Album Review: Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton, 'Live at the Legion'

On April 7, 2024, Nashville’s American Legion Post #82 hosted the hottest show in town when wizards of flatpicking guitar, Grammy-Award winners Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton, took the stage for an evening of high-octane picking and singing and just downright fun. The duo captured every lightning note on their new album, released yesterday (4/7/2025) to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the show, Live at the Legion. As Strings and Sutton joke in their introductory comments, they’ve spent the week “flatpicking our asses off,” and the pair never misses a note as they burn up the frets of their guitars on this set of twenty traditional bluegrass and folk songs.

The set opens with their vibrant, galloping take on Doc Watson’s “Nashville Blues.” Their performance sets the bar high for the rest of the show, for they each of them dart up and down the frets, chasing each other’s notes, providing melodic foundations and harmonic counterpoints for each other. In the closing measure of the song, they duel note-for-note in dashing arpeggios. Strings and Sutton match each other note-for-note again in their take on Tony Rice’s “Texas Gales,” with one taking the harmony line and the other driving the melody line; listening to the crystal clarity of their delivery and the duo’s ability to follow each other’s notes and phrases will certainly make listeners wish they’d been there to witness the show.

The pair takes a break, slowing down for a moment with their soaring take on Blaze Foley’s mournful ballad “Cold, Cold World.” The tempo shifts quickly as they scamper through Doc Watson’s bright “Way Downtown.” The duo’s upbeat take on Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” lights up the familiar minor chord lover’s lament, while their spiraling harmonies and shimmering picking and strumming lend an urgent gravity to the traditional murder ballad “Darling Corey.” Strings and Sutton convey the wink-and-a-nod humor “Open Up Your Pearly Gates” in their dashing, playful version. The set closes with the pair’s jazz-inflected notes flowing under the rich bluegrass folkiness of Doc Watson’s “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar,” something we hope these two won’t do any time soon.

Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton channel the spirits of Doc Watson, Tony Rice, and Clarence White in their set at the American Legion Post #82, and they honor them, innovating on and carrying their songs to new heights for a new generation of listeners. It’s not too much to say that every song or tune that this pair touches turns to musical gold, and Live at the Legion overflows with gold nuggets.