By Ian Bremner
Every so often there is an engagement-bait prompt on social media asking something along the lines of “who’s an artist you saw in a small venue before they blew up?” Though I never type out my answer, I know it instantly in my mind.
As a 90’s kid, I grew up loving country music on the radio. I was Garth Brooks for Halloween from ages 4-8 yrs. Clint Black, Alan Jackson, I knew every word. But as I got older, my tastes changed and I all but abandoned country music because I felt it had abandoned itself. So in 2014, when my ears first heard Metamodern Sounds in Country Music by Sturgill Simpson it changed everything for me. It was country music at its very core, but it had a heart and soul. It felt straight out of the dusty record bins, but also fresh and immediate. I fell fully head over heels for this new sound.
It was still the early days of social media, so Facebook events were where you saw new concert announcements. And there it was: the Tractor Tavern in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle announced a show with Sturgill Simpson, like it came from the sky. I bought two tickets immediately and circled the proverbial calendar for a few months down the road.
It was late November and cold outside but the room was cramped, hot, loud, and smelling of Rainer beer. There was a buzz in the air that night I’m not sure I’ve felt since. It felt like the entire crowd was feeling a similar release as I was, having spent months in anticipation for that very moment.
Here in 2024, the days of Sturgill Simpson playing to a 400 cap rooms like the Tractor Tavern are long gone. His latest tour had stops at the likes of Forest Hills Stadium, Rupp Arena, Bridgestone Arena, and the Orion Amphitheater in Huntsville, AL. The aptly named “Why Not? Tour” feels particularly triumphant because there was a real question as to whether any of us would see Sturgill Simpson on stage again. In 2021 for his “last record” The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, he was scheduled to play just a handful of shows in New York and Nashville when he came down with a vocal chord injury that almost derailed his career forever. No social media, no updates, nothing. He essentially disappeared, leaving the scene with new mounds of acclaim, but even more mystery than when he arrived.
Then one day, out of the deep dark seas, came Johnny Blue Skies. “Who the fuck is Johnny Blue Skies?” reads a T-shirt from the official artist merch page on Sturgillsimpson.com. The question was also posed in multiple texts I received upon the announcement of Passage Du Desir, the wonderful new record from Johnny Blue Skies, the artist formerly known as Sturgill Simpson. Regardless of the moniker, it was met with the announcement that he was rounding up the old band and hitting the road for the first time in 4 years. I immediately bought two tickets to the show in Huntsville, Alabama and circled the proverbial calendar again.
By the time the date of the show came up, I felt the same sense of excitement as I had 10 years earlier at the Tractor. A lot of life has happened since 2014 and in many ways ways it feels like a whole new world. A two hour drive south, I trekked down I-65 alone, with the hopes of finding my people in the audience.
If you don’t live in the South you may not be aware of the Orion Amphitheater, but it feels like a matter of time before it becomes a destination venue nationwide. I got to the venue an hour before show time. After wandering the venue grounds for 20 minutes I went to my seat to settle in and soak up my surroundings. I go to many shows by myself, but being so far from home in another state, glancing up at the starry skies, this night felt different. I felt grounded and peaceful.
As the rows of seats filled in, I got to know my neighbors. A couple from Florence, Alabama who was excited to see Sturgill Simpson for the first time. A couple from Kentucky who had driven down after seeing multiple shows already on the tour. It was oddly comforting to see dudes in MAGA hats mixing with old hippies in tie dye. There were military folks and women wearing Kamala Harris pins. All of the algorithmic digital silos we fall into dissipated and here we all were in real life, showing up to hear the music together. Perhaps it was simply a representation of Huntsville, a small town in Northern Alabama where the brainiacs of NASA live, but it also felt true to the fan base Sturgill Simpson has cultivated over the years. He is a gun-owning former Navy man who’s shared the stage with Bob Weir, John Prine, Willie Nelson and some of counterculture’s lasting heroes. He is proof there is room for it all here in America. I felt hopeful for the first time in a long time imagining this version of our country could exist after all.
At 8 PM sharp, the lights dimmed, John Williams’ famous Star Wars theme song echoed throughout the greek-like amphitheater and five men in matching space suits took stage, fully leaning into their “Rocket city” home for the night. The slow intro to “Welcome To Earth (Pollywog)” blared crisply though the sound system. A song dedicated to his first born that hits home on a whole new level since I’ve become a father in my own right. After seamlessly ripping through Welcome to Earth, Best Clockmaker on Mars, Mercury in Retrograde, Jupiter’s Faerie at the top of the set, no doubt paying homage to the city’s spacey roots, the band took their first pause of the night with Simpson blurting out, “give me a few years and I’ll write 4 songs about the other planets.” From then on, it was on. Three straight hours of blended blues rock, country and soul music.
Simpson and the gang appeared to be making up for lost time, playing songs from the entire catalog where no song felt out of place. Songs from the electronic fuzz record Sound & Fury went back to back with bluegrass songs and covers like Prince’s Purple Rain and the The Allman Brothers’ Midnight Rider. For the jam band fans in the crowd, the transitions between the songs were experiences of their own.
Through every twist and turn of the 31 song set, I was dialed in to the journey, but I was surprised how the songs from Metamodern Sounds in Country Music especially hit on personal level. With a legion of folks singing along to Turtles All the Way Down, a song referencing DMT and psilocybin I couldn’t help but smile. The Promise was the “first dance” song at my wedding and I got chills hearing that down in Alabama all by myself. It was a stark reminder of how much that album meant to me 10 years ago and how much it’s informed a lot of my life since then. It was a reminder of the power music can have over you when you hear it at the right time in the right place in life.
Nothing about Sturgill Simpson’s career has been predictable. He’s constantly threatening to disappear forever so it would be foolish to assume he’s back for good. For now though, on stage Sturgill appears to be in his prime, fully comfortable in his skin and having a lot fun leading a group of stone cold killers. The “Skies” the limit for Mr. Johnny Blue. For if I am lucky, I will be purchasing tickets and circling the calendar to see Sturgill and the boys 10 years from now and 10 years after that. And I hope to be just as excited.
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