Sturgill Simpson (2024)

One Liner: Fantastic torchbearer of the type of Country I love

Wikipedia Genre:  Alternative country, progressive country
Home: Lexington, KY

Poster Position: HEADLINER!
Day: Sunday at 8:25 on the Honda Stage
Both Weekends.

Thoughts:  Last here in 2015.  Which is wild - feels more recent.  He was also the guy I was supposed to see, right when the pandemic lockdown cancelled everything.  Tyler Childers to open for him.  Would have been an amazing show!  Dammit!

Classic country.  If you have read my blog before now, you know that, in between lineup announcements for ACL and doing God's work for you all, I listen to new music and collect reviews in posts of four or five new albums.  However, when I heard Simpson's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, I had to do a post all by itself for the pleasures I found in that disc.  It is an excellent homage to classic country while still sounding new.  I won't repeat myself or repost the song links, but if you are curious, "Turtles All the Way Down" is the most listened to track on Spotify at 66.6 million, and his cover of "The Promise" only clocks in 4th place with 23 million.  "The Promise" is awesome.

After hearing that early album, I went and saw Simpson play the Stubb's amphitheater with my friend Noah, and had a hell of a good time.  I saw a boatload of people I knew at the show, and you could just tell that he was catching fire and on the way up.

Before 2014's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson had another album, 2013's High Top Mountain.  It is still good, but it just doesn't have the same electric fire that Metamodern uses to slice through old school typecasting.  It is still a rootsy, classic country album with a clear line tracing straight back to Waylon Jennings, but the sound sticks closer to tradition and does less to move the outlaw country sound forward.  His cover of Willie's "I'd Have to Be Crazy" is an aching gem.  Two songs from that album crack the top ten most listened to for Simpson on Spotify, but the most listened to is "You Can Have the Crown," with 61.2 million.

Live version, but you get the gist.  High energy rockin' country.  And funny lyrics - trying to write a song that will pay the bills, but can't so he needs to go rob a bank.  King turd!  Boss Hawg!  And he can't figure out "what the hell rhymes with Bronco."  Uh, Honcho?  Bravo?  Matthew Mcconaughey's Bongos?  Uchiko?  He should join up with Unknown Mortal Orchestra for another song about being buried underneath Uchiko in his Bronco!

I saw his 2015 show at ACL and it was fantastic.  That was my favorite year of ACL bar none.

Part of the cool about Simpson is how original he is.  Born in Kentucky to a Kentucky State Trooper, and Sturgill was the first male on his mom's side of the family to not work the mines.  he apparently barely graduated from high school and immediately enlisted in the Navy.  he spent three years in the Navy, with some time in Japan, before ending up back in Kentucky to pursue his music.  You can hear some of that background on "Sea Stories."  Originally, he started a country rock band called Sunday Valley, and he moved to Nashville, but he even says that "was a total bust."  He moved to Salt Lake and moved up in the ranks of a railroad freight shipping yard that he ended up managing, but his wife and friends kept on him about his music and how he shouldn't give up.  So, after a while, he and his wife went back to Nashville to give it a go.  Anyway, back to the albums.

2016's A Sailor's Guide to Earth further cemented his outside status, using different sounds mingled in with classic country things.  I mean, I love this album.  I know I'm very much not alone in that sentiment, as any middle aged guy who hates Nashville bro-country but likes the old outlaws is required by DNA and law to think Sturgill is the best thing of all time, but I just thoroughly enjoy the guy's tunes.  Metamodern was classic, but this one combines an amazing sound with some truly lovely and heartfelt lyrics aimed at his newborn son.  

First, he opens with this piano ballad for his first born son ("Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)") that evolves into a kick ass blast of Stax-horns-funk-fueled soul.  That is part of why I dig on this guy - he's not just sticking with a formulaic method of pandering to the country crowd - he's crossing boundaries and making kick ass music, regardless of the sound.  And as a dad, this kind of stuff hits right on up there into home.  Second, he covers Nirvana.  I mean, bold ass move, but he pulls it off and I dig it.  I've been singing his version of "In Bloom" for days.  He dropped old school 80's on us in the last album with "The Promise," now he went grunge.

The hit off the album is my favorite track on here, which is a little more traditionally country (with a dose of southern rock), but it is a good one.  "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)" has 34.7 million listens on Spotify, and is just a well-done track.

Make sure you live a little, man.  Be a scary old guy running down gravestones in your hot rod, and you'll be more satisfied when you are dead. Good stuff.  "Oh Sarah," to his wife, is freaking gorgeous.  I think my only beef with the album is that it's too damn short.  9 songs and 38 minutes?  Come on man, keep it coming. Cover "Mayonnaise," "Sober," and "Peaches" to make some 90's alt history.  The other extremely fun track on here is the album closer, "Call to Arms," which sounds like it could be a Blues Brothers rave-up, that includes a succinct review of the current state of entertainment media ("bullshit on the TV, bullshit on the radio").  I am getting goose bumps right now, in 2024 listening to this track crank it up again.  hell yeah.  He won the Grammy for Best Country Album with this disc.

In the midst of all of this music, he also made time to be in several movies and shows as an actor.  Probably the biggest of those was Killers of the Flower Moon, but I remember him in Queen & Slim too.

Next was 2019's Sound and Fury.  Another good album, taking less of a country tack than ever and angling further and further into straight rock and roll.  This one is definitely a keeper, although I will readily admit that I loke the earlier two better.

"Sing Along" is the hit from the album at 21 million streams.  That video is totally weird.  I've said this before, but for some reason the weird bass drop near the end of the song bugs the crap out of me.  Otherwise, it's a fine song, but that one moment is out of place and weird and I don't like it.  But yes, this disc is good.  He apparently made an entire companion film for this, and was openly antagonistic with his label about the whole process of him making a hard-to-market album and companion movie.

But then, he swerved into the pandemic with two personal favorite bangers.  First was 2020's Cuttin' Grass.  I absolutely LOVE this album.  These are bluegrass versions of his previously released songs, and the players that he has surrounded himself for the backing instrumentation are freaking stone-cold killers.  I looked up who they are, and none of them ring a bell to me as artists in their own right, except for Mandolin player/singer Sierra Hull, who I reviewed an album from a while back (and is bad ass).  But each tune bristles with bluegrass perfection - bouncy banjos, lively fiddle, weaving and nimble guitar lines, as well as great harmonies from the collected singers.  And its super fun to hear familiar songs re-imagined like this.  "Long White Line," or "Turtles All the Way Down," or the lovely "Breaker's Roar," it's crazy fun.  And while I know a bunch of his music, I have to readily admit that a handful of these tunes ring no bells to me, which is a very fun deal - I get new-to-me tunes in a perfect bluegrass wrapping.  The top track for streams on here is "I Don't Mind," with 35.4 million streams.

That one turns down the banjo's presence and leans more on the mandolin, guitar, and his lovely voice.  Lyrically, it's also a beautiful track, just a pure love song sung in with conviction and longing.  And I dug into its history a little bit, because it doesn't ring any bells from the albums that I own.  Ends up it came from his pre-solo band Sunday Valley.  

Two months later, he fired out Volume 2. For me, Sturgill could release one of these a week for the rest of my life and I'd die a happy man.  The first track, "Call to Arms," combines a breakneck breakdown that sounds like a train just an inch away from launching off the tracks with killer lyrics excoriating the war machine chewing up our boys.  What a great fucking song.  And this rearrangement of it is just a hillbilly freakout.  "Sea Stories" is another similarly great one that involves poking some fun at the armed services.  And as with Vol. 1, it is high fun to hear some of the great songs from his old albums reimagined into bluegrass.  "Welcome to Earth" starts as a pretty true-to-the-original lullaby, and then turns into a pickin' session.  "Brace for Impact" and "Keep It Between the Lines" remain excellent songs, just with a different flavor now.  The top track is the third one - "Oh Sarah" - with 18.4 million streams.

Sweetly sad love song from the Sailor's Guide album, with that great line of "so forgive me if sometimes I seem a little crazy, but god damn, sometimes crazy is how I feel."  I know some people didn't want to hear volume one, so I get if you won't buy in a second time, but I love the reimagining of his great tunes for a different style.

Keeping with the oddball career choices, next was 2021's The Ballad of Dood & Juanita.  This one is weird and wooly, with clever stories and one particular moment that makes me laugh each time I hear it.  This album takes the bluegrass mastery he showed on Cuttin' Grass (check the breakdown in the middle of "Shamrock," good gravy!) and applies it to a new set of songs (instead of his old catalog) with a story woven through them of old timey Kentucky settlers.  Dood is a son of a mountain miner and a crack shot with his rifle.  Juanita is a good-hearted woman who calms down his worst impulses.  Their story goes south when Juanita is kidnapped and he has to go on a mission to rescue her, but the hero wins in the end.  Instead of the top track of streams, I want to give you "Juanita," because it contains the line that makes me laugh.  8.7 million streams.

"JUANITA!!!  Where'd your momma get that name!?"  Love it.  Need to belt it out at a concert sometime soon.  "Sam" is the top song (61 million streams), which is too bad, really, because it's about Dood's dog dying too soon.  I don't know why the best songwriters in the country genre need to keep making songs about their dogs dying (see "Maggie's Song" from Chris Stapleton) but hearing him sing about how amazing his dog was makes me sad about the day when my dog might die.  But still, the song is good and it works in the fabric of this album.  Great disc. 

He apparently ruptured his vocal cords in 2021 and announced a retirement from touring.  That seems to have resolved itself now.

Now, in 2024, you'd hate to not be kept on your toes by the guy, so he released an album under the name Johnny Blue Skies called Passage Du Desir.  Which translates to Passage of Desire.  The pseudonym apparently has to do with a promise that he won't release more than five albums of original material under his own name.  Which is sort of whack.  Anyway, this new disc is a little under inspiring for me, personally.  It sort of sounds like Sailor's Guide, but without those exciting horns and high energy riffs - takes a more quiet and soft tack towards the same oddball horizon though.  It isn't bad, like the funky little groove on "Scooter Blues" is tasty for me, but it mostly just cruises by under my radar with each listen.  The closer "One For the Road" has some Allman-esque licks that I like and gets a little rowdy near the end.  Not many streams for the disc either - not sure if that is because of the pseudonym or just a lack of excitement.  Top streamer is called "Mint Tea," with 2.5 million streams.

Like I said, just kind of bops along and then is gone without leaving a trace.  I like the imagery of another band aid on this bullet hole, but I don't even think that is an original thought.  For sure Taylor Swift already used it, and I'd expect others.  Huh.  Morgan Wallen has a song named "Band-aid on a Bullethole."  So, there you go, the least original country guy out there already used that thought...  The album is fine, it's just not something that snags my attention and gets me all psyched up to see those new songs played live.  Instead, I'll be hoping for a greatest hits set.