Bluegrass phenom Billy Strings is a bigtime metalhead who came up playing in metal bands, and he seems to have a special affection for Montreal tech-death legends Cryptopsy. Last year, Strings played a solo on Cryptopsy's 30th-anniversary medley of re-recorded songs from their 1994 debut Blasphemy Made Flesh. When Strings put together his own Ionia Freak Fair festival in his Ionia, Michigan hometown last weekend, he made sure to have a metal stage, booking Cryptopsy alongside bands like Bane, For The Fallen Dreams, and Flesh & Blood Robot. Then he joined Cryptopsy onstage at the festival.
In the run-up to the Ionia Freak Fair, when he wasn't dodging projectiles, Billy Strings made sure to note how excited he was to have all these metal bands he admires — some of whom he used to book or hang out with in his early days — at the Ionia Freak Fair. This kind of extreme metal wasn't exactly par for the course at a festival where the main stage featured acts like Greesky Bluegrass and Leftover Salmon, and that's what's so cool about it.
Billy Strings headlined both days of his Ionia Freak Fair, and he also made time to appear on the smaller stage and to shred with Cryptopsy. He seemed very fired-up to temporarily rejoin that world. The crowd looked psyched, too. Watch a couple of fan videos below.
