Episode Details

One of the most mind-blowing guitarists on earth, Billy Strings, talks about an all-time great Willie and Trigger workout, “Stay a Little Longer,” off the 1978 double-album Willie and Family Live. The song’s an old Bob Wills standard that Willie updated, made his own, and plays here at a careening, 90-mph pace that Billy says blazes like bluegrass—before adding that he hears in it a hallmark of Willie’s picking: integrity in every note. From there he describes a magical day cutting “California Sober” at Pedernales with Willie, the high price of playing poker with him afterward, and what it was like to carry Jody Payne’s old Martin guitar onstage at Willie’s 90th birthday shows.