Billy Failing
Billy Failing is a banjo player, guitarist, singer and songwriter who has played banjo in Billy Strings’s band since 2016. He plays on the band’s albums Home (2019), Renewal (2021), Live Vol. 1 (2024) and Highway Prayers (2024), and he also leads his own group, the Billy Failing Band.
Music ran through his upbringing: his parents played classical records, his older brothers introduced him to rock guitar, and his father played the occasional Earl Scruggs and Béla Fleck record around the house. He started on violin at seven and switched to electric guitar at thirteen. Hearing Yonder Mountain String Band in high school turned him to the banjo, and his father showed him the basics on an old open-back instrument. At college in Eugene, Oregon, he began playing out and helped form a bluegrass band called Mossy Top, then played in Wy’East, a band from Portland. In 2011 he moved to Boston to study banjo at Berklee College of Music, and in 2013 he released The Berklee Sessions.
He met Billy Strings through mutual friends in Nashville in 2015, when he was looking for work and Strings was looking for a band. After a few weekend dates on the road he signed on full time. He played banjo and sang harmony on the Billy Strings EP, recorded on 11–12 April 2016 with John Mailander on fiddle, Casey Campbell on mandolin and Erik Alvar on bass. With Jarrod Walker on mandolin and Royal Masat on bass he then made Home (Rounder, 2019) at Blackbird Studio in Nashville and Renewal (Rounder, 2021), and when the fiddler Alex Hargreaves became a permanent member in July 2022 the band grew to five. That lineup recorded Highway Prayers (Reprise, 2024) and the concert album Live Vol. 1 (Reprise, 2024), taped at shows in the United States and Paris. Home, Live Vol. 1 and Highway Prayers each won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.
In December 2018 he moved from Nashville to Boulder, Colorado, and in April 2019 he fronted the Billy Failing Band in Denver for the first time since 2017, with Silas Herman on mandolin, Eric Thorin on bass and Todd Livingston on Dobro. In September 2023 the Nechville company introduced a Billy Failing signature model, a version of its Vintage Eclipse banjo with a maple neck and resonator.
