Friday Listen: Love and Regret — Billy Strings

By Mike Meldon

I've been a Billy Strings fan for a while. I missed a couple of his small local shows early on in his career and my friends 'in the know' gave me a bunch of heck...because this guy was the new phenomenon. Such talent and so different. So, the next time he was coming near, I got tickets.

That show was 2019 down at Headliners in Louisville, KY. It was a good-sized show (not too big yet) and he had special guest, Michael Cleveland (look him up!). It was quite a night, and I promised myself that I'd see Billy again when he came close to Cincinnati.

Well, the next time was after the Covid quarantines, and his legend had grown quite a bit...so much so that he was doing a 2-night show here in Cincinnati at the Brady Center and both shows sold out in minutes. These were bigger and and much more produced and refined.

I went to the second night of the show, and it melted my face off. Billy had tuned in his stage show and now had the help of stage lights and video-- he took bluegrass and made it a psychedelic jam...it was like nothing I'd ever seen. He was now bigtime and the general public had now heard of his guitar talent, musicianship and unique sound.

Today, I'd just like to look at one of his songs, Love and Regret from his Renewal Album...one of my favorites of his. I can hear some of his diehard fans mumbling because this is definitely one of the songs that many are hoping to hear when they see him live, but the song has something special that makes it stand out to me.

Down by the river, the water’s cold —It’s a song that drifts somewhere between a fever dream and a confession, full of longing for what’s lost and the quiet acceptance that some things can’t be reclaimed.

At its heart, this song is about the ways love and sorrow intertwine until you can’t tell one from the other. The river is both the scene of loss and the instrument of healing — a moving mirror of memory and realization.

My favorite line is not about what is said- but how it sounds...

The scream of a raven

The screech of an owl

A heartbroke and lonesome coyote howl

Oh, man...listen to that and tell me there's not something there.

It's primal almost. The ghostly sounds of nighttime nature: a raven, an owl, a coyote’s howl. These wild images make the heartbreak feel elemental, as if the natural world is mourning alongside him.

And just when the pain feels too heavy, he slips in a nod to his musical roots — “those old Hartford records that we used to play.” It’s a small line, but it reveals a lot about him.

Billy Strings is a bridge between bluegrass’s past and future. Born William Apostol in Lansing, Michigan, he grew up picking bluegrass with his stepfather and listening to legends like Doc Watson and John Hartford. But his sound has never been limited to tradition. He blends furious flatpicking with psychedelic edges and raw emotion, earning a Grammy and a reputation as one of the most vital voices in Americana today.

Love and Regret moves like the river it describes — steady, mournful, and unstoppable. Every listen feels like skipping a stone across memory: brief flashes of light before the ripples spread and fade.

The song finds beauty in what hurts. In the end, Billy’s right — love and regret are one and the same.