Seeking shelter from the arenas that have become his onstage home, Billy Strings and his Nashville mentor, Bryan Sutton, performed an intimate duo gig American Legion Inglewood Post 82 in. 

That surprise performance is now out as the surprise-released Live at the Legion and finds the mentor and mentee “picking our asses off,” as the latter puts it in describing the rehearsals that led up to the April 7, 2024, gig in Music City. 

Weaving their acoustic-guitar strings into a single music-making machine, Sutton and Strings are synched up nearly perfectly; the occasional speed bump – be it a false start, botched lyric or forgetting who is taking which solo – only adds to the allure of this unique recording. 

It’s a throwback to the days before Strings’ breakthrough, when this then-unknown wunderkind was bringing traditional songs to bars and clubs full of unsuspecting audiences. Now, of, course, playing such a gig requires a ticket lottery and tons of luck. 

Though they play as one, Sutton and Strings sing as two, the former up high, the latter down low to meet in the middle on such songs as “The Nashville Blues,” “Tom Dooley,” “Two Soldiers,” “Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright,” “Darling Corey,” “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar,” and 14 others as the duo reanimate the ghosts of Doc Watson, the Carter Family, Tony Rice and the other inspirational characters they carry in their guitar cases. 

Live at the Legion finds the student and the teacher bringing the past into the present and laying the path for those yet-unknowns who will follow and likely play Sutton and Strings’ numbers alongside those the duo brought to life at the Legion.