Billy Strings put a metal stage on the bill of his own festival and then walked onto it. At Ionia Freak Fair, the event he runs in his hometown of Ionia, Michigan, the bluegrass guitarist joined Cryptopsy for Open Face Surgery, a song from the Montreal band's catalogue that sits about as far from flatpicking as music gets.
The pairing is not a novelty booking. Strings came up playing in metal bands before bluegrass took over, and he has a documented soft spot for Cryptopsy specifically. Last year he played a solo on the band's 30th anniversary medley of re-recorded material from Blasphemy Made Flesh, their 1994 debut.
He was still learning the song a day or two beforehand. Speaking to NPR about his new album, he mentioned he was working on Cryptopsy material and played a few bars of Open Face Surgery down the phone, then said he might as well stick to bluegrass guitar since he is still learning how to do that.
The metal stage was not an afterthought either. Alongside Cryptopsy, Strings booked Bane, For The Fallen Dreams and Flesh & Blood Robot, which is a real hardcore and metal lineup rather than one heavy act placed among the string bands for contrast.
Ionia is a small place, a village and county seat in mid Michigan, and running a festival there is a deliberate act of homecoming from an artist who left as a teenager. It also gives him a stage where the programming answers to nobody's expectations of what a country headliner is supposed to like.
Strings has spent the year turning up in places nobody booked him, including sitting in with a bar band in West Virginia on a night off. Elsewhere in death metal, Immolation released their album Descent this month, and festival dates are collected on the festival tracker.
The facts
- Billy Strings joined Cryptopsy onstage at Ionia Freak Fair
- The festival is held in his hometown of Ionia, Michigan
- The song they played was Open Face Surgery
- He played a solo on Cryptopsy's 30th anniversary medley last year
- Cryptopsy's debut Blasphemy Made Flesh came out in 1994
- The festival's metal stage also booked Bane and For The Fallen Dreams
How this checks out
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Background 1
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Billy Strings was learning the Cryptopsy song Open Face Surgery
Source NPR Music