Review & Photos | Sturgill Simpson | Santa Cruz
By Team JamBase Apr 16, 2015 • 9:10 am PDT
Sturgill Simpson :: 04.10.15 :: Catalyst Club :: Santa Cruz, CA
“Woke up this morning and decided to kill my ego. It ain’t ever done me no good no how.”
This ain’t mainstream “Friends In Low Places” or “Fast Cars and Freedom” kinda country. A few lines later Sturgill Simpson sings about how he’s “gonna transmigrate” to his destination, and the whoops and hoots that greeted the opening lines grew even louder. Sure, there’s plenty of Waylon, Willie and Hank Sr. in this Kentucky slugger but there are also a whole bunch of interesting points of entry for folks more devoted to Huxley, Owsley and Jung. Surrounded by a healthy mix of cowboy hats, cardigans and smiling bikers, one realized that Simpson brings in all sorts, his saloon doors swinging wide for blue-collar pickup drivers and kickers of doors of perception alike, post-shift waitresses and college kids that couldn’t find Nashville on a map let alone cite the honky tonk dynasty welcome at the table. See, Sturgill’s music is so damn good, so strikingly relevant that one quickly leaves their preconceptions behind and takes a big ol’ nibble of Simpson’s cornbread while their new neighbor passes them corn whiskey to wash it down.
In the past two years, Simpson has independently released two absolutely stellar albums and toured like his life depended on it. And folks are taking notice, including recent high profile appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman and Conan. But none of this is happening because of the well-oiled, tried-and-true mainstream country music establishment. Simpson represents an alternative to the warmed over, steam table grade leanings of the vast majority of artists on CMT and FM radio. He’s not trying to throw a line back to classic country, he’s a modern answer to classic country BUT one that resonates in the 21st century because it’s not a costume or marketing ploy. Simpson is an original, and like all genuine originals it’s his unique quirks and can’t-fake-it disposition that rings true with audiences. Where so much modern art seems like hologram mimics of things we love, Simpson and his crack band plant us smack dab in the nitty gritty. It’s like that first bite of a real hamburger after years of fast food pseudo-sustenance – fucking delicious, a little greasy, and utterly satisfying in ways that defy description so you just surrender to the feeling and smile.
In a nod to old school stagecraft, Simpson joined the rest of his boys about a minute after they fired up, the double doors at the back flying open as he confidently walked to the mic and swung his guitar and wonderfully husky voice into action. “I’m getting pretty tired of the state things are in. Sometimes I feel like cutting a vein, just watching it bleed,” he growled, an opening salvo that speaks to the general state of discontent so many people carry around like a plow harness or grave digger’s sack. But soon he was nodding to the Buddha – something Simpson does a number of times in his catalog – announcing, “Well, I’m getting pretty tired of being treated like competition when the only one that can hold me down is inside my head.”
One of the things we look for in art is a reflection of our own lives. It’s selfish and self-serving but it’s also unavoidable. We like what we like, and why we like it is that it offers truths and perspective on how we personally spend our days. Simpson speaks to a whole lot of folks with his tales of struggling for dreams, gentle enlightenment through recreational chemistry, and belief in the positive power of hard work, diligence and being decent to your fellow human beings. Heartland stuff but also a contemporary P.O.V. that doesn’t look for saviors in bread ‘n’ wine nor fear the thorns, turtles and other things one encounters when they slip behind the vale of accepted reality. While his debut album, 2013’s High Top Mountain frequently harks back to 1960s/70s country, the follow-up, last year’s Metamodern Sounds In Country Music is an instant classic that draws out the best elements from the past to serve a vision aimed at the present and future. In music nerd terms, the evolution between the two albums is akin to Van Morrison’s poetic leap between his 1967 debut, Blowin’ Your Mind and Astral Weeks a year later. Put more simply, what Simpson sings about and the way he gets these stories across speaks directly to how a lot of us are living in 2015. Whether a person has ever connected with country music or not, they can probably jive with trying to wring a little more life out of a paycheck or smoke their mind silly just to contend with the nonsense beamed in by satellite daily.
For all the depth and cosmic pondering inside his tunes, what the live setting cements is how beer swilling, boot-scootin’ ready this material is. In Santa Cruz, keyboard player Jeff Crow had the night off so the songs lost some of the countrypolitan echoes of their studio takes – seriously, listen to Charlie Rich’s Behind Closed Doors and discover one of Simpson’s overlooked ancestors – but gained a raw, livewire directness that suited the rowdy Friday night crowd. And the fact that Simpson has worked the same shitty jobs, gobbled the same distractions, and muscled his way through to his current age shined through in a set that only stirred folks more and more as it progressed, both the partygoers and the one’s picking up on the glimpses of God peeking down from his pretty skies inside Simpson’s verses finding lots to love.
“You Can Have The Crown” had a particular resonance with this S.C. mixed bunch, the abiding sense of stasis and powerlessness finding release in the snap and bounce of a swinging song:
Well, I been spending all my money on weed n’ pills/ Trying to write a song that’ll pay the bills/ But it ain’t came yet so I guess I’ll have to rob a bank
I guess it could be worse, it ain’t that bad/ At least I ain’t sitting in old Baghdad/ in the middle of the hot damn desert sitting in a tank
Every time the wife talks a baby gets mentioned/ But I’m so broke I can’t pay attention/ Lord how it tears me up to see her cry
So I been spending all my nights on the internet looking for a clue but ain’t found one yet/ just a bunch of Mopars, guitars and other stuff I can’t buy
On this one and many others I found myself singing along, but never alone, wherever my eye fell finding an expression that spoke of understanding and empathy, a shared spirit passing through the room like a benevolent wind or friendly ghost.
The open drug references and old school country moves might ring false or seem forced in lesser hands but Sturgill and his fellow travelers are clearly just on the road looking for truths and these are their tools, the whole enterprise exuding a palpable sense of purpose and mission beyond wringing an all-mighty dollar from people, their winning verisimilitude evident in the way they meet our eyes and in the heft of their words and formidable musicianship. Rarely have the worlds of enlightened inquisition and time clock living collided so successfully.
Simpson is surely a descendent of the many country greats he’s drawn comparisons to – though he points out on “Life Ain’t Fair and The World Is Mean” that “the most outlaw thing that I’ve ever done was give a good woman a ring” – but he’s also kin to blessed outliers like Goose Creek Symphony, Gram Parsons, and Michael Nesmith -the creative relationship between Simpson and lead guitarist Laur Joamets strongly reminds one of the quiet magic Nez conjured with pedal steel foil Red Rhodes in the 1970s in the way they deftly embrace and confuse tradition at the same time. But mark my words: it won’t be too long before this independent is playing good-sized theatres and getting wooed by the suits in Nashville. Let ‘em come, I got faith Sturgill Simpson is gonna continue to walk his own path and the journey is far from over.
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