. I know, I know... I'm probably nitpicking here. Lots of moments in this record would provide a nice soundtrack for an idle Sunday in the countryside, even if it's too soon to know if Billy Strings will leave an imprint on public consciousness in the long run. I'm amazed that the streaming numbers for this artist are so high (hence Jon Brion's involvement for this album?). The industry sure spotted the man's potential, beyond critics lists, prominent music websites reviews and even Wikipedia writers (there's not even a wiki page dedicated to this album, go figure!). Maybe ten years from now, people will laugh at reviewers for missing the talent that William Lee Apostol is. Or maybe everyone will have forgotten about him... But I'm happy for Billy Strings that he currently "lives the dream" given his grassroots origins and messy upbringing. It's a feel good story that could trigger a benevolent feeling towards another project of his in the future -- to the point where I could maybe include it in my own list of 1001 albums? Going through this particular record again, I don't think "this is it", at least not yet. But some "highway prayers" are answered once in a while... So I'm gonna keep an eye on Billy in the years to come, at least. 3/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 8/10 for more general purposes (5 + 3) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 66 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 85 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 163 (including this one) ---- Emile... Je viens de lire ta dernière réponse. Je vais essayer de trouver le temps de rédiger la mienne pendant la période des fêtes. D'ici-là, ben bonne année!

This sits closer to the bluegrass than I'd recognise and despise) as country music. As a consequence, most of this album has not made me want to commit atrocities. Gild the Lily came very close, with that resonator sounding uncomfortably close to a steel guitar. It's an interesting question. Most sources online suggest that bluegrass is a subgenre of country, but I'm not sure I could agree with that, because bluegrass specifically isn't usually the musical equivalent of papercuts between the thumb and forefinger. From what I've read, both styles have been brought up from similar root stems, with some cross-pollenation. However it has happened, I'm glad that I've not been put into a DNF state, despite being an album that should be half an hour shorter. Skipping some of the most obnoxiously "country"-sounding ones (like the 4am one) helped.

No more country

This wasn't too bad, despite my two stars. Well-played, rootsy music. I didn't need 74 minutes of this though and I doubt I'll remember much of it. Fave Songs: Leaning on a Travelin' Song, In the Clear, Gone a Long Time

Blue grass just isn’t my cup of tea, therefore zero interest in a 2024 bluegrass album, that doesn’t nothing new for the genre.

Det finns ett problem. Albumet saknar bra låtar.

Oh good, another double album out of the jam band scene. Excuse me for a moment while I do the hippy shake… [dances arthymically, then twirls around with arms out and face towards the sun, with no awareness or care for his surroundings] This dude is super talented, but most of the music isn’t really for me and his fanbase, I’ve found in my interactions on the subreddit for a popular Australian psych band, is kind of insufferable sometimes. I can’t deny the talent, though, and there was enough variety to keep things sort of interesting - even if the experimental/atmospheric/psych excursions fall flat for me and a couple of these songs kind of sound like “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” rewrites. I was going to give this 3 stars, but then I heard “MORBUD4ME”. Oof.

Highway Prayers is pleasant but unremarkable, it's well put together, a couple of very nice tracks (Stratosphere Blues in particular) but really nothing that hasn't been done before, yet this is 2024 so I'd expect something a bit more interesting? 2/5.

73 minutes. Fuck you.