Sturgill Simpson emerged from musical seclusion earlier this month with his first studio album in three years. Well, kind of.
The album, Passage du Desir, was released by a shadowy figure known as Johnny Blue Skies. The baritone singer previously appeared on DJ-turned-country enthusiast Diplo‘s single “Use Me (Brutal Hearts)” last year before making his full-length, the title of which translates from French to “Passage of Desire.” Through its eight dreamy tracks, Johnny Blue Skies shares many of the same characteristics that drew fans to the long-dormant Simpson: empathetic storytelling and relatable characters, plain-spoken emotionalism, and searing, golden-era rock guitar playing. That’s because Sturgill Simpson and Johnny Blue Skies are one and the same.
Since coming from Jackson, KY to Nashville, TN and cutting his first album, High Top Mountain, in 2013, Simpson long maintained that he would release only five albums under his own name. In a new interview with Qobuz, the singer-songwriter(s) explained the reasoning for the artistic metamorphosis.
“I kind of wanted my name back for myself. I felt like my identity had just become a brand,” Simpson said. “And be at airports or something, and you hear somebody say your name and you turn around and you realize you never met this person. It’s a pleasant encounter, but all the same… And then I realized I was always a big fan of the Derek and the Dominos record. And I thought that was a really neat concept that [Eric Clapton] hid behind a character to make a very vulnerable rock and roll record of love songs. And I don’t know if he would have done it with his name on it.”
As for the actual name “Johnny Blue Skies,” don’t expect a Keyser Soze-level reveal. When Simpson returned home from the Navy as a young man, a black trenchcoat-clad, Zippo-flipping bartender at a local tavern took to calling him Johnny Blue Skies every time he walked in the door. Simpson has no idea where exactly the name came from, but it stuck around in his mind and has made select appearances in his discography. On physical copies of his 2016 album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, there is an illustration of a vast ocean, and in a corner of the map there is an image of Sturgill as the dread pirate Johnny Blue Skies. Then, when Simpson went to Japan to create the film accompaniment for his 2019 country-meets-psych-rock-meets-anime crossover, Sound & Fury, he named the production company Johnny Blue Skies Productions to avoid any attention.
Or, to sum it up plainly as Simpson is wont to do, “Because the paperwork was already done. I already owned the name.”
The rest of Passage du Desir‘s creation follows a similarly matter-of-fact storyline from the eloquently understated everyman. He wrote many of the songs while traveling and living in Europe and Southeast Asia over the past several years—at a time when he wasn’t sure if he’d ever tour again due to a tour-ending vocal cord injury in 2021. During that same time, radical changes affected Simpson’s personal life as he lost various of people close to him, including one friend who died by suicide and is immortalized in the grief-stricken epic, “Jupiter’s Faerie”.
“So, I just decided, you know what? I got to get all this stuff on tape and record it,” Simpson said of dealing with tragedy.
Those who have followed Sturgill Simpson long enough know that he is a constantly moving target. The singer-songwriter who took the country world by storm with 2014’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music then went off to make a nautical concept album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (2016); an animated psych-rock middle finger to Nashville, Sound & Fury (2019); two bluegrass albums featuring new arrangements of old songs, Cuttin’ Grass volumes one and two (2020); and the spaghetti Western album The Ballad of Dood & Juanita (2021), which was allegedly his swan song.
“If something works or is successful, I just feel like I don’t deserve it, so I run from it,” Simpson said 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.”
Related: Sturgill Simpson & Stephen Colbert Provide Lyrics For Official Space Force Song [Watch]
In that same spirit of constant reinvention, Simpson also racked up a couple of notable acting credits in recent years with The Righteous Gemstones and Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon. As Simpson was laid up from touring and singing, he fielded some offers just to kill time—though he was by no means an actor. When he auditioned for Killers of the Flower Moon during the pandemic, Simpson had never taken part in a Zoom call, much less a film audition. Acting on instinct, during his digital interview he looked off-camera as if he was talking to someone in the room until the casting director finally asked, exasperated, “What the hell are you looking at?!” After five months of silence, Simpson inexplicably got the part and ended up in Oklahoma for six months working alongside Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and fellow country singer-turned-Scorcese actor Jason Isbell.
“I feel like it’s a great way to kill some time,” Simpson said of his experience acting. “But it’s not something I feel the need to actively pursue. I’m a musician, and I didn’t find it all that rewarding or gratifying, to be honest. … I just realized I should stick to what I love and what I know.”
Check out the full interview with Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies and stream Passage du Desir below or on your preferred platform. Simpson will get his old band back together this fall for the Why Not? Tour, his first in three years. Find tickets and a full list of tour dates on his website.
Sturgill Simpson explains why he’s now Johnny Blue Skies for Qobuz
Johnny Blue Skies, Sturgill Simpson — Passage Du Desir
The post Who The F–k Is Johnny Blue Skies? Sturgill Simpson Explains Alias In New Interview [Watch] appeared first on L4LM.
