Ionia Freak Fair
Ionia State Fairgrounds
Ionia, Mich.
Friday, Aug. 28-Saturday, 29, 2026
Though he moved to Nashville and has since become one of the biggest names in bluegrass music, Billy Strings has not forgotten his Michigan roots. “I’m looking for the place I used to live,” he sings on the opening track of So Much for Goodbyes, his fifth studio album, released Friday. The singer-songwriter and guitarist celebrated his new record last week at the inaugural Ionia Freak Fair, a two-day music festival in his hometown located somewhere between Lansing and Grand Rapids.
Born William Apostol, 33-year-old Strings exploded as a festival and arena act in the 2020s, drawing hordes of tie-dye-clad jam band fans thanks to his virtuosic guitar skills and Grateful Dead-esque mix of bluegrass, country, and psychedelic rock. Many made the pilgrimage from across the country to see Strings perform in Ionia, his only Michigan date this year.
The small town welcomed them with open arms. Ionia is so small, in fact, that the first person I struck up a conversation with on the street just so happened to be Mayor John R. Milewski, II, who immediately clocked me as a visitor.
“We haven’t had this big of a concert in a long time, probably 20 years,” he said, beaming with pride. He noted that the Freak Fair is a play off of the city’s long-running Ionia Free Fair, established in 1915 and having hosted many big-name acts throughout the years including Metallica and Willie Nelson, among others.
Milewski said the city has been working with Strings on the Freak Fair for years, inspired by Strings’s manager allegedly mishearing the words “Free Fair.” With 27,500 tickets sold per day, including some 18,000 two-day tickets, the city expected some 36,000 visitors over the weekend — with many spending the night at campsites in the area.
Milewski choked up when the conversation turned to a recent New York Times interview where Strings spoke about his struggles with addiction and the recent passing of his mother, who died of a drug overdose. “He embraces where he came from,” Milewski said. “He doesn’t hide, he doesn’t shy, and I think it’s probably one of the better messages of no matter where you come from, you can always become better.” A number of tickets were set aside for Ionia-area residents.
Like the Free Fair, the Freak Fair was held on the Ionia County Fairgrounds. The event leaned into its circus theme with Strings’s friend Mark “Huggy Bear” Lavengood serving as a carnival-barking MC, kicking off festivities with a Jimi Hendrix-like version of the National Anthem played on the dobro — which he dubbed “The Star-Mangled Banner.” The grounds also included a Ferris wheel, an old-timey sideshow with acts like a sword swallower and a bearded lady, motorcycles circling inside a “Globe of Death,” carnival games, and more. Plenty of fans even dressed for the occasion by wearing clown makeup.
The main draw, of course, was the music, with bluegrass-inspired acts on the main stage including Colorado’s Leftover Salmon and Kalamazoo’s Greensky Bluegrass, and metal bands in a smaller tent. The two genres may seem like an odd marriage if you didn’t know that Strings grew up picking bluegrass with his stepfather Terry Barber before performing with local metal bands as a teenager. During the Freak Fair, he even let his long hair down from under his signature orange hunting hat to headbang, making some guest appearances shredding during the metal sets.
The metal influence is apparent on “Burn the Other End,” the ominous lead single from So Much for Goodbyes. Strings and his band — Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Billy Failing on banjo, Jarrod Walker on mandolin, and Royal Massat on bass — performed the new album in its entirety during his headline set on Friday.
“This is incredible for me,” Strings said from the stage. “I’ve been wanting to do this for quite a few years and I think we finally pulled it off.”
As the sun set, an impressive, dazzling lighting rig delighted the crowd. After a break, Strings and his band returned for a second set, including favorites like “Dust in the Baggie” and “Gild the Lily” from Strings’s Grammy-winning 2024 album Highway Prayers, fleshed out into an extended jam with the help of members of Leftover Salmon.
While introducing a cover of the Stanley Brothers’ “Rank Stranger,” Strings recounted an incident from his youth in which he stole his mother’s car and drunkenly drove at full speed through the nearby cornfields. He credits the song playing from the tape deck as inspiring him to turn his life around and get back into bluegrass music, which he associates with the innocence of childhood. (The song’s lyrics: “I wandered again to my home in the mountains/ Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and free/ I looked for my friends, but I never could find them/ I found they were all rank strangers to me.”)
“If you live in this little town, and you’re not sure where your life’s gonna go, it can go anywhere you want it to,” Strings said, “with a little love and a little bluegrass music.”
He followed with a cover of Tom Paxton’s “The Last Thing on My Mind,” chosen because his hero Doc Watson once performed it with Dolly Parton. Her death last week at age 80 hung over the festival, with other acts paying tribute — Lindsay Lou covered “9 to 5,” and Sierra Hull took on “Smoky Mountain Memories.”
Strings acknowledged an 11 p.m. curfew but mischievously blew past it anyway, well aware the mayor was probably in the crowd and enjoying the show.
He and his band played an entirely different set on Saturday, with Strings’s stepfather sitting in for a stretch of covers of old-school country tunes including “Life to Go” by Stonewall Jackson, “Someday You’ll Call My Name” popularized by Hank Williams, and “Little Cabin Home on the Hill” by Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. It was a beautiful full-circle moment for Strings and his stepfather — and a testament to the power of music.
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