It’s time to engage in one of the most important exercises all year: determining who and what will be crowned the Album of the Year in 2024. The point of this exercise is not to devolve music into a competition.
For the first time in three years, Sturgill Simpson took the stage to perform a full set of music. And for the first time in an even longer period he took the stage with guitarist Laur Joamets, Kevin Black on bass, and Miles Miller on drums.
You better like Country music with a ‘C’ because it’s coming at you hard and heavy in this playlist update. It includes tons of upbeat twang just in time for the heart of the summer, and just as country has never been hotter.
As much as the new name and the new album open a new season for Sturgill, it’s also perhaps the most Sturgill Simpson thing he has ever done. It’s country, but expanded, enlightened, and uninhibited.
When you have Sturgill Simpson, Billy Strings, and Megan Moroney releasing highly anticipated albums on the same week, as well as William Michael Morgan making a return, and Randy Rogers and Wade Bowen…
Simpson has announced a slew of new tour dates, as well as an album under the Johnny Blue Skies name. It’s probably a good bet that it will be a conceptualized song cycle of some sort.