3 Billy Strings Licks To Transform Your Playing

Today I'm going to show you 3 classic Billie Strings licks that every bluegrass player needs to know. But not only that, I'm going to show you how to move these licks around, play them in other tunes, and really absorb these ideas in your own playing. Stick around to learn more. So Billy Strings is everywhere. He pulls out huge, huge crowds to his shows. He's been on the Theo Vaughn podcast. He sat in with Tool, which— who would have ever thought you would have ever seen a bluegrass player sitting in with frickin' Tool? It's awesome. And here recently, he was on Rick Beato's channel, and after less than a week with that video being up, it's had over 2 million views. So he is bringing this music and this style of guitar playing to more people than anybody ever, and it's such a cool thing. So what I want to do for you today— maybe you're new to bluegrass, maybe you're new to Billy's music, or maybe you've been doing this stuff for a while— but I'm going to give you 3 really killer, really classic Billy Strings licks. But not only am I gonna show you how to play the licks, I'm gonna give you some ideas on how you can take these licks and you can move them around, you can play them in different tunes, and kinda make them your own and absorb those into your flatpicking vocabulary. So down in the video description and in the top pinned comments, you can get the tabs for these licks totally for free. All right, let's jump into the lesson. Okay, so let's go ahead and start off with this first lick, and it's gonna go like this. A lot of y'all will probably recognize this one. He plays this in the original studio recording of Dust in a Baggy, you know, the tune that kind of started all of this for Billy. But the thing about it is, is he plays some version of this almost every time that he, um, that he plays it live. It's almost like some of those passages from maybe Jimmy Page's Stairway to Heaven solo where he didn't necessarily play it live the exact same way every time, but there were a few of those passages that he would almost always play live, and this is one of those. Okay, so now that you've heard me play the lick, let's hear how Billy plays it in context of this tune on the original studio recording. Let me slow it down here for you, and it's gonna go like this. We'll do Okay, that's where I've decided to stop the lick here on, on Dust in a Baggy. Here he keeps going and ends it like that, but I want to kind of stop it right there. So one more time. Again, playing it slow here, this first Billy Strings lick that he plays in the original studio recording of Dust in a Baggy. We'll do So, um, what he's doing, it's this kind of descending little bluesy pentatonic thing, and then it's almost more like two licks in one, like this first little, and then, okay, and then that last part That's a great little short lick that you can use in a lot of different places, and it gives it kind of a banjo feel, which is really, really cool. Now, there may be some flatpicking bluegrass purists that will point out that, um, Billy is not the first person to play this lick, and he's not. Um, this obviously, you can clearly hear a Tony Rice influence, but I think Clarence White played passages like this. Even Marco Conner played something similar on his classic version of Dixie Breakdown, something along those lines there. But here's the thing with this— this tune is maybe the biggest bluegrass flatpicking song ever. I'm not really sure. It's definitely up there with like Man of Constant Sorrow, Rocky Top, Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Like, it's in that pantheon of like bluegrass tunes that even people who don't listen to bluegrass, um, you know, kind of know and recognize. So Billy has brought this lick and this passage to more people than anyone else. So that's why I'm starting off with it. And even though it's kind of Billy's maybe like interpretation of it, it's not completely original to Billy. I wanted to start off there. But anyway, let me go through it one more time nice and slow here for you. All right, so now that we've learned the lick, now I want to show you how I would take that lick and play it in a different tune. So when it comes to classic tunes to try out new licks in, um, it's hard to beat Nine Pound Hammer. So I'd say a lot of y'all, maybe even most of y'all, are familiar with Nine Pound Hammer. Um, if not, just real quick, I'll go through and play and sing just a verse. And of course, please excuse my singing here, but, um, it'll go like this. I go, one, two, well, a nine pound hammer is a little too heavy.

It's for my size, but it's for my size Well, I'm rolling, buddy. Don't you roll so slow. How can I roll when the wheels won't go?

So this is a classic tune, and it's great for just playing a bunch of licks over. Some tunes don't lend themselves to that so much, but Nine Pound Hammer really does. So just real quick, um, here's a solo that I've come up with using that Little Billy Strings lick in Nine Pound Hammer. Sounds like this. So at the beginning, I'm just kind of playing the melody, all right, and then doing a real classic billy, and then— so that's like the first half of what I'm doing on 9-pound hammer.

3, 4.

And then all I'm doing is just this second half of Nine Pound Hammer. I'm just— I'm taking that Dust in a Baggie lick. And then I'm going to end it with— okay, so that's all I'm doing is I'm just like the second half of Nine Pound Hammer. I'm just taking that lick from Dust in a Baggy and I'm plugging it into Nine Pound Hammer, and it works really well. So So there we have it. There's just one example of how you can take that really killer classic Billy Strings lick and put it into a classic tune like Nine Pound Hammer. So let's go into the next lick now. So the next lick that I want to do is also out of G, and this lick is gonna go like this. Okay, I love this lick. Now I have covered this one in my 10 Bluegrass Licks That Every Picker Should Know. So this lick comes from the tune Cabin Song, which was featured in The Hunger Games. So now that you've heard me play the lick, let's hear how Billy plays it in context of the tune on the original recording. Okay, so let me go through just nice and slow here for you, and this is what we're going to do. We're going to do One more time. Okay, so what I love about this lick is it gives it— it gives this little bluegrass phrase just a little bit of dissonance before resolving into a pretty common sounding bluegrass phrase. What I mean by that, at the beginning here, this little— so he's starting off with this open first string, which is like the sixth in G, coming up to the B-flat, which is the minor third, pulling. So he's pulling off from like the minor 3rd to the 6th, which almost like— I don't want to get too deep into theory, but it's like a minor 6, I think. Yeah, because it would have a 6 and a minor 3rd, little tritone there. Um, so it gives it— and then we hit this F note, which is our dominant 7, and it's just— it's some good quick tension. It just kind of tweaks the listener's ear just a little bit. And then we're doing, um, down up, pull off, up, down, up. And then after that, we kind of resolve into a much more kind of traditional sounding bluegrass run.

So that—

again, that whole lick together there Okay, so there it is out of G. We've learned the lick here. You've listened to how Billy plays it in context of the original recording on the tune Cabin Song. But now let's get a little creative with this. Let's have some fun and let's use this lick in a different tune. All right, so another classic bluegrass tune that is great for trying out new licks is Clinch Mountain Backstep. This is the old Ralph Stanley banjo tune here. And just real quick, I'm only gonna play the A part. I'm not gonna play the A and the B part of this, but I'm just gonna play the A part to Clinch Mountain Backstep, and I'm gonna throw in that little cabin song lick into this tune. Sounds like this. Okay, so, um, again, this is a pretty classic tune. You may already be— you may already know Clinch Mountain Backstep, but if not, just real quick, just a simple little melody break. Let me play that again.

Okay.

So that's kind of our basic melody to the A part to Clinch Mountain Backstep. You can look up the original Ralph Stanley recording if you really, really want to go down into the original there. It's a little difficult for me to play this melody without kind of Tony Rice-ifying it up a little bit, you know. That might be a little closer to the banjo, but it just feels so good playing it like that on the guitar. But anyway, what I'm going to do with this Billy Strings lead We're gonna— okay, I'm basically gonna throw that Cabin Song into like the second half of that. So think of it like this, we're gonna— this, this melody repeats, right? And then we play all of that twice. So what I'm going to do is, like, the second time through the melody, I'm going to throw in the Cabin Song lick to the second half the second time through. I hope that's not too confusing, but it'll be, uh, right here. Okay, and that's what we're doing here. We're still playing the tune. We're not just completely getting away from the tune and just playing a bunch of licks, but at like a strategic point in the tune to just kind of make it a little more interesting, we're taking that really cool Billy Strings phrase that we learned from Cabin Song and we're kind of plugging it into Clinch Mountain Backstep.

Right here. Okay, so there we go.

There's how to take that little Cabin Song lick and plug that into a classic tune like Clinch Mountain Backstep. All right, let's go into the last lick here.

All right.

I love this lick. So this comes from the tune Pyramid Country. Again, I'm referencing the original studio recording. He plays this on the second solo to Pyramid Country. He starts it off with this little phrase, which I just love this. And it's— it's— I wanted to show it to you here because it's out of it's like out of our D shape. I've got the capo on the 2nd fret, so it's actually in E, but you can take the capo off. And anytime you've got like a D shape or you're playing over a D, you can use a version of this lick, which is really cool. So now let's listen to how Billy plays it in context of the tune on the original studio recording. Okay, so let me play it nice and slow here for you, and it'll go like this. All right, one more time. Okay, so it's just got a lot of— and again, basically anytime you're playing over like a D shape, you can use that lick or some version of that lick, you know, along with— there's just so many cool places that you can use it. Now you'll have to experiment and kind of see what works for you because you can go through this phrase and pick everything. You can use some hammer-ons and pull-offs, you know, there's, there's a bunch of different ways you can articulate. I think Billy mostly picks it, but you know, you can experiment with some different ways of articulating this little phrase here. But one more time, real slow here for you. Okay, so now that we've learned the lick, now that you've heard Billy play it in context of the original recording, let's use this lick in another tune now. So another classic tune that is one of my one of my favorites for trying out new licks, especially new licks out of like a D shape, is John Hardy's. So John Hardy is an old classic bluegrass tune here, but just in case you're not familiar with it, again, let me just kind of sing and play just a real quick verse of it here for you. Okay, it'll go like this.

Well, John Hardy was a desperate little man, strapped on his guns every day, shot down a man on the West Virginia line.

Y'all see John Hardy Okay, so this tune, in this case I'm playing it with the capo on the 2nd fret to play it out of a G, C, and D shape. A lot of people will play it out of G. It doesn't really matter here. You can do it either here with the capo at A or at a G. It doesn't really matter. But what— here's why I like to to, you know, practice my D licks because there's that section in there that—

y'all to see John Hardy getting away—

where we stay on D for like 3 bars. 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, and then back to G after that. Okay, so it's a great tune to practice your, uh, D licks there. So, so with this one, um, you know, I kind of licked it up on some of the other ideas, like And that's what I'm playing over the— but then when it goes to the D for 3 bars, I'm plugging and playing that Billy string And then I end, you know, okay. So again, John Hardy is just a great tune for practicing your D licks, even though it's really in, you know, it's out of this G shape depending on what fret you have the capo on. Changes up the key. But, um, that's all I'm doing is just when it goes to that 3 bars on the D, I'm just plugging and playing that little Billy Strings lick. One more time, all the way through. John Hardy here, we'll do.

There we go.

I wanted to— I didn't want to just give you 3 cool Billy Strings licks, which that's all well and good, but let's kind of look at what we've done. We've learned 3 really classic really great Billy Strings licks that just, in my opinion, every single flatpicker bluegrass player— and honestly, I just think like every lead guitar player should learn. It's just good stuff, even if bluegrass isn't your main thing. It's just really good licks to have underneath your fingers. But we learned those, we then listened to how Billy plays those in context of the original tune on the original recording, but then I just showed you how I like to think about taking those licks sort of changing them up a little bit and then moving them to different tunes and playing them in different places. That way now it's not just a lick that I know, it's ammunition that I can use. Okay, so I showed you the way that I like to think about it, but ultimately— and this is something that I don't remember who I heard say it, but I love this— you cannot outsource your own creativity. So whenever you're learning these licks, it's great to learn licks by your favorite favorite players, but it's even better to absorb those and get a little creative with them and try to figure out some ways that you can use those in other tunes. Now ultimately, I can show you how I think about it, but you can't outsource your own creativity. That's going to be something— everybody's a little bit different, and you're going to have to use your, your, your, your brain, your mind, your creativity, and figure out how you like to take licks and move those around to some other places. So, you know, whether you're learning licks off of this video or other stuff that I teach on this channel or other content creators, it doesn't matter. But in addition to learning the licks and getting the technique down, spend some time really getting creative and figuring out how you can move those licks around, because then it's not just a lick that you know, it's part of your vocabulary, and that's gonna come out in your playing. That's what's so cool about this stuff. So remember, hit the link down in the video description and in the top pinned comment to get the tabs for these licks. I want to thank you so much for hanging out. And hey, if you want some other Billy Strings lesson videos where I really go through and break down both cabin song and pyramid country, I show you exactly how to play all of those solos note for note, check out these videos right here. As always, thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you next time.