Billy Strings - Highway Prayers [Green/Black Splatter]

When Highway Prayers landed in September 2024, it did something no bluegrass record had managed in 22 years: it went to number one on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart, the first to do so since the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2002. It also topped the Bluegrass Albums chart and moved 24,000 equivalent album units in its first week, the biggest of Billy Strings' career. Not bad for an album of 20 original songs with no obvious concessions to anyone.

It is his fourth studio album and his first solo studio set since 2021's Renewal, following the 2022 father-son collaboration Me/And/Dad. Co-producing with Jon Brion turns out to be the move that opens the record up. Brion, best known for his work with Fiona Apple and Aimee Mann, plays bass, drums, and percussion here, and his instincts push Strings past straight-ahead picking into stranger, more textured places without ever burying the flatpicking that made his name. Jerry Douglas and Matt Chamberlain turn up too, and the longtime touring band plays like the road-hardened unit it is.

Across 20 tracks and four sides, the record moves between barn-burning instrumentals, road-weary balladry, and psychedelic detours that make sense of why Strings sells out arenas to crowds who came up on jam bands as much as on Doc Watson. It is the sound of a player who no longer has anything to prove deciding to explore anyway.

This exclusive 2LP pressing comes on black and green splatter vinyl, a limited color variant of an album that spent its first week outselling every other record in the country. Grab it while it lasts.