Sturgill Simpson Bluegrass Album ‘Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1′ Coming
Well, Sturgill Simpson was planning to surprise all our asses this Friday, October 16th by releasing his long-anticipated bluegrass record full of acoustic interpretations of some of his most favored songs, but torrent sites in Europe screwed it all up by leaking it early, and now that cats out of the bag.
Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 The Butcher Shoppe Sessions will be arriving on Friday (or Thursday night Central time and parts west) Sturgill has confirmed, with 20 Sturgill Simpson cuts interpreted bluegrass style. Simpson challenged his fans to raise money for The Special Forces Foundation and various other charities through May and June, incentivizing them by promising to play a live stream, and release a new record if they reached certain goals. He subsequently performed a bluegrass set at the Ryman Auditorium in June (see below), and in the midst of cutting this record at The Butcher Shoppe recording studio in Nashville.
“Y’all raised Scrooge McDuck pile of $$$ to help a lot of people in need and I promised you a record this year,” Sturgill said. “So I’m taking a detour from the five album plan to cut my entire back catalogue of songs for you guys the way they were written and meant to be played … ruff, rugged, n’ raw … Get your Zyrtec ready cuz we cuttin’ that grass.”
Along with many songs from Sturgill’s four solo records, the songs “I Wonder,” “All The Pretty Colors,” and “Sometimes Wine” come from Sturgill Simpson’s early band Sunday Valley, and their out-of-print album To The Wind And On To Heaven, giving fans studio versions of these songs the may have never heard before.
Joining Sturgill Simpson are bluegrass pickers Stuart Duncan, Mike Bub, Sierra Hull, Scott Vestal, Tim O’Brien and Mark Howard. Sturgill’s drummer Miles Miller was also part of the session. It was produced by David “Ferg” Ferguson. Hypothetically, a Volume #2 could also be on the way in the future.
The album is being released on High Top Mountain Records via Thirty Tigers. No pre-order link is available at the moment.
Tracklist:
01. All Around You (3:09)
02. All the Pretty Colors (2:19)
03. Breakers Roar (2:30)
04. I Don’t Mind (4:30)
05. I Wonder (3:15)
06. Just Let Go (3:02)
07. Life Ain’t Fair (2:01)
08. A Little Light (1:44)
09. Life of Sin (2:18)
10. Long White Line (2:21)
11. Living the Dream (2:31)
12. Old King Coal (2:53)
13. Railroad of Sin (2:13)
14. Sitting Here Without You (1:56)
15. Sometimes Wine (3:56)
16. The Storm (2:31)
17. Time After All (2:14)
18. Turtles All the Way Down (2:19)
19. Voices (3:38)
20. Water in a Well (3:47)
October 13, 2020 @ 3:11 pm
Really happy to see so many Sunday Valley songs on the list for Volume 1.
It’s going to be awesome, can’t wait.
October 13, 2020 @ 7:20 pm
I Don’t Mind has me excited
October 13, 2020 @ 3:37 pm
Absolutely stoked
October 13, 2020 @ 4:11 pm
fuggin’ stoked. hope all the haters skip this one.
if you can’t handle sturg at his rockinest, you don’t deserve him at his pluckinest.
October 13, 2020 @ 4:52 pm
The guy is talented that is for sure and I’ve liked most of his music, regardless what genre people what to put some of his songs in. I know I am going to love this.
However I’ll be listening to some stugril on November 3rd, I hope the anguish and despondency of that day (for him at least) makes him find even more creative material to for me to enjoy 🙂 .
October 13, 2020 @ 6:40 pm
Will you shut up, man?
October 13, 2020 @ 6:28 pm
The hell we can’t, imagine having to like everything an artist does to support them….
October 14, 2020 @ 4:14 am
C’mon. Even Sturgill has admitted Sound & Fury and the companion anime piece was a joke and a way to steal money from the label. I’m glad I recognized that early and moved on. You fanboys (and girls) would swear and album of Sturgill farting would be Grammy worthy! Be objective and not blinded by fandom.
October 14, 2020 @ 5:25 am
he did not say that the entire album was a joke. gimme a break.
October 14, 2020 @ 6:01 am
Link to “Sturgill has admitted Sound & Fury and the companion anime piece was a joke and a way to steal money from the label”?
I must have missed that interview.
October 14, 2020 @ 6:25 am
Right here buddy
https://savingcountrymusic.com/sturgill-simpson-isnt-being-outlaw-hes-just-being-an-asshole/
October 14, 2020 @ 6:43 am
Yeah, nowhere in that article did Sturgill refer to the music on Sound & Fury as a joke. If anything, he trashed High Top Mountain more than Sound & Fury. All he said about Sound & Fury is that he’s not in that headspace anymore and that he knew it wouldn’t be a super marketable album and expected the label would lose out.
October 14, 2020 @ 6:47 am
it definitely does not say what you think/are claiming it does. you’re reading it (poorly) to support your own viewpoint. take your own advice and be objective and not blinded.
October 14, 2020 @ 10:01 am
Sturgill Simpson did not say that the music on “Sound & Fury” was a “joke.” But he did say,
“Maybe if you don’t want to be on a record label anymore, you make a record they can’t market, then you get them to spend a million bucks on an animation film and refuse to promote it, and leave them holding this giant un-recouped debt.”
That definitely calls into question just how serious he was about it.
He also said,
“I’m completely burnt out on the record. I literally can’t listen to it …
Though it’s not totally uncommon for artist to have that feeling after they finish a record.
October 14, 2020 @ 11:22 am
making an album that is difficult to promote from a marketing perspective is not the same thing as being uncommitted to the art.
October 14, 2020 @ 12:01 pm
I think you’re giving a lot of weight to a tongue in cheek comment, my friend.
No one is pretending S&F didn’t chart, and that he didn’t launch an arena tour with a protege off of the heels of it, despite his apathy towards its marketing campaign.
October 14, 2020 @ 12:35 pm
Again, I don’t think that Sturgill released “Sound and Fury” as a joke. I was just offering context to what Hoptowntiger was getting at. Sturgill has been pretty expressive he was trying to piss off the right people with that record, and he accomplished that.
October 15, 2020 @ 6:19 pm
Not really. He actually stated he was blown away by the anime project which was put together with the help of one of his friends.
October 14, 2020 @ 5:00 am
Dumb comment of the day.
October 13, 2020 @ 4:34 pm
Can’t wait! I wish medicine springs was on this though, still going to be great.
October 13, 2020 @ 5:36 pm
I’m listening now. Wow. Floored to say the least. Anyone who in the past had said “Sturgill should make a bluegrass album” will be pleased with the output on this one.
October 13, 2020 @ 6:12 pm
How?!?
October 13, 2020 @ 6:25 pm
his instagram post apparently said that it got leaked early by “germans”
October 13, 2020 @ 8:21 pm
I’m pretty sure every Sturgill album since “Metamodern” has been leaked before release. There’s a mole somewhere who has his number.
October 14, 2020 @ 10:42 am
Germans and breaking deals.
Name a more iconic duo.
October 14, 2020 @ 11:36 am
Well done.
I say that with a staunch German ancestry (“bach” is the end of my last name).
October 15, 2020 @ 3:22 am
ahahah, my wife’s german, hope she won’t break the deal or maybe…
October 13, 2020 @ 6:02 pm
Long live King Turd!!!!
October 13, 2020 @ 6:18 pm
Wish like hell this counted toward the 5.
October 13, 2020 @ 6:26 pm
Best news this week! Sturgillgrass is top notch music.
October 13, 2020 @ 7:39 pm
I’ll be buying it.
October 13, 2020 @ 8:10 pm
When I look at the song times and compare them to the original track; it seems to me that he is burning right through the songs with very little “jam” in them.
I wonder if there is a little punk rock component to these bluegrass renditions
October 13, 2020 @ 8:13 pm
On a side note… it also appears that Sturgill either has a new Instagram or the label erased all of the content associated with his old one
October 13, 2020 @ 8:22 pm
Sturgill has been clearing his Instagram posts on a pretty regular basis. Usually only leaves them up for a few days.
October 13, 2020 @ 8:16 pm
I found the leak and grabbed it.
October 14, 2020 @ 5:03 am
I looked after I saw this article, but they plugged the leak pretty quickly.
Of course, even if I had found it, I would have still purchased on Friday, but I could use some bluegrass Sturgill today. Guess the Ryman livestream capture will have to do for now.
October 13, 2020 @ 8:34 pm
Sierra Hull is stealing the show…love Sturgill, but he’s on her turf hahaha
October 13, 2020 @ 8:48 pm
Thought you guys wrote off Ol’ Sturg after he released all those rock albums and cartoons? Fickle group…
October 14, 2020 @ 10:06 am
I can’t speak for everyone, but if Sturgill does something that’s cool in music, why not celebrate it? Even if you disagree with something he said, or some stance he’s taken politically, music is still music and is there to be enjoyed. Don’t let some dumb grudge get in your way of that.
October 13, 2020 @ 10:05 pm
Man I was hoping he would put ‘The Promise’ on there. He did a grand ole Opry set that included a bluegrass version of it and it was fucking amazing
October 13, 2020 @ 10:45 pm
There’s going to be a volume 2. It’ll probably on that.
October 16, 2020 @ 4:38 am
I hope so, I really like his version of that song, Would like to hear it given this treatment.
Listening to the album right now, thanks to the old fella having that iTunes subscription thingy (not sure what’s it’s called) where you can access anything they have. I like it so far.
Doesn’t bother me that half the time I can’t understand what he’s singing. I’m not American, so it’s no big deal. I can enjoy a Verdi aria while having no idea what they are banging on about, and the same applies to Sturgill. In fact, sometimes not being able to discern the lyrics on a record can be a boon, I think. 🙂
October 14, 2020 @ 4:57 am
Not really a Sturgill fan, but I’m looking forward to this.
October 14, 2020 @ 6:46 am
I know it’s mentioned that no pre-sale information is out yet; but any idea on where to keep an eye out for physical copy pre-sales? I have a feeling since I’m not on facebook or any social media, I may miss out on a vinyl for this but will keep an eye out on both his website and the Thirty Tigers website.
October 14, 2020 @ 7:24 am
i imagine his mailing list will send something out if you care to sign up for that.
October 14, 2020 @ 7:30 am
I’m sure all of that stuff will be made available late Thursday, early Friday. This was not how this was supposed to come about. Very similar to the Tyler Childers release, they were hoping to surprise everybody. Tyler had merch bundles available the next day.
Also folks should take into account that vinyl is super backed up at the moment across the industry. Check before ordering of when they expect it to ship.
October 14, 2020 @ 9:33 am
This is true. I ordered that Tyler Childers LP back mid September and they ain’t even shipped it yet.
October 14, 2020 @ 9:49 am
It says right on Tyler’s site that the LP’s won’t ship until January.
October 14, 2020 @ 8:12 am
Really looking forward to this. Was hoping to have some Sound & Fury songs on this one, but there’s always Vol. 2. Say what you will about the sound of that album, but it had some of Sturgill’s best writing on it. I’d be really interested to see how those songs would sound as bluegrass songs.
October 14, 2020 @ 9:29 am
I’ll never forgive Stugill for raggin’ on London and Londoners… but perhaps if he’s brought THIS show to the UK instead of that limp rock thing – which was REALLY dull, the rumors are true – he might have got the audience onside!
Can’t wait for this record!
October 14, 2020 @ 10:39 am
Welcome home Sturgill !
October 14, 2020 @ 1:34 pm
Totally excited about this album! Sturgill, Bluegrass, Sierra Hull and Tim O’brien? Hell yeah, sign me up! I’ve been waiting for this one.
October 14, 2020 @ 2:11 pm
Such a coincidence! I was listening to “Life of Sin”, this morning, in France, on my way to work, on KOKE FM. Such a fantastic way to start the day! And this night (it’s now 11pm in France), I read this post and I’m so happy to know that Sturgill’s new album will be released next Friday… and will include this song! Life is good! I can’t wait!
October 14, 2020 @ 5:59 pm
Is he trying to regain his bonafides? His first album was great but he seems to want to piss off the classic country fans with much of what he says.
October 14, 2020 @ 6:34 pm
He’s doing what he wants to do and says what he wants to say. Why do think he’s trying to piss off fans? What a dumb comment.
October 15, 2020 @ 12:57 pm
he’s rewarding his fans for raising $230k for MusiCares Covid-19 Relief Fund, Nashville Tornado Relief, and the Special Forces Foundation
October 14, 2020 @ 6:34 pm
I’m curious both as to why he didn’t originally play more of his songs “the way they were written and meant to be played,” and if he ever at all considered enunciating them.
October 14, 2020 @ 7:26 pm
Man, you know you’ve got nothing when you have to resort to downing a musician for his eastern Kentucky drawl on SavingCountyMusic.com
Yikes.
October 14, 2020 @ 7:48 pm
I love a good drawl, and even how he talks. Good effort though. ????
October 15, 2020 @ 3:57 pm
He sings very similar to how he talks. It’s a deep throated, gravelly accent that cuts syllables, and his brute, unrefined projection doesn’t lend itself to articulation.
If you were from the area, you’d understand. It’s partly his style, but it’s damn sure his accent too.
Stu never shook the edge that came from the alt scene he came up in. It’s served him well, but it’s also turned a lot of people off.
I respect difference of opinion, but I tend to lampoon what I see as unfair criticism.
October 15, 2020 @ 7:21 pm
Nah. It has nothing to do with his accent, though I do understand everyone’s gotta start a little culture war about something. Chris Knight is probably my favorite artist of the last decade and he seems pretty “from here” to me. It’s beyond obvious, but if you need further explanation, read what Kevin and Billy wrote in response. Best of luck with your lampooning next time.
October 16, 2020 @ 9:17 am
Yeah, Chris is from western Kentucky and doesn’t project in a remotely similar manner.
The only thing that is beyond obvious is the sharpness of that axe that you’ve kept grinding.
October 15, 2020 @ 4:30 am
Numerous commentars in other Sturgill articles on this very site , including some fans , have talked about Simpsons mush-mouth approach to singing. Hes virtually impossible to understand when singing live. So, I think its a fair criticism.
Compare his enunciation to Loretta Lynn, Patty Loveless, Chris Stapleton and Tyler Childers, who are also from coal mining country in Kentucky. The difference? You can clearly understand their vocals. Off that list, I’d say Tyler has the thickest accent, but yet he vocalizes his words clearly. Sturgill? Not so much. Can you get past that? Obviously, some folks can. Admittedly Bob Dylan could be mumbley at times, and quite difficult to understand live. I know, as I’ve seen both him and Simpson live.
I like a southern accent just fine. And to me, it adds credibility to your authenticity in the country music realm.
But im not a Simpson fan. To me, hes all over the map. ADHD is how I describe him. No real continuity musically to what he does. What version of Sturgill are we getting TODAY? And he will just say things that contradict what hes said and done in the past. Its like hes this restless soul that lives in the moment, but once the moments gone, so is he. Look, I know his fans think that’s a selling point , and they cling to his every move, and declare it as brilliance, regardless how irrational the rest of us perceive him. And that’s okay. Obviously he’s had no small amount of success and apparently has a thriving fanbase who will support him. GREAT. And at the end of the day, its just entertainment and we can all have our opinions. So, enjoy!
October 15, 2020 @ 6:10 am
Yep. It also doesn’t help that he likes to over emphasize certain syllables and to turn away from the mic at the end of every word. Lucinda Williams (especially late), has a thicker drawl than anyone and I love it.
October 15, 2020 @ 7:29 am
Definitely a fair criticism. The vocals on the Ryman livestream were pretty good, and helped by the fact that he didn’t have to focus on being the sole guitarist and pulling off lead after lead. He needs to just wear a damn headset microphone, and remember to not grit his teeth when he sings. I’ve said on here a few times that his delivery would benefit greatly from a vocal coach….people didn’t seem to like that for some reason ????
October 15, 2020 @ 2:06 am
With no disrespect to bluegrass (it’s great music), but releasing a bluegrass album is the country music equalent of getting a call from MTV to do an unplugged album.
October 15, 2020 @ 8:14 am
While I definitely see where you’re coming from, I can’t disagree more. Country artists doing a back-to-basics move and cutting a bluegrass record is like its own little tradition in the history of country music, and it’s one of my favorites.
Also, Emmylou’s “Roses in the Snow” and Patty Loveless’s “Mountain Soul.” ‘Nuff said. 🙂
October 16, 2020 @ 7:53 pm
Dolly Parton’s ‘Grass is blue’…Steve Earle ‘the Mountain”
October 15, 2020 @ 9:48 pm
Hell of an album! Sounds great on my phone (can’t wait for the limited edition green / yellow vinyls to arrive mid-december). Vocals as clear as day.
October 15, 2020 @ 9:51 pm
Strange that the tracks are just put in order alphabetically instead of any sort of musical rhyme or reason.
October 16, 2020 @ 7:39 am
Yeah I just noticed that. I like the whole thing a lot on first listen but I’m sure I’ll rearrange the track order and trim a couple of tracks to my liking. It sounds good though, real good.
October 16, 2020 @ 8:56 am
I completely agree. It’s a very lazy/non-artistic approach to sequencing. Zero effort made to create flow.
October 16, 2020 @ 9:11 am
Disagree. His regular albums are all very well-thought out in that regard, so I am guessing here he wanted to avoid that and just went with alphabetical given that the songs are all from different albums with varying themes and concepts. Also, they are all bluegrass songs with similar tempo and structure (with a few exceptions), so how they all fit together from an overall feel standpoint matters less here. Finally, my guess is a part of him did it just to get under people’s skin who always want to read deeper meanings into everything he does.
October 16, 2020 @ 5:31 pm
Well the first song is mid-tempo in 3/4 time. Second one is up-tempo 4/4. Third one is mid-tempo 4/4. Fourth one is a slower 4/4. Fifth song is a slow waltz…. Seems like quite a bit of variation to me.
October 17, 2020 @ 7:54 am
Why would he want to organize the album by tempo variations (they are all within the standard bluegrass realm, mind you, so they a similar from that perspective)? That would be a terrible idea. Random was the best way to go here, and keeping it alphabetical was a straightforward way to do it that heads off people reading too far into it.
October 17, 2020 @ 12:46 pm
It’s in *nearly* alphabetical order. Life of Sin follows A Little Light.
October 16, 2020 @ 2:28 am
Badass album and probably best Sturgill has sounded vocally with being able to understand words.
October 16, 2020 @ 3:48 am
Currently playing and its everything you hope for.
October 16, 2020 @ 7:13 am
Listening to it now, and it’s amazing.
October 16, 2020 @ 9:05 am
For those that aren’t on his email list, here is what he sent out last night, which I thought was pretty cool:
Cuttin’ Grass – Vol. 1 (The Butcher Shoppe Sessions)
This album started when I was in the third grade.
My paternal grandfather was sort of a bluegrass freak. He played a little mandolin, and after he retired, he’d travel around to bluegrass festivals in his motor home making field recordings. He just lived and ate and breathed it, and every time he’d come to visit, he’d try to shove it down my throat. My palette wasn’t ready to absorb it at the time—I was probably still into the Monkees and, thanks to an older cousin, discovering bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin far too young. He would sit me down and play cassette tapes of live bluegrass. One night in my room, when he could sense my rejection of what I was hearing, he looked at me directly and said, “One day it’s gonna get in ya, and it’ll never get out.” I wish more than anything he was still here and could hear this collection of songs.
Many years later, after returning home to Kentucky from the military and living for some time out on the West coast, I was driving down the road one day and the public radio station played an old Monroe Brothers song and it absolutely floored me. A wave of emotion slammed me in the chest and I had to pull over on the side of the road. I was pretty much drifting at the time—completely lost, I guess you could say—and hearing that music brought everything to the surface.
It sounded like home. Bluegrass music is healing. I truly believe this to be true. It is made from ancient, organic tones and, as with most all forms of music, the vibrations and the pulse can be extremely therapeutic.
After that, I spent the next eight years or so obsessively scouring the earth for any and all of the old recordings of this music I could find. This was pre-YouTube era, so it wasn’t that easy. In 2005, I moved to Nashville for the first time. I was there for about a year, and the only thing I did was sit in my cinder block garage apartment and go to the Station Inn every Sunday night to play bluegrass. Needless to say, it was not the career jump-start I was hoping for, and I ended up moving back out west and taking a railroad job.
There’s been various reoccurring phases of obsession throughout my life with just about every kind of American music. In high school I was completely obsessed with electric blues and guitar playing. As I got older, I got more into writing and singing songs and playing acoustic guitars, more out of necessity than anything due to living in small apartments where I couldn’t crank up an amp. All the songs I’ve ever recorded in my life were written on one guitar, a Martin HD-28 I’ve owned since I was much younger, and sung in a fashion that was probably closer to bluegrass or country blues than to anything else. So doing a bluegrass album was always in my heart and in the back of my head. I had it in my mind for a long time that someday I wanted to cut as many of these songs as possible in that fashion, just organic and stripped down to the raw bones of the composition, without any heady production. If you can’t sit down and play the song like that, it’s probably not a very good song.
Last year, we made a pretty bangin’ rock and roll record and started a big arena tour, but it all got halted and ultimately cancelled when I got sick with the ‘Rona. We were in Europe back in January and February, and then came back to do arena shows in the US starting in late February. We had barely gotten into the tour when I knew something didn’t feel right—I felt extremely winded and fatigued, out of shape even…certain notes weren’t coming as easy as they should have. I couldn’t make sense of it, as I had lost a ton of weight in recent months in preparations for the tour and was living cleaner than ever. We played in Charleston on March 10th and the next day I was completely leveled physically, so we cancelled a string of shows that weekend starting in Hampton, West Virginia, and I went home. The next morning I was in the ER with pre-stroke blood pressure levels, feeling like I had an invisible ratchet strap cranking down around my chest. So after years of needing the break I never allowed myself, the universe decided it was time I stay home and take it easy.
I was stuck at home recovering in south Tennessee. I didn’t have any social media presence whatsoever to speak of before this last tour and the guys in my band gave me a lot of grief about that, so I let my drummer set my page up. I spend a lot of time in the woods at home. So on one of many boring days in quarantine, I made some goofy post in character as a backwoods badass named “Dick Daddy” running a fictitious survival school looking for new recruits, and somebody commented, “If you put that on a t-shirt, I’d buy it.” So I thought, what if I put it on 30,000 t-shirts and give that money to charity? Having been personally affected by this virus, I was trying to think of some way to help and to use the platform for something other than narcissism or toxicity. The response was amazing and hilarious. I received some pretty far-out recruit application videos in those weeks from people stuck at home trying to “live above Hell.”
In an effort to raise more money, I told my fans that if they hit a certain number by a deadline, I would put on a livestream concert, and if we reached a second goal, I’d put a record out this year. Well, they blew those goals completely out of the water, so really it was the fans made this album happen. Otherwise I may have just as easily spent all summer fishing and changing diapers. I called up my engineer/co-producer/partner in crime, David Ferguson and said, “Get all the best players in town,” and we went in and banged this record out in about three days, with no planning or preparation.
Ferg had been begging me to make this album since we’d met in 2015. He has been a true friend and touchstone for me in Nashville where I’ve had so few.
He has also probably forgotten more about recording music than most people will ever know in this life, so I put myself in his hands and asked him to produce the sessions so I could focus more on having fun and singing. I self-produced my last two albums and have learned it can sometimes be an unnecessarily exhausting process wearing all those hats at the same time.
That same week we did a charity gig at the Ryman, which was essentially a livestream of our first rehearsal. That was one of the more surreal gigs of my life, playing that room completely empty.
I typically go into the studio with most of the album written in my head and end up throwing half the songs away and writing the rest during the process once the album reveals itself for what it wants to be. But with this record, I just went though my back catalogue and listed which songs I thought would work best and surrounded myself with musical wizards, so at most there might have been some second takes…but not many. Once they learned the form, we just went in and hit record. Ferg and I told everyone, “What you play off the floor is what it’s going to be—we’re not punching in solos or overdubbing anything, it’s just going to be totally raw and live.” Due to modern recording technology and the endless choices it brings, even modern bluegrass recordings have suffered from the soul-sucking pursuit of perfection. Merle Haggard once told me that “perfect is about the most boring thing on Earth.” When it comes to music, he was dead on. As a result it was the fastest recording I’ve ever made.
Adapting the songs was pretty easy; even a few of the tunes that I thought might be a little weird worked very easily. Some of the more esoteric psycho-babble songs, like the song “Just Let Go,” we got in the first take. It was just extremely easy, fun, everybody was laughing the whole time. Mostly, I was just humbled and amazed to be in the room with all these musicians. You can’t overstate all their talents—truly next-level freak show kind of stuff.
There are songs from all my albums except for the last one, and there’s two or three that I wrote 15 years ago back when I was playing dive bars in Kentucky. Those are the songs that were really cool to hear finally realized the way I had always wanted them to be recorded. “I Don’t Mind” is a song I wrote in 2006 or 2007, and it’s probably my wife’s favorite song that I’ve ever written. So she basically said, “Don’t come home if that thing’s not on the album” I thought it turned out really pretty, really beautiful, everybody did a great job on it.
If I had to say what’s the most definitively bluegrass song on the record, I would probably say “All the Pretty Colors.” The performance, the feel, the lyrical content, that could be like a bluegrass standard some day. I really loved what Sierra Hull, who sings and plays mandolin, did on “Breaker’s Roar”—she put these lilting harmonies on it that made it just as pretty as the strings on the Sailor’s Guide record. I thought that was really cool. She’s such an amazing and special talent and her mandolin playing really brought a fresh contemporary feel to the album that might otherwise not have been there had I used any number of other players. She also kept everyone on their best behavior in the studio. Bluegrass musicians can be a squirrelly bunch.
The bluegrass I love is from post-World War II up to the mid-‘70s. All of it, from the classic styles to the Ozark style, and especially some of the folk-tinged, almost mystical sounds that came out of California in the late ’60s. After that, everything kinda got away from the true pulse and the rhythm of bluegrass that Bill Monroe devised, and became more based on hot flash soloing and herky-jerky “look what I can do.” That stuff does nothing for me.
My grandfather always told me that when it came to the instrumental or the solo sections, if you get away from the melody of the song, you’re not playing bluegrass anymore, you’re just showing off. So we were trying to adhere to the Jimmy Martin swing, the Clinch Mountain feel, because that’s the bluegrass I love. It should sound like a train rolling. I decided to call it volume one—because I could easily and literally do seventeen of these albums!
The thing I’ve realized about the ride I’ve been on these past seven years is that to me, despite what others may call and label them, all my records are simply “American music.” My head and my heart go different directions all the time, and when you put out a record, it becomes this definitive thing, like “this is who you are now” because people need to define things for the cycle of that album. This album for me was always just supposed to be a sort of simple mix tape for my fans, so it’s somewhat funny to me to think we might play TV shows and what not to promote it, and for a time I’ll be considered a bluegrass musician. In all honesty, though, I guess that’s probably the closest thing to the truth that could ever be put in print about me.
This album also begins a new phase for my career. I’m starting back the way I started out, on my own record label. I’m realizing more and more every day what I already knew, which is that I was always supposed to be an independent artist. I’m just trying to look forward and create without any industry timelines or narratives and all the creative restrictions that inevitably come with them. The real benefit is that I’ve completely fallen back in love with music again. I was really burnt out for a long while, due to so many variables that had absolutely nothing to do with making music, and as a result had started associating music with some of the headaches behind the curtain that came with it. But with all that now in the rearview, I am feeling extremely healthy and happy. Mostly I’m just extremely grateful to wake up every day and look at my children. When I’m not playing with my kids, I just sit around playing guitar all day, which I haven’t really done for a number of years.
The world’s hurting right now in so many ways…there are a lot of people in way worse shape than most of us could ever imagine. I cannot fix or change any of this. But I can change myself. And I can put some music out, and hopefully, if nothing else, it might make some people forget about their pain and troubles for fifty-five minutes.
– Sturgill Simpson, October 2020
October 16, 2020 @ 11:01 am
Thanks for reposting this. Very insightful.
One thing I’m wondering about though is, based on what he says, the stuff on “volume 1” is all that’s been recorded so far? In other words, if I’m interpreting him correctly, it’s not like “volume 2” is right around the corner or whatever. They’d have to go back in the studio to cut another album. I hope that happens sooner than later, though volume 1 is already quite a bounty of goodies.
October 16, 2020 @ 1:35 pm
Good question. I haven’t seen him mention anything further about a second album besides at the Ryman performance, and he specifically referred to them as “volume 1” and “volume 2”. I would think that the recording session was one and done and they recorded everything, given the pending closure of the Butcher Shoppe and the fact that even during covid slowdown it can’t be that easy to get that group in the studio all at once.
October 16, 2020 @ 9:05 am
The production and feel of this is amazing, what a pleasure to listen to.
October 16, 2020 @ 9:19 am
Sturgill pretty much nails everything I love about bluegrass on this album.
October 16, 2020 @ 1:23 pm
Does anyone have a link to the anime for this?