Shoutout Theo Von for constantly bringing the best guests on his podcast This Last Weekend.
Of course many are comedians, but he’s also brought on a ton of country music artists like Lainey Wilson, Morgan Wallen, Travis Tritt, Parker McCollum, and Jelly Roll and Ernest.
But this latest guest may be his best pull yet… none other than Billy Strings stopped by to talk all things under the sun, and while I haven’t gotten through the entire conversation yet, the first half is already one of the best I’ve heard in awhile.
The number of stories Billy has from growing up in small town Michigan as the child of two half-hippie, half-redneck parents are honestly endless, but the conversation got deep when he opened up about the struggles his parents had with drugs, the fact that his biological father died of a heroin overdose, and the instability of being raised in a household with few, if any, rules.
The subject of drugs came up and both said they feel bad for people who want to dabble with them today because of the crap people are putting in them, particularly fentanyl. They talked about Billy’s first experience with crack at just 16 years old and then it rolled to meth, a drug that Billy had quite the musical experience with…so much so that he didn’t rule out smoking it again.
“Whenever I hit that sh*t, I was up for two days straight. There was a time where I played guitar for 48 hours straight and I didn’t put it down. I swear to God. And I played pretty much the same riff the entire time..
I was just holding my guitar and my fingers were going and I was just like ‘Wow.’ And it was like an orchestra was coming out. I was writing sh*t that I never could have imagined, it was like a beautiful mind type situation.”
Theo asked if he believed the music was drug-fueled, to which Billy said:
“Oh yeah, absolutely. So much so that I can’t even sit here and say that I’ll never smoke meth again because I might want to do it in a controlled environment as a creative experiment. You know what I mean?
Because dude, I swear to God I think I could write an album in three days that’s like the craziest sh*t ever… Obviously I’m not like condoning it. It’s f*cking terrible, don’t do it, but I am saying that those 48 hours where I was playing guitar straight, I worked some cobwebs out in my brain that was kinda crazy…
And this was the first time I ever smoked meth.”
Before we go any further, I strongly echo the part above where you should NOT smoke meth. We Smoke Meat Not Meth around these parts. But man, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t listen to an album written by a tweaked out Billy Strings…
This story starts around the 28:50 mark of the podcast, but here’s a short clip of them talking about it.
I can’t wait to see where the rest of this conversation goes, but man is it awesome to hear the great mind of Billy Strings work in real time with a conversation partner like Theo Von who can roll with anything…
Cue “Dust In A Baggy,” the classic video from a party…
And here’s the entire podcast for your listening pleasure.
