Bluegrass phenom Billy Strings says this is the most important part of his shows.

Billy Strings has sold out multiple nights in several cities on his current tour and Nashville is no exception. He'll be playing two sold-out shows at Bridgestone Arena, followed by a sold-out show at The Ryman on Sunday.

But here's something you may not know about a Billy Strings show: The setlist is completely different every night and something he toils over every show day. Why? The fans.

"Every morning I wake up and write the set list and it’s like a puzzle for me," Strings told The Tennessean. "What have we not played in like the last two or three shows and that’s what the set list will be. Because a lot of our fans, it’s not like they come see us one time, they come on tour. They follow us. We see a lot of the same faces on the front row every night so we can’t feed them same thing for dinner every night."

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And although he toils over each set list, a collection of songs determined by how he's feeling that day, what the weather is like, and what town he's playing, sometimes he even deviates from that mid-show based on the crowd.

"When me and my guys get on stage, it’s like we are playing basketball or something," he said. "We are passing the ball back and forth. Sometimes we’ll follow the set list and sometimes I pull songs out of my a**. The crowd kinda plays the show. I can tell if its gonna be ok to play a slow song now or if we should keep the energy up.  I kinda read the room."

As for what fans in Nashville can expect at this weekend's run of shows, Strings says "fun."

He noted that there will be "a lot of hippies" in downtown Nashville this weekend hanging out between shows and he loves it.

"I think the community based around our shows is just really awesome. A bunch of people get together in a big parking lot somewhere and they have vendors and sell tie dyes and everybody gets together and plays music for like three days. It's like a big traveling festival or circus. People that follow us used to follow the Grateful Dead.

"That’s part of the reason we change up the set list every night. These aren’t just regular fans who say 'I’d like to go to a concert on a Wednesday night.' They have given up everything to come see this music. That’s their main objective to come see the show."

But continually striving to give those dedicated fans the best show possible is, at best, taxing. He admits he feels a lot of pressure to do right by the people who spend money and travel to see him multiple times on tour.

"When I wake up in a hotel room sometimes it can take me hours to write the set list because I don’t want it to be like we’ve done that before," he said. "There are huge arena acts out there who are not only playing the same set list every night but playing to tracks and stuff. It blows my mind how much work I put into it compared to some folks… a lot of folks are like 'man, you are making it too hard on yourself.'"

But he wouldn't have it any other way.

"It's impossible for us to phone it in because when we get into these improvisational jams on stage, if people weren't paying attention it would just deflate."

As for playing to massive crowds at Bridgestone followed by a more intimate show at The Ryman, Strings said he likes to play two nights at Bridgestone and then have a nice Sunday service at The Ryman to kinda bring everybody down.

"We bring ya up real high at the Bridgestone and we don't wanna just drop ya from that high up, so we wanna bring you down softly at The Ryman."

Melonee Hurt covers music and music business at The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK — Tennessee. Reach Melonee at [email protected], on X @HurtMelonee or Instagram at @MelHurtWrites.

If you go:

What: Billy Strings

When: Fri., Feb. 23 and Sat. Feb. 24 at Bridgestone Arena and Sun., Feb 25 at The Ryman

Tickets: Bridgestonearena.com, ryman.com (sold out)

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Billy Strings says this is the most important part of his shows.