Billy Strings Announces Release Date For ‘So Much For Goodbyes’ Album Dedicated to Late Mother

Billy Strings is gearing up to release his fifth studio album, So Much for Goodbyes. The Grammy-winning singer and fleet-fingered guitar picker announced the details of the 16-song collection due out on Aug. 28 on Reprise Records on Tuesday (June 30), saying it was recorded in honor of his mother.

“To notice and embrace this very significant period of grief in my life and make art from it,” he said in a statement about his inspiration for the LP, which will drop just a year after the bluegrass star’s mother, Debra Apostol, died unexpectedly in her sleep while her son was on stage at the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival in Michigan. “To turn my heartbreak into songs while using my guitar as a coping mechanism as I always have. It’s always been there for me to lean on through the hard times, and I figure it always will … until it’s my time to say goodbye.”

The follow-up to 2025’s Grammy-winning Highway Prayers was co-produced by Strings and legendary producer T Bone Burnett and a release said it finds the performer “channeling a deeply personal period into his most musically mature and reflective body of work to date.” Its cover will feature an original piece of art created by Apostol.

The album will be available in black, wood grain and sun core variants, with all the production originating in the U.S.; the records were plated and pressed at Denver’s Paramount Pressing & Plating and cut for vinyl at Take Out Vinyl in Memphis. Strings dropped the collection’s first single, the moody, introspective “Burn the Other End” on Tuesday (June 30), an urgent song that finds him singing, “This will break/ I just can’t/ So I will burn the other end,” on the chorus.

Strings will return to PBS’ Austin City Limits series on Thursday (July 2), marking his first headlining concert since breaking his leg in a skateboarding accident earlier this year. He will then kick off an extensive U.S. summer tour with an appearance at Willie Nelson’s annual July 4th concert in Austin, Texas at Germania Insurance Amphitheater and also team up with Sierra Hull, Leftover Salmon, Cryptopsy, See You Next Tuesday, Bane, For the Fallen Dreams, Greensky Bluegrass and others for his first annual Iona Freak Fair on Aug. 28 and 29 in Ionia, Mich.

Check out the tracklist for So Much For Goodbyes, the video for “Burn the Other End” and Strings’ upcoming tour dates below.

1. “I’m One of Those”

2. “Burn the Other End”

3. “Carry Us Home”

4. “Lay Me Down”

5. “Lucid Daydream”

6. “Mill Town Flood”

7. “Live to Tell”

8. “Bluewater Breakdown”

9. “Light the Wall”

10. “I Like Train Songs”

11. “10,000 Miles From a Friend”

12. “Still I Crash”

13. “I Wish I Wanted To”

14. “Remember to Cry”

15. “Wrestling an Angel”

16. “Debra’s Waltz”

Billy Strings 2026 tour dates:

*Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic