A previous post left off with the description of a traumatic event in the life of Billy Strings, when he was still a very young teen, living with his mom and her husband, Terry Barber, who had been his world-class stepdad for years.

In those days, a lot of things went on that shouldn’t have. It seems not only appropriate, but obligatory, to mention an interview in which “Liberal Redneck Comic” Trey Crowder describes how it was in a small Southern town, when suddenly half a dozen pharmacies would open, none of them owned by local residents, and somehow enough doctors would materialize, with prescription pads in hand, to keep them all in business.

In an unhumorous joke repeated all over America, folks sought relief from life’s pain by using substances that were designed to increase agitation, because that is what the avaricious suppliers brought in. Terry Barber and his wife Debra succumbed, and pursued their relationships with methamphetamine to the exclusion of just about everything else.

Sometimes the hot water or electricity would be cut off, or there would be no food in the house. On such a day, one of those things that shouldn’t have happened, did. As previously mentioned, Terry’s most treasured possession was a Martin guitar inherited from his father:

That instrument had been the “family jewel” and Terry had promised, “Son, this will be your guitar one day.” To see it sold, whether for drugs or food or whatever, was a signal to 13-year-old Billy that he needed to take some of the pressure off his parents (and himself) by finding a different place to live.

Now, the iconic instrument was an orphan, out there in the cold world, alone. The boy who grew up to become acclaimed guitarist Billy Strings was not quite alone. Years later, he told podcast host Marc Maron:

I kind of couch-surfed for a while, joined metal bands and stuff. Eventually one summer I was staying with my friend Benji for about a week straight and finally his mom goes, you know, “Hey man, don’t you have your own house to go back to?”

Well, not really. His parents were still unraveling, and he didn’t want to be a junkie like his once-adored stepdad. It seemed like everybody else he had grown up with was either strung out, locked up, or both. Yet and still, he was also a born musician, with a direction and a goal, meanwhile peddling a little weed and ‘shrooms to get by. To a musician, the right ax is as important as the right spouse is to a normal person.

In pursuit of a guitar that might change everything, he suffered a painful shock. Via an “unofficial Martin Guitar Forum website,” he learned that one instrument currently on the market was his stepdad’s treasured Martin, which Terry had promised that Billy would inherit. “And I kind of built a dream up on that,” he later told Maron.

Billy went online and wrote a long, fervent letter to the guitar’s current owner. It included such phrases as…

This is my dad’s guitar… [I]t was supposed to be mine one day… I’ll do anything… Please don’t sell it to anybody but me…

The owner, who had two interested parties with cash in hand, was reluctant to even listen to the 17-year-old street kid. But the man’s wife took an interest in the transaction, and convinced him to sell Billy the guitar on the installment plan. He needed three monthly payments of $700 each, and worked himself to a frazzle cutting grass and turning in empty cans and doing any other gig he could scare up.

When Terry Barber’s guitar was finally paid off, Billy wrapped it up and took it over to the house, set the box on the kitchen table, and summoned the man who had shaped and enriched his life:

He sits down and slowly undoes each kind of buckle on the case and he opens it up about an inch and he sees it and then he just puts his head down on the guitar case and starts crying.

Eventually, Terry takes out the guitar and strums a chord. Billy adds,

By that time me and my brother and my mom are standing there we’re all crying, yeah, that the guitar’s back home, yeah… [A]nd he told me that he felt like his mom was in the room with him… [L]ike his mom came back to life or something… He has the guitar still to this day, and he plays it, and he sounds great, and it’s back in his hands, and it’s just so (expletive) beautiful.

Years later, the main point of the Maron interview was to explore Billy Strings’ relationship to addiction, starting with “What made you stop drinking?”

A really bad hangover… Like, so bad that I haven’t drank in seven years bad.

His persistent nausea made the band late for their next gig, and they had to set up in full view of the audience, never a good look. Billy said:

And after that, I just, you know, I was like, okay, like, do you want a career or do you want to (expletive) get hammered? Because it’s going to be one or the other for you, bud… [I]t’s like sometimes when it’s going down good and it’s a celebration thing, I don’t know when to stop… It’s like there’s never “Like, okay, I’m good…” Like, “I think I’m drunk enough…” It’s like that never happens…

And he recorded an album with Terry Barber — which was nominated for a Grammy Award.

I got to take my dad out to the Grammys and let him walk on the red carpet… It was so awesome.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published August 20, 2026.

Sources:

“Episode 787,” WTFPod.com, February 20, 2017.

“Episode 1539 – Billy Strings,” RGoldfinger.com, May 16, 2024.

Image Copyright: Jesse Faatz 2023.jpg/Creative Commons.