“Gild The Lily” by Billy Strings

"Gild the Lily" turned up on Billy Strings' 2024 album Highway Prayers, and the credits read like a pickers' summit with a curveball thrown in. Strings wrote it with Jarrod Walker, who plays mandolin on it, and co-produced it with Jon Brion, who also handled the double bass and the drums himself. Around them sit Billy Failing's banjo, Alex Hargreaves on fiddle and Nathaniel Smith's cello, with Strings stacking guitar, 12-string, resonator guitar and shakers under his own vocal.

The result sounds like a string band let loose in a well-stocked studio: acoustic and nimble, but with a warm, layered depth that the cello and Brion's bass and drums lend it. Brandon Bell engineered and added production, and Greg Koller mixed.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.