Sturgill Simpson

In 2013 American singer, songwriter, and musician Sturgill Simpson released his debut album, the fiercely traditionalist High Top Mountain. Simpson was soon hailed by many critics and fans as “the savior of country music.” He quickly proved himself to be an artist who refuses to be pigeonholed, subsequently releasing several acclaimed albums that stretch the boundaries of the country genre, including the Grammy-winning A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (2016).

Kentucky upbringing and influences

Simpson was born on June 8, 1978, in the small Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. His father was a state police officer, and his mother was a secretary. Simpson was the first male on his mother’s side to not work as a coal miner. When he was seven years old, his family moved to a town outside Lexington, Kentucky.

Growing up, Simpson was interested in many kinds of music. From his grandfather he developed an appreciation for classic country artists such as Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins. In grade school he discovered the music of John Mayall, Jimi Hendrix, and Cream, which led to a love of Chicago- and Delta-style blues. His grandmother’s music collection introduced him to the 1960s soul greats Otis Redding and Sam and Dave.

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When Simpson was in the seventh grade his parents divorced. He began experimenting with marijuana and psychedelic drugs and enlisted in the U.S. Navy in his senior year of high school, inspired by the novels of Beat author—and former merchant marine—Jack Kerouac. Simpson was stationed in Tokyo and on a frigate in the Pacific for part of his service. He told Rolling Stone in 2016 that he “saw shocking things in the impoverished pockets in Kuantan, Malaysia, that, as a teenager, shook me to my core. My worldview darkened.”

Early music career

After three years in the navy, he drifted to Seattle and worked in a pancake restaurant before returning to Lexington. Back home he had an epiphany that caused him to immerse himself in bluegrass music. He told Rolling Stone, “I was driving my pickup when Bill Monroe’s ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ came on. I was transported to childhood. I’d rediscovered my musical heart.” In 2004 he started a bluegrass group called Sunday Valley that gained a local following and self-released one album on iTunes before disbanding about 2005.

In 2005 Simpson tried his luck in Nashville before moving the following year to Utah, where he spent four years working for a railroad company. In 2010 he decided to make one more attempt at a music career, and he and his wife, Sarah, moved to Nashville, where he briefly revived Sunday Valley. He explained to Lonesome Highway in 2014, “I didn’t start my music career until I was 34, as growing up in east Kentucky everybody plays music, but never in a way where you think, ‘I could do this for a living.’ You do it after work. So I did everything else first.”

High Top Mountain

In 2013 Simpson released the self-funded album High Top Mountain, an ode to the music of his home state, featuring 12 hardcore honky-tonk tracks. Although not a big seller, it attracted country music purists who began comparing Simpson’s style and deep, soulful vocals to that of Waylon Jennings, who along with Willie Nelson had spearheaded the outlaw country movement in the 1970s in rebellion against the formulaic constraints of the Nashville Sound of the 1960s. Simpson also took after the outlaw musicians in attitude. He told Lonesome Highway, “At the risk of sounding like a cliché and extremely egotistical, I wanted to make the kind of country album I wasn’t hearing anywhere else.” He was soon branded a “neo-outlaw” artist, although his lyrics in “Life Ain’t Fair and the World Is Mean,” the first song on High Top Mountain, reject the label: “Well the most outlaw thing that I’ve ever done / Was give a good woman a ring.” Later that year, however, he announced his rebellion against the “saccharine” tastes of Nashville’s Music Row in an interview with the Country Music Association (CMA), telling the organization, “I’m plotting your destruction.”

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Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

Rather than follow up with another traditionalist album, Simpson next released the experimental Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (2014). Instead of using classic country instruments such as steel guitar, he introduced electric guitar and a Mellotron, an electro-mechanical keyboard instrument often used in art rock. The songs’ lyrics explore arcane topics such as physics, cosmology, evolution, Tibetan Buddhism, and psychedelic drugs, especially in the single “Turtles All the Way Down.” (After the album’s release, Simpson joked to The Guardian, “People think I wake up in the morning and pour LSD on my Cheerios.”) It reached number eight on the Billboard country chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award for best Americana album.

A Sailor’s Guide to Earth

Simpson took another musical turn with A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (2016), which includes a cover of alternative rock band Nirvana’s “In Bloom” and a guest appearance by the soul-funk group the Dap-Kings. Inspired by the experience of being separated from his wife and young son during a grueling tour to promote his previous album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth was written as “a love letter to my boy and my wife for having saved me from a life of despair.” Simpson scored Grammy nominations for album of the year and best country album, winning in the latter category. The album also went to number three on the Billboard 200 chart and number one on the country chart.

Clashes with the music industry

Also in 2016 Simpson had a much-publicized row with the Academy of Country Music (ACM) after it announced a new award named for Haggard, whose music had rebelled against the slick Nashville Sound and who had died earlier that year. Haggard and Simpson had also shared a friendship and made public pronouncements of their mutual respect for one another. Simpson posted a rant on Facebook in which he wrote, “I find it utterly disgusting the way everybody on Music Row is coming up with any reason they can to hitch their wagon to his name while knowing full and damn well what he thought about them.” In 2017 he protested the music industry by busking outside that year’s CMA Awards ceremony and donating the money he raised to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Later albums

Simpson’s next release was the Southern rock-style Sound & Fury (2019), which earned a Grammy nomination for best rock album and was accompanied by a short anime film of the same name. The following year he returned to bluegrass with Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions and Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 2: The Cowboy Arms Sessions, both of which feature new songs and stripped-down remakes of some of his earlier work. In 2021 he dropped The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, a concept album about the Civil War that blends cowboy songs with Latin music styles. The Grammy ceremony in 2022 saw that album nominated for best country album, while Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions got a nod for best bluegrass album.

Simpson ruptured his vocal cords in 2021 while on tour with Nelson. That experience, along with several personal losses, caused him to reassess his career. He took some time off and traveled to Europe and Southeast Asia, spending some time in Paris. Feeling that his name had become a brand and that he was losing his identity, he released his next album Passage du Desir (2024) under an alter ego, Johnny Blue Skies. The New York Times called it “deliberately eclectic, hinting at outlaw country, Memphis soul, countrypolitan and Pink Floyd along the way.” In 2026 Simpson released Mutiny After Midnight under his Johnny Blue Skies alias. Featuring songs about sex, hedonism, and politics, the album combines funk and disco with country rock.

Film and TV projects

Simpson has occasionally acted, notably in Martin Scorsese’s film about the Osage murders of the 1920s, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), and in the television series One Dollar (2018) and The Righteous Gemstones (2023). On the latter show he had a recurring role as a member of an all-male Christian fundamentalist militia. In one episode, he leads the militia in a rousing gospel-style version of “All the Gold in California” (a hit for Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers Band in 1979). Simpson released the song on streaming services under the name Brother Marshall and the Choir of Fire. Simpson also had a role in and recorded the theme song for Jim Jarmusch’s zombie movie The Dead Don’t Die (2019).