It’s been a wild ride for Sturgill Simpson. From joining the Navy straight out of high school to waiting tables at an IHOP in Seattle, the Kentuckian was admittedly without ambition in his younger days. After learning his wife was pregnant, he threw a hail mary on his 2014 sophomore release Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, expecting it to be the last album he ever made before settling into a quiet family life. The result was an instant classic that altered country music’s trajectory for the decade, earning Simpson universal acclaim, commercial success, and a launchpad for a genre-defying career.
Though Metamodern Sounds was widely hailed as a major step forward in 21st-century alt-country, that doesn’t mean it was accepted by everybody. In his adopted hometown of Nashville, the country music establishment kept the pothead singer-songwriter with the song about DMT at arm’s length. Despite Simpson’s “Best Country Album” win for his third album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth at the 2017 Grammys, the album was not nominated at the CMA Awards later that year. Even more, Simpson wasn’t even invited to the ceremony.
As it happened, Simpson was free on the night of November 8th, 2017, and went down to Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena where the awards show was filming. Without a ticket or credentials, he set up his guitar case on the sidewalk—with his Grammy inside it—and livestreamed himself busking, taking tips for the American Civil Liberties Union. The act was indicative of his already revolutionary career, and was merely a preview of his subversive streak to come, confounding fans and critics alike as he churned out a psych-rock anime soundtrack, bluegrass albums, and a folk story album.
Sturgill Simpson Busking In Nashville At CMA Awards — 11/8/17
[Video: Kentucky Born Music]
Plenty has changed for Sturgill Simpson in the seven years since the busking incident. After hemorrhaging his vocal cords in 2021 while on tour with Willie Nelson, Simpson didn’t perform live for almost three years. Now, he’s back with a new album, Passage du Desir, and a new name, Johnny Blue Skies, making good on his career-long promise to only release five albums as “Sturgill Simpson.” Another notable change is that, on the night of October 25th, 2024, Sturgill Simpson was invited to play inside Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena—no busking necessary.
Simpson’s Why Not? Tour, his first since his 2021 vocal injury, has been defined by marathon three-hour performances. Friday’s sold-out show in Nashville was long even by Simpson standards, going for almost three and a half uninterrupted hours. Sturgill and his bandmates Laur Joamets (guitar), Miles Miller (drums), Kevin Black (bass), and Robbie Crowell (keys) crammed 36 songs into that timeframe, touching on his sublime new album, covers by the likes of the Allman Brothers Band and Prince, and of course A Sailor’s Guide to Earth—the album that couldn’t get him into Bridgestone seven years ago. Sturgill’s music is nothing if not intentional; there are no accidents or wasted words from the man who waited until his 30s to seriously enter the music industry. So it’s likely no accident that Friday’s Bridgestone show ended with an emphatically stretched-out, 16-minute “Call to Arms” from—you guessed it—A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.
Sturgill Simpson — “China Cat Sunflower” (Grateful Dead) — 10/25/24
[Video: Michael Wilker]
As if Friday’s concert wasn’t surreal enough for Simpson, he was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame the following day. Simpson’s longtime friend and The Righteous Gemstones co-star Danny McBride inducted the musician with a surprisingly earnest speech in Mount Vernon. Taking the podium, soft-spoken Sturgill reflected on his childhood growing up in Kentucky where he was surrounded by bluegrass in his musical family.
“I remember when I was not much older than my oldest son, I was probably in third or fourth grade,” Simpson said, “[my grandpa] was visiting us at home one day and he came into my room and he had these cassette tapes in this giant brown box of field recordings he made of all these bluegrass festivals. He lived and breathed it. He was playing old Stanley Brothers and Hot Rize and, you know, I was too young, my palette wasn’t ready to absorb it. And he looked at me and he said,” Sturgill paused as he got choked up, “‘You know one day it’s going to get into you, and it ain’t ever gonna get out.’”
Sturgill Simpson — Kentucky Music Hall Of Fame Induction — 10/26/24
[Video: Exclamation Points Are Overused]
Sturgill Simpson’s Why Not? Tour will pick back up in mid-November with a run of shows through the eastern United States. Find tickets and tour dates 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!]
The post Sturgill Simpson Sells Out Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena 7 Years After Busking Outside [Videos] appeared first on L4LM.
