If there’s someone who knows about coming back from the brink of disaster, it’s Sturgill Simpson. After spending the better part of a decade as one of alt-country’s leading voices, the singer-songwriter was indefinitely sidelined in 2021 by a vocal cord injury that threatened to derail his career permanently. After creeping back into the spotlight with acting gigs in Killers of the Flower Moon and The Righteous Gemstones along with some studio collaborations, Sturgill reemerged this summer with a sublime new album Passage du Desir under the new name Johnny Blue Skies.
In a parallel story of destruction and redemption, the music hub of Asheville, NC continues to rebuild following the devastating Hurricane Helene. Late last month, the storm killed 95 people in western North Carolina and left over 100,000 without water or power for weeks—putting an immediate halt to all commercial activity in the tourism-driven area. Sturgill Simpson was originally slated to play Asheville’s downtown arena on October 21st, but as cleanup efforts continue and the city slowly comes back online, he moved the show to the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary where he was already scheduled to play on the 22nd, and turned the show into a benefit for hurricane relief. Coincidentally, Cary was only a couple hour drive from Charlotte where Simpson blew out his vocal cords in 2021.
Making the drive from Asheville to Cary on Monday afternoon, there wasn’t a cloud in the Johnny Blue Skies. On the way there, I still wasn’t sure if it was wise to make the seven-hour round-trip journey across the state on a school night, but I wasn’t about to let something like 238 miles get in the way of finally seeing Sturgill Simpson for the first time. Nor would I let the venue’s poorly-planned entry road and scattershot parking deter my attendance, ultimately parking my Subaru Outback at a 45-degree angle just as the clock struck 7 p.m. and The Andy Griffith Show theme—the band’s walk-up music—began whistling through the towering pine trees.
The evening’s opener, “Scooter Blues”, was ironic given how many drivers in the angry red snake of taillights that slithered from the venue would have gladly paid a steep price for a Bird scooter into the show. Sprinting into the venue and entering the pit just as Simpson hit the guitar solo to the Allman Brothers Band‘s “Midnight Rider”, all was right with the world.
Sturgill Simpson — “Scooter Blues” — 10/21/24 — Partial Video
[Video: Rynopinn Concert Videos]
Monday’s three-hour, 30-song concert oscillated through the different moods of Sturgill Simpson, headbanging one song and misty-eyed the next. Simpson’s quantitatively concise but stylistically vast catalog has long presented a man with an almost tauntingly diverse amount of sides to his artistic character. Just when he emerged as a leader of Nashville’s new age, he turned around and cut a psych-rock album, followed by a pair of bluegrass reinterpretations of his old songs. The musical game of cat-and-mouse reinvention is something that drives the paradox-prone, anti-authoritarian Navy veteran.
“If something works or is successful, I just feel like I don’t deserve it, so I run from it,” Simpson said in a recent interview when asked if every album is merely a reaction to the reception of the previous one. “Or if people say, like, ‘Well, this is great, we want more of this,’ my brain is like, ‘No, you can’t have it. I do this now.’ It’s a fault.”
Audiences in Cary saw many of those sides. There was Simpson the guitar hero from the “Midnight Rider” solo and an evocative lead in Prince‘s “Purple Rain”. There was Sturgill the psych-rocker on the smoldering post-rock of “It Ain’t All Flowers”, the sludge of “Best Clockmaker on Mars”, and the Floydian breakdown of “All Said and Done”. There’s Simpson the sentimental sadboi on gripping live interpretations of dreamy Passage du Desir tracks “Jupiter’s Faerie”, “One for the Road”, “Right Kind of Dream”, and “Mint Tea”. We even got a bit of Simpson the P.E. coach as he led the crowd in calisthenics after a couple of people went down in the pit.
Simpson’s entire band toggled through modalities as well, with Sturgill playing alongside longtime mates Laur Joamets (guitar), Miles Miller (drums), and Kevin Black (bass), plus former Midland member Robbie Crowell (keys). The airtight group oscillated from a shit-kicking country bar band on “Life of Sin”, Moore & Napier‘s “Long White Line”, and a cover of J.J. Cale‘s “Call Me the Breeze”—the band’s first since 2016—to emulating a jam band as it tore apart a frenzied “Call to Arms” reminiscent of Phish‘s tenacity circa 1995, or the blues-inspired slow-jam of “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)”.
The evening’s grand finale combined Simpson’s crowd-pleasing bar band sensibilities with the group’s instrumental prowess. A climactic crescendo of Norman Greenbaum‘s “Spirit in the Sky” into Sound & Fury rocker “A Good Look” and finally The Doors‘ “L.A. Woman” finished minutes before the venue’s hard 10 p.m. curfew.
Sturgill Simpson — “Breakers Roar”, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” (Procol Harum), “Railroad Of Sin”, “Mint Tea”, “The Promise” (When In Rome) — 10/21/24
[Video: Beth Boylan]
So, in the end, who is Sturgill Simpson? The truth is he’s all of these things, but he’s also somebody else. The country singer who helped usher in a new class of songwriters is the same person who put out a Japenese anime film to accompany his psych-rock album. He’s the Navy-serving, bluegrass-playing, concept album-making enigma who has continued to defy expectations—and even enthusiasm—at every turning point. Given his career-long promise to only make five albums as Sturgill, and the Johnny Blue Skies loophole, he’ll probably become some other things before his career is through. Above all, the only thing Sturgill Simpson needs to be: is healthy.
The Sturgill Simpson Why Not? Tour returns to the Koka Booth Amphitheatre tonight, October 22nd, for a sold-out show. Find a full list of tour dates and tickets here. Sturgill has partnered with nugs to stream audio of the tour. Not a nugs subscriber yet? Sign up for a seven-day free trial here. [Editor’s Note: Live For Live Music is a nugs affiliate. Ordering your nugs subscription or purchasing a download via the links on this page helps support our coverage of the world of live music. Thank you for reading!]
Setlist: Sturgill Simpson | Koka Booth Amphitheatre | Cary, NC | 10/21/24
Set: Scooter Blues, Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers Band), Jupiter’s Faerie, It Ain’t All Flowers, One For The Road > Purple Rain (Prince), Life of Sin, Call to Arms > Call Me the Breeze (J.J. Cale) [1], Pinball Blues (Moore & Napier), Long White Line (Moore & Napier), I Don’t Mind, All Said and Done, Right Kind of Dream, I’d Have to Be Crazy (Steven Fromholz), Juanita, Fastest Horse in Town, Brace for Impact (Live a Little), You Don’t Miss Your Water (William Bell), Welcome To Earth (Pollywog), Best Clockmaker on Mars, Breakers Roar, A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum), Railroad of Sin, Mint Tea, The Promise (When in Rome), Turtles All the Way Down, Spirit in the Sky (Norman Greenbaum) [2] > A Good Look > L.A. Woman (The Doors)
[1] LTP by full band 11/19/16
[2] Instrumental
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