Sturgill Simpson
From Sloss Fest to Johnny Blue Skies

In 2015, I went to the first Sloss Festival in Birmingham, Alabama, without knowing a single thing about the guy playing one of the afternoon slots. I left a fan. That's the whole origin story — no dramatic buildup, no friend's recommendation, just a set that stopped me in my tracks. I went home and listened to everything Sturgill Simpson had put out, and then everything he put out after that.

Sloss Festival, 2015

There's a specific kind of discovery that only happens live — hearing an artist for the first time with no context, no expectations, nothing to compare it to. That's what Sloss Fest gave me. I didn't know the songs. I didn't know the catalog. I just knew, somewhere in the middle of that set, that I was going to be following this guy for a long time.

An Artist Who Won't Sit Still

What's kept me listening for a decade isn't any one sound — it's that Sturgill refuses to stay in one place. He'll make a straight-ahead country record, then a synth-and-fuzz rock record, then a bluegrass record, then something that barely sounds like the same artist made all three. Most artists find a lane and stay in it because that's what sells. He treats genre like something to walk through, not live in.

That's the part collectors respond to, I think. You're never just buying "the new Sturgill record" — you're buying whatever direction he decided to go this time, and trusting that it'll be worth the trip.

Jackson, Mississippi — October 2024

Fast forward to 2024, and he's touring again — this time under a new name, Johnny Blue Skies, in support of Passage du Desir. I got to see him again in October, and the set was everything I'd hoped for: staples like Juanita and Turtles All the Way Down sitting right alongside a handful of covers that caught the whole room off guard.

Back at the Airbnb, Sound & Fury

Sturgill live is a different beast than Sturgill on record. He's soulful, explosive, and workman-like all at once — the ticket said the show started at 8 PM, and he was on stage at 8 PM sharp. He played for three straight hours and was off the stage at 11:00 PM, right on the dot. No filler, no wasted time, just three hours of a band working at full capacity.

She and I stayed up after, just the two of us, playing Sound & Fury and talking through everything we'd just watched. That's become part of the ritual for me — the show is the event, but the conversation afterward, still buzzing from it, is where it actually settles in.

The Record That Comes Back Around

I went to that Jackson show with a group of friends, one of whom is the same person I gave a copy of R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People to a while back. That gift turned into something neither of us really planned.

Christmas 2025, I picked up a copy of Passage du Desir for her — from the concert we'd seen together — and had no idea what she'd gotten me in return until I opened it: Sound & Fury. Same artist, both of us, completely independent of each other. We laughed about it for a while — of all the records either of us could have picked, we'd both landed on Sturgill, both tied back to that one night in Jackson. Neither of us set out to make a statement, but we ended up doing it anyway: out of everything we could have given each other, these were the records that meant something specific, pointing straight back to a show neither of us is going to forget.

That's the part of collecting that doesn't show up on a spec sheet or a want list. It's not just about finding the record — it's about who you were with when you found it, and what it means when someone hands you the one they know you'll want.