Fresh Air - Best Of: Rob Reiner On 'Spinal Tap II' / Billy Strings

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

Rob Reiner talks with Terry Gross about directing the new sequel to Spinal Tap, the mockumentary about a heavy metal band.  He’ll  also talk about his remarkable life and career, like directing When Harry Met Sally and starring in All in the Family. Also, singer songwriter and guitarist Billy Strings is one of the rare bluegrass musicians who can fill arenas with tens of thousands of fans. He’s been working to get to where he is for a long time. "I slept with my guitar when I was four or five years old, I'd put it right under the blankets with me, and I used to kiss it good night." Strings spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Briger and brought his guitar to the studio. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We all wonder about life's big questions. Why are we here? What are we to do and how to make sense of it all? On Yeagons with Scott Carter, I talk with Politico's priests, actors, and atheists on how they wrestle with life's mysteries. Their stories will spark reflection, challenge assumptions, and maybe even bring you some clarity on your own journey. Listen to Yegods, part of the NPR network wherever you get your podcasts. From W. H.Y.I. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Today, Rob Reiner talks about directing the new sequel to Spinal Tap, the mockumentary about a heavy metal band. He'll also talk about his remarkable life and career.

He directed When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, and More, and was a star of the sitcom All in the Family. Also, Where the air is clean, the road is straight. Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Billy Strings. Strings is one of the rare bluegrass musicians who can fill arenas with tens of thousands of fans. He's been working to get to where he is for a long time.

I mean, I slept with my guitar. When I was four or five years old, I'd put it right under the blankets with me. I used to kiss it good night. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Terry has today's first interview,

Here she is. Finally, there's a sequel to the groundbreaking 1984 mockumentary, This Is Spinal Tap. And the director and co-star Rob Reiner is here to tell us about that film and his life and career. This Is Spinal Tap was the most influential mockumentary that helped pave the way to movie and TV mockumentaries, including The Office and Parks and Recreation. Spinal Tap satirized heavy metal bands and rock documentaries. The band is known for its excesses, its loud volume, a bass player who stuffs his pants, incredibly sexist lyrics, as well as on and offstage mishaps. In the new sequel, Spinal Tap 2, The End, continues, the band members return for a reunion concert.

As in the original film, the band is portrayed by Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer. Reiner repriezes his role as the director of the documentary about the band. This time around, Paul McCartney and Elton John make appearances as themselves. There's also a companion book. Rob Reiner has had a remarkable life. The films he directed include Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and Misery. His father, Carl Reiner, created the 60s sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show. Rob Reiner was a star of the groundbreaking show in the 70s, all in the family.

Let's start with a scene from Spinal Tap 2. The end continues. The premise of the film is that the band's former manager has died, and his daughter inherited the band's contract. She discovers the contract calls for a final concert, which is why the band reunites. She's also found a new road manager. He's played by Chris Addison.

In this scene, he's giving advice to the band. If this is the final gig that's final tap do, then what we need to do is secure your legacy. And the simplest, most effective way that we could do that is that if during the gig at least one, but ideally no more than two of you, were to die,

that's what I call the Elvis effect. It really allows for a sort of late flowering of... Do you mean pretend to die? I think that would complicate matters. It's easier if you just... If we just expire? If the exertion, expire. Do you mean actually die?

Yes, yeah. Well, yeah, but I don't... It's a bit... to arrange. No, no, no, I appreciate that. But I think in terms of your legacy going forward, how you'll be remembered, how you'll be talked about, what effect that will have on record sales,

I'm thinking documentaries, I'm thinking a huge memorial concert. You could do that without actually killing one of us, though, can't you? It's very difficult to do a memorial concert when the person is still alive. That's just a sort of rule of thumb. Would you settle for a coma? Oh, no, that's interesting. You know? Oh, no, now, David, that's interesting.

That could get really expensive. bit of thinking outside, well, the literal box, I suppose, actually. Rob Reiner, welcome to Fresh Air. Congratulations on the sequel. I'm very glad that you made it, and I know everyone else will be too. Thank you. One of the things that's very interesting about the film, the first, and maybe particularly the sequel, is that you have a band that started off as you know kind of like young and rebellious and you know all that and now like spinal tap they're in their 70s and it just makes no sense for them to be singing some of the lyrics that they're singing and that happens to a lot of bands who end up performing their old

material about teenage love you know when they're when they're in their 70s but these are songs about like their sexual prowess and and they're they're incredibly as some of them are just like incredibly, like, sexist. So it sounds so inappropriate in so many ways. Yeah. The beauty of, of these guys, the members of spinal tap, is that in all those years, from their 20s, 30s, up now until their 70s, they have grown neither emotionally or musically. There's no growth. They basically are in a state of arrested development for like 50 years. And the only growth that there is is maybe skin tabs from getting older. They have to be biopsied. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Did you want the second movie to reflect how

music documentaries have changed? Because if I did my math right, like spinal tap, like this is spinal tap precedes the MTV and VH1 music documentaries that became so famous and so parodied. There were a lot of music documentaries before we made the first film. I mean, you know, the Led Zeppelin had the song remains the same. The Who had the kids are all right. And of course, you know. The Last Wall. Yeah, the Last Walls was Scorsese.

And the first one was the Bob Dylan documentary by Penny Baker. You know, don't look back, you know. Yeah. So there were these documentaries. So what we were doing was not only satirizing heavy metal, but we were satirizing the documentary form and the way in which documentaries were presented. And I, you know, basically the reason my character, Marty DeBerge, who's the supposedly the documentarian of the film, is in the film, is because in the last waltz, I saw, yeah, there's Marty Scorsese. He's in the

film. He's documenting this last concert by the band, but he's also in the film. The first film I shot with a 16 millimeter camera, you know, it's a film camera. Now we have digital cameras, and I shot with two cameras. And I try to, you know, Marty, let's say the character Marty, who's making the film, I have to always filter it through how he would make it, not necessarily how I would make it. And I try to say, will he be affected by the new modern type of techniques that they use in reality shows and, you know, what you see up on social media and all that. And I think he's, you know, he may try a little bit,

but basically he's stuck in his own inabilities to make it any hipper or cooler than he was. So he hasn't grown all that much either. You started making spinal tap to The End Continues in 2024 on your 77th birthday. And everyone in the movie is the same or approximately the same age as the characters they play. Did making the film make you think more about how you've aged since the first one

and all that's happened to you in between? Oh, sure. You can't ignore it. I mean, you, you know, hopefully our minds are still sharp and we're still able to, you know, as Chris Guest calls it schnadel. We can schnadel with each other back and forth. But, yeah. Schneidel is his word for improv?

Yeah, yeah. He says, you know, we schnadel with each other, which is true. I mean, and what's interesting is that after 15 years of not, you know, working together, we came back and started looking at this and seeing if we could come up with an idea, and we started schnadling right away. It was like falling right back in with friends that you hadn't talked to in a long time. It's like jazz musicians, you know, you just fall in and do what you do. You are part of so many comedy-related things, and so are your friends.

So I'm going to start with like your father was Carl Reiner. And he created the Dick Van Dyke Show. And before that, wrote for and acted in Sid Caesar shows back in the 1950s. Albert Brooks, your good friend from high school, you made a movie about him. You did an act with Joey Bishop's son before he made movies. You co-founded an improv group and did a lot of improv. In the 70s, you were on one of the most popular and groundbreaking sitcoms, all on the family. you wrote with Steve Martin

for the Smothers Brothers Summer Replacement show early in your career you were the third host of Saturday Night Live I mean I could go on you have three movies in the National Film Registry when Harry met Sally the Princess Bride and this is Spinal Tap

yikes that's like so much comedy history I'm tired Terry I'm tired when you read that when you make a friend or meet somebody is being funny one of the first traits you look for on someone? Well, you know, it's interesting. Yes, of course, you want to, you know, connect with somebody that, you know, you can connect with on the same level. When I was

young, you know, you mentioned, you know, my dad and said Caesar. You know, he also did, to me, the greatest comedy albums ever done with Mel Brooks, called it, you know, the 2000-year-old man. And to me, they're the hip-est funniest comedy albums ever. And when I was a kid, kid and teenager and I come home from school, I would put on one of the albums. I did it almost every day for a long time. And I listened to it because I thought, God, this is so brilliant. And that was improvised too. I thought, you know, when I met somebody, if they dug the 2,000-year-old man and they could quote lines from it, I knew it was somebody I could connect with because they were on the same wavelength as I. It was like a good test to see if this is somebody

I could connect with. Was the 2000-year-old-old-man album and subsequent versions of it one of the reasons why you wanted to do improv? Well, no, not really. I mean, that's something I always, you know, I was drawn to. I mean, I loved Second City. I loved the committee. I used to go visit the committee when they were up in San Francisco.

And we got the idea when I was at UCLA. I guess I was about 18 or 19 at the time to start our own improvisation group. And I wanted to do what my dad did. I, you know, when I was a little boy, my parents said I came up to them and I said, you know, I want to change my name. I was about eight years old, I guess. I said, I want to change my name. And they said, they were, oh, my God, this poor kid, he's worried about being in the shadow

of a famous guy and living up to and all this. And they said, well, what do you want to? want to change your name to. And I said, Carl. And they said, I loved him so much. I just wanted to be like him, you know, and I wanted to do what he did. And I just looked up to him so much. So, yeah, I was surrounded by all of this. And I look at, there's a picture in my office of all the writers who wrote for Sid Caesar and the show of shows over the nine years, I guess, that they were on. And when you look at that picture, you're basically looking at everything you ever laughed at in the first half of the 20th century. I mean, there's Mel Brooks, there's my dad, there's Neil Simon, there's Woody Allen, there's Larry Gelbart, I mean, Joe Stein who wrote Fiddler on the roof, Aaron Rubin, who created Andy Griffith show.

Everybody, anything you ever laughed at is represented by those people. So these are the people I look up to, and these are people that were around me, you know, as a kid growing up. We're listening to Terry's interview with Rob Reiner. He directed, co-wrote, and co-stars in the new sequel to This Is Spinal Tap, which is called Spinal Tap 2. The End Continues. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. You decided to give your mother where turned out to be the most famous, most quote,

line from when Harry met Sally. This takes place in the deli, a very famous deli in Manhattan, Katz's Deli, when Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, their characters are having lunch together, their friends. And Billy Crystal is kind of like going on about, you know, his dating life, how good it is and how satisfied, you know, sexually satisfied the women he's dating are. And Meg Ryan is a little skeptical. And she says, like, how do you know that it's, well, real. I mean, how, how can you judge if what they're expressing is real or not? And he goes, oh, I know. And she goes, oh, really? And then she starts faking the noises as if she's having an orgasm. And everyone in the deli stops eating. Everyone's staring at her. Billy Crystal's

watching people stare at him and Meg Ryan. And she's going on and on. And then your mother has this famous line that when Meg Ryan is done that your mother says to the waiter. So let's play a short excerpt of that. Oh, oh, oh, God.

I'll have what she's having. I'll have what she's having. How did you decide, oh, that's the line I'm giving my mother? Well, first of all, Billy Crystal came up with that line. We had the scene. We knew we were going to do a scene where Meg was going to fake an orgasm in an incongruous place, like a deli. And Billy came up with the line. I'll have what she's having. And when he did,

and he came up with it, you know, before we went to New York, he came up with in rehearsal. I said, we need to find somebody, an older Jewish woman who could deliver that line, which would seem incongruous. And I thought of my mother because my mother had done a couple of little things. She did a thing in a movie that Anne Bankroft directed called Fatsau. And she did a couple of other little things. And so I thought, oh, well, she'd be perfect for it. And so I asked her if she wanted to do it. And she said, sure.

And I said, listen, Mom, you know, we don't know. Hopefully that'll be the topper of the scene. It'll get the big laugh. And if it doesn't, you know, I may have to cut it out because I know the scene is funny with Meg doing that. And she said, that's fine. you know, I just want to spend the day with you. I'll go to cats as I'll get a hot dog, you know, whatever it is. She was fine with it, you know.

She was okay. And then when we did the scene, the first couple of times through, Meg was kind of tepid about it. She didn't, you know, give it her all. She didn't go full out. And so I said, let's try it again. And she was nervous. She's in front of, you know, the crew and there's extras and people. She did it a few times.

And then it was never exactly what eventually wound up in the film. And at one point I get in there and I said, Meg, let me show you what I'm on it. And I sat opposite Billy and I'm acting it out and I'm going pounding the table. And I'm going, yes, yes, yes, I'm pounding the table. And then I turned to Billy. I said, Billy, this is embarrassing here. Oh, he's what? He says, I just had an orgasm in front of my mother.

But then Meg came in and she did it obviously way better than I could do it. So I have to ask you, I feel obligated. to ask you about all in the family, which was such a popular show in the 1970s and kind of controversial for its depiction of the generation gap between the parents and the daughter who is married to you. You're the son-in-law in it. And you're very liberal and the father's really conservative. And that's a constant battle between the two of you. That's one of the main themes throughout the series. But, you know, Norman Lear was very liberal.

He founded, you know, people for the American Way. What was that experience like for you? Like, how old were you when you first started performing in that? The series started in 71. Right. I was 23. And this is to me what's interesting about all this. And it was groundbreaking at the time.

Nobody had done a show like this. CBS, when they put it on, they had a big disclaimer at the beginning saying, You know, the views that are represented in the show don't represent the views of CV. Basically, it was a disclaimer saying, I don't know how this show got on here, but you want to watch it. You're watching it at your own risk. Don't sue us. Yeah, don't, don't talk. Yeah, I don't know.

Somebody put it on. Anyway. But here's what was interesting about this. We were a country at that time of about 200 million people. And we were number one in America for five years. straight, every single week. And every week, 40 to 45 million people watch that show. And they had to watch it when it was on, because there was no TiVo, there was no DVR, no video cassettes, nothing. Now we're a country of, you know, upwards of 340 million people. And if you can get five to 10

million people watching a show on a given night, that's a huge hit. And they're not all. And they're not all watching it at the same time. Well, there's politics itself that has become, like everybody talks about that, but pop culture is no longer the glue that it once was because there are so many options that everybody is doing their own thing and not watching or listening at the same time. So I know exactly what you're saying. What was it like for you to be famous at that age? You were already from a famous father and had.

That helped. That helped. We went to school with the children of very famous people, and other people you went to school with were becoming famous too. But what was it like personally to have people recognize you? Did that make you feel good? Was it feeling intrusive? I got to tell you, it was bizarre, you know, to be on a show of that power and that reach. It was like being in the Beatles.

I mean, you'd go into a restaurant or you'd go into, I remember. I remember one time that Gene Stapleton and myself, Sally Strather, walked into an airport restaurant, and the entire restaurant stood up and cheered and started applauding. It was that kind of response that you don't see so much now, you know, with people in television. So it was, that was strange, but you have to take it with a grain of salt because you want to entertain them and you hope that you do, but it doesn't matter what they think. You have to do something you like to do, and hopefully other people will like it too.

Rob Reiner, thank you so much. It was really been a pleasure to talk with you, and thank you for the Spinal Tap movies. Well, thank you so much for having me. Rob Reiner, speaking with Terry Gross. His new movie is Spinal Tap 2. The end continues.

If you're a big world, you can't touch because I'm going to rock you. Tonight I'm going to rock you. Tonight I'm going to rock you. Tonight I'm going to rock you. Tonight. Oh, yeah. If you ever find yourself at an arena concert where tens of thousands of fans of all ages

are stomping about to the Billman Routoon Roanoke or the classic bluegrass song Old Slewfoot, chances are you're at a Billy String show. A singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Billy Strings is one of the younger generation of musicians carrying the torch for traditional acoustic bluegrass, even while his music incorporates excursions into exploratory improvisational jams and the occasional heavy metal guitar riff.

And he's been celebrated by both audiences and the music industry. He's won two Grammys and Highway Prayers, released in 2024, is the first Bluegrass album in over 20 years to reach number one on Billboard's All-Genra Top 100 album sales chart. That album showcases his songwriting and his terrific band. Since then, he's released a live album with another, ace bluegrass guitarist Brian Sutton called Live at the Legion. The duo performed in a more intimate setting than the arena strings usually plays in these days, the American Legion post 82

in East Nashville, playing a lot of music associated with Doc Watson. Let's hear the lead-off track from Live at the Legion, Nashville Blues, originally by the Delmore Brothers. I've got the blues Those Nashville Blues I've got the blues Those Nashville Blues Ain't got no hat Ain't got no shoes

These people here They treat me fine These people here They treat me fine Well they feed me beer And they feed me wine And I've got the blues, those Nashville blues, I've got the blues, those Nashville blues, I ain't got no hair,

they ain't got no shoes. That's Billy Strings and Brian Sutton on the new album Live at the Legion. Billy Strings, welcome to fresh air. Hey, thank you so much. Good to be here. A lot of this material comes from Doc Watson, like some of these songs are songs that are part of his repertoire. You said that most everything you do comes from Doc Watson.

Can you talk about his influence on you? Yeah, he's like the ground upon which I stand. My dad played his music all around the house growing up, and by the time I could play guitar five, six years old, I was learning those tunes too. I might have been able to play some of them before I knew how to tie my shoes or something. It was like I was learning how to speak and talk and walk

and I was learning all these Doc Watson tunes at the same time and it was just like a religion in my house. His music is just, it's the best. I mean, that's what I was listening to on the way over here, the Sonic Journals, the Owsley thing that he recorded. It's just these beautiful recordings and gosh, it was so good. Everything they were playing was just churning.

I can hear some of his guitar playing in your playing, but what about his singing? Was that also influential? Like, he didn't have a big range, but he was expressive, and he is singing. I always think it was very crisp. I mean, I think his range was really kind of something to behold when you think about it. He had this great low baritone,

and he could also yodel and get up into that, high falsetto and, you know, but with Doc, it was always just spoken. It was always the information of the song came through and the conversation of it. You know, people like him, people like Willie Nelson, people like Dolly Parton, these really great storytellers. When they're singing, you know, if you see Dolly Parton on TV singing and you press mute, it just looks like she's talking to you because she is. She's telling the story. you know that's that's one big thing that um one of my vocal coaches that i've been working with one of the big things that i took from some of those lessons was just give me the information you

know i get on stage and i sing and i'm so worried about the pitch is it am i singing good is the tone good am i singing right how's my timing this and that it's like taking the kids to the park and you're scared to let them go down the slide because you don't want them to get hurt it's like jeez let them play you know and so if you focus on the story and telling the words and you know it's just like i know where the pitch is i just need to tell the story so you're doing that more trying to yeah it's easier said than done all this stuff you know all the music kind of zen kind of mindful stuff that i've been getting into it's kind of the inner game uh inner game stuff you know I mean I'm high strong I'm I got a lot of anxiety and stress and I'm moving around a lot

I've been really busy the last several years and I got a lot of my own personal stuff that just haunts me on a daily basis and I try to I try to do everything I can to just be cool and get my nervous system to chill but it just seems like I don't know what I can do to to calm it you know I do the best I can, and I'm doing okay, but it's a daily kind of struggle to just stay on the ground. Does playing guitar help or is playing guitar caught up in all of that stuff because that's what you do for a living? It depends on what kind of playing guitar, you know? If I'm on stage, that's where the joy is, you know? That's where the fun is. If I'm, I kind of ride myself pretty hard about practice off stage. Well, Billy, if you wouldn't mind doing another song for us

That's one of your favorites I could do I told you on the way over here I was listening to that Bears Sonic journals Doc and Merle T. Michael And man, they were sounding good And they were doing this number here It's called the Browns Ferry Blues

I love popcorn on the lane Mom giving back his walking cane Lord Lord I got them browns fairy blues Well he throwed away and he went to town To see a little woman and now he's down Lord, I got them brown, spray, blue Hard but pop, you're getting too tight, Junk'd be drinking in your highest kite.

Lord, Lord, I got them browns, fair a blue. Drink a block and tackle kind, he can walk a block and tackle a lion. Lord, Lord, I got them. Brown's Fairy Blue Well, I walked up to my girl's old man, and I asked him from my true love's hand. Lord, Lord, I got them Browns, Fairy Blues. Said you, la, la, la, little colloose that I heard him and got his foot.

Lord, Lord, I got them Browns Fairy Blue. Hard luck pubs, tinnam in the rain, the world was corn, you couldn't buy grain. Lord, I got the grounds, fairy blue. Walk around and sit in me in close, and the smell of the street wherever he goes. Lord, I got them browns fairy blue. That's Billy Strings playing Doc Watson. He'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air Weekend. You know, I'm going to be able to be.

Well, Billy, if some of your songs deal with some pretty heavy subjects that you've dealt with in your life, including, you know, losing friends to suicide, family and friends who are dealing with addiction, you know, feeling neglect when you were a kid. When you write songs about that stuff, is it helping you process those experiences? Is it easy to sing about that stuff once you've written the songs? Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it is definitely a, it's how I felt when I was sitting on stage the night my mom died. It was cathartic. I've had songs that I've written about something totally different

that I didn't realize I wrote for myself until a month later. I write these words thinking that I'm giving some information to some people that might could hear it. Really, I'm the one that needs to hear it. And I wrote that for myself so that I could heal. And now I go sing it on stage. And there's also been songs, Stratosphere Blues, and I Believe in You, you know, the other night I was singing that on stage. And, you know, like I said, I wrote that before my mom had died, and now singing it after is just different.

It's like I knew something or something, you know. I'm sorry about your mom passing away. She died this last June. Would you mind singing a verse of that? Oh, I could try. Let's see Couldn't help but wonder why you threw yourself away Come on out from under and just take it day by day

It's true I took a walk to wonder and I wandered on a thought It's kind of hard to get through all the things we ain't been taught It's true But I believe in you After all the years of medication Feels good to get your life on track As long as you live, I'm sorry to tell you

You never get that monkey off your back Yeah, something like that, anyway, you know That's a beautiful song, thank you for playing that. Billy, when your mom died, I think you heard in the morning, and you had a gig that night, you decided to play it. You got on stage, and you made, you know, obviously an emotional announcement about it, and you said that your mom would have wanted you to go on. She wouldn't have wanted you to cancel the show. Why is that? The only reason she died is so she could, you know, space travel and be there.

She was at all the shows, you know. she was always in the mix, right up front. She'd show up in New Orleans or Seattle or somewhere, and I wouldn't even know she was coming. She freaking hitchhiked there, you know? I was like, what? She walks in my green room. What?

You didn't even tell me you're coming, you know? She was just a wild one, and she was really living her best life in this last little bit. She had become quite involved with a lot of my friends and fans, you know, that go to every show and go out in the lot and stuff, and she became really close to a lot of these people. And I always had mixed feelings about that. What do you mean?

Well, I wanted her to go have fun and be doing whatever she wanted to be doing, but I worried about her running into the wrong people or she's been an addict my whole life and had short stints where she was doing pretty good, you know. And I love to see her out there. hanging with all the fans but at the same time i was leery of them you know i would go over to visit my parents house and there would be like the fans there that i see in the front row of my concerts all the time people you knew or did it or just knew as fans mostly i just recognize them from the

crowd you know and then i get to know them because they're hanging out with my parents or something but you know and who what am i supposed to say like don't do that i don't know they're grown people but i don't know she was getting older and i kind of just had this vision of her in my head that I wanted, which is stupid. It's not realistic to try to come up with somebody else's life in your brain. But like, I just wanted her to have a garden. And my dad, 70 years old, she was 64. I was like, man, you guys should like be settling down, you know, don't you think? Instead of raring and tearing and going and eating all these shrooms and going to all these concerts. And then she did get wrapped up in the wrong stuff. And that's why she's not here anymore.

I'm sorry, this might be too personal. Or did she overdone? Is that? Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's, it's messed with me in my whole life, and now it's going to mess with me for the rest of it. You know, I have complex post-traumatic stress, and I have anxiety and depression, and I have, for years, tried to deal with this stuff just that happened to me when I was a kid. You know, it wasn't just being neglected, and they're not being food in the house, and, you know,

My parents being strung out and I miss them even though they're sitting right in front of me. While they were partying and stuff like that, I was around the corner being molested before I was 10 years old and all that stuff. It's a really hard thing because there's such beautiful people and they taught me so much about music. But yeah, their addiction has been really hard on me for my whole life and it still is and really triggering. to lose her in this manner, you know. Well, I'm sorry. I hope talking about it is not triggering any hard feelings for you right now. I got to talk about it because it's like my whole life I've had to keep a secret in order to try to not make them look bad, you know?

Like even when I was in high school, I spoke to a counselor one time. I mean, I was in 10th grade, but I was couch surfing. I didn't live with them, you know. I moved out when I was like 13 because the house was no longer a home. They were strung out, and it's a wonder I was even going to school. And one time I got pulled into a counselor instead of the principal's office, you know, and they said, what's going on, you know? And I finally just, they told me anything I say is between them and it won't leave the room.

And I said, yeah, my parents are on meth and I don't even live there. And my house got raided right after that, you know, that same day. Five state cops came up, raided the house. I almost sent my mom to prison because I opened my mouth. And from then on, I never said to anybody about anything. I've just, it hurts me, but what hurts me is I've always just been worried about them, you know. And I've always wanted them to be good. And when I say be good, I mean, to be well and happy and have some sunshine in their life.

You know, a few years ago I was able to buy them a home, my parents, and stuff was good for a while. It just, yeah, it really breaks my heart that it went back to this, and now she's gone. So I think my duty here is to continue doing what I'm doing, for one thing, use all that beautiful energy that I get from her, that crazy wild streak. I got to use that and, you know, honor her in that way. And I feel a great kind of duty as far as just writing down these words, making these songs for people to heal from and also you know who knows maybe someday i'll actually be able to help kids that are in the situation that i was in maybe i'll be able to

help their parents you know like open a rehab or something or something like that to just to help combat this because it's it's really hard you know yeah are you taking some time for yourself right now like are you are you able to take some time off the road and you have a young family now. That's also, that's at home. Yeah, they're with me on the road. Oh, they go with you on the road. Heck, yeah, man.

So, yeah, I got the whole gang, and we're out there traveling, and it's really cool. Earlier we talked about Doc Watson, and I wanted to ask if you'd play a tune that maybe was one of the earlier songs that you learned as a kid. Yeah. When I was a kid,

I mostly just played rhythm. So I'll give an example of that. My dad, he would play this. That's the fiddle tune, Beaumont-Mrag. Yeah, and so I would play. You know, and so that's how I started, and that's kind of what I did for the first few years of playing. I was my dad's rhythm player,

and that gave me a chance to just listen to how the songs worked, to just kind of stay there in the bass. kind of notes and um and listen to the melodies and listen to the harmonies how the vocals work together and uh that kind of bluegrass harmony just seeped in my ears i guess and um later on i i got an electric guitar a little mini squire strat and a pig nose amp for christmas one year i think i was probably nine or ten or so and that was my first time really trying to play solos and stuff like that but it was more i was getting into hendricks and i was playing more, you know, guitar center stuff. When I got into middle school, I wanted to play with people

that were my age, you know, I'd always played with my dad and his friends, and some of them were much older, and I just wanted to play music with people that were into the same stuff as I was, like skateboarding and video games, whatever, you know. And so the only thing that was really going on in my middle school at the time was heavy metal. And I went to to a couple of shows, and I just, I hated it at first. It was like, this is not music, you know, I don't know what this is, but it ain't music. But I just, I fell into that friend group, and then next thing you know, I started, I acquired a taste for this music, and then I fell in love with it. But after my bands kept breaking up and falling apart, I kind of got back

into Doc Watson at this time, and just bluegrass in general, this would have been around the time that stuff was really rough around the house. I remember specifically stealing my mom's old Chevelle one day. How old were you? 14, 15. You know, because I'd go over to my parents' house and hang out with them and stay there and party, and it's not like I just totally left and disowned them. I just, once I realized stuff wasn't going to change, I mean, I didn't end up really moving back there, but I'd go there for a weekend and hung out there a bunch, but I didn't, wasn't like my home. And so, yeah, I stole my mom's car one day when I was just sitting around getting drunk by

myself. And that's how bored I was and that's how kind of there was nothing to do in this town. I mean, there's 600 people that live here. There's nothing to do. So I was just getting drunk during the day and I stole mom's car and I went down Hayes Road, this old country road with cornfields on either side. And man, I put the pedal to the floor and I just, I was going. And that corn was just a blur on either side and there was a tape sticking halfway out of the deck and I pushed it in and I'm like I'm wondering what my mom's listening to right and then uh this is what came on I was in those heavy metal bands and all this stuff and I hadn't really been listening to bluegrass very much but I was kind of heartbroken at the way my life was at the time and when I heard

I wandered again To my home in the mountain You know, Ranked Stranger came on, that's what my mom had in her tape deck And I just started slowing that old car down Until I came to a complete stop And I just pulled over on the side of the road and I started crying And I was drunk, you know, but this song hit me right in my heart In that moment, I was like, what am I even doing?

doing in these heavy metal bands. Bluegrass is where my heart is. This is the music I should be playing. And at that time, I just started hunting for an acoustic guitar, you know, and my friend Zach had one. And one of the first tunes I learned how to actually pick. How to play the lead on and stuff is a thing called Nothing to it.

It goes like this. We're going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be I'm going I'm I'm

. I'm I'm I'm I'm not I'm sorry to I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm and I'm I'm

Is that one of those licks that you're now tired of, or you still like it? Oh, I love it. I mean, yeah, it's still the best. I mean, any of that Doc Watson stuff. your dad taught you how to play guitar have you picked out a guitar for your son yet do you plan to teach him the way your dad taught you well he's already got one that he just bangs on the floor

I gave him this Martin dreadnought Jr used to be my guitar I just practiced on the bus and stuff and I took tape and I covered up all the pokey parts where the strings are on top and I wrapped him real good so he can't poke himself on that yeah so when are you going to start teaching him how to play the strings Oh man like I said he's

He's already gone He's 10 months and He's just banging on it But I sing for him all the time It's always the best I remember that First night when we got home The night of my 32nd birthday

The first time I was able to Be at home with my son And I held him And I sing this little song I'll sing a bit of it for you He went to sleep in my arms when I was singing this to him, and it's probably the best moment of my entire life, besides maybe just the moment he was born.

But there's this little lullaby. Sleep, pretty, baby, sleeping, close them pretty bad eyes, listen while your dad is Oh, daddy, sweet little best to you. And I sang that to him, and he fell asleep. That was like the best. Well, Billy Strings, I want to thank you so much for coming on fresh air today. I thank you for having me. Billy Strings' latest album is called Live at the Legion.

Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Sam Brigger.