Edgar Winter Brings Multi-Instrumentalist Skills To Billy Strings’ Night 1 In Nashville

Billy Strings‘ 2026 Winter Tour saw him returning home to Nashville where he performed three concerts in total over the weekend, beginning with two nights at Bridgestone Arena. The guitarist and his band got the run underway with a concert on Friday that featured an extensive sit-in from multi-instrumentalist Edgar Winter.

The show kicked off with “Hello, City Limits,” released by Red Allen and The Kentuckians in 1965. The first frame also saw Billy Strings offering original favorites such as “Meet Me At The Creek,” “Home” and set-closer “Secrets.”

To begin set two, Billy with Edgar Winter on piano delivered a duet on the latter’s “Fly Away,” which saw the saw the musicians sharing lead vocal duties before exploring the song thoroughly across a nearly 16-minute rendition.

Winter then switched to saxophone for a take on a song his brother, Johnny Winter, released in 1973, “Ain’t Nothing To Me,” another vocal co-lead from Strings and Winter. Edgar kept in on sax for the Billy Strings original “Love And Regret,” which contained another nod to the late Johnny Winter with a lyric change of “old Hartford records” to “old Johnny Winter records.” The sit-in came to a conclusion with the Chuck Berry rock ‘n’ roll classic “Johnny B. Goode,” which marked the first time Billy Strings performed the song since Halloween 2023, a 173 show gap.

Billy and the band — mandolinist Jarrod Walker, bassist Royal Masat, banjo player Billy Failing and fiddler Alex Hargreaves — then went it alone for “Red Daisy,” a co-write between Walker and bluegrass musician Christian Ward. Next came “Escanaba” and “Seven Weeks In County,” both appearing on Billy Strings latest record, Highway Prayers, which netted the guitarist his third Grammy win at the recent awards.

Strings then paired up “Crown Of Thorns,” a song written by grunge progenitors Mother Love Bone, with “Wargasm.” The latter saw Strings taking aim at I.C.E. with the lyric change from “tanks on your street” to “I.C.E. on the street.” The second set came to a close with “Sally Goodin” and “Ridin’ That Midnight Train.” Strings and the band returned to encore with single mic renditions of original “Freedom” and “Y’all Come.”

Watch more video from the show below:

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Setlist