Welcome to Sturgill SZN.
Country-rock iconoclast Sturgill Simpson said 2021's The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita would be his last, completing a promised five-album arc. But in 2024, he returned with Passage Du Desir, a brilliant new LP under the alias Johnny Blue Skies. He and his band then toured that album around the world to rapturous acclaim. They're about to do it all over again.
In a new letter mailed to fans, Simpson has revealed that his band, now known as Johnny Blue Skies & The Dark Clouds, will soon release an album called Mutiny After Midnight. He says it emerged from the goal of making a dance record. "The majority of this band has been on the road together on and off and on again for over thirteen years," Simpson writes. "We have all grown sometimes together and sometimes apart. But we've never felt more 'together' than right now. I couldn't be happier. This is the band I've dreamed about being in since middle school."
Simpson is also promising a tour with no opening act. "We're going to take every minute the venue gives us," he writes. "We're gonna rock this Mutiny as hard as humanly possible. It is our privilege and our honor because our fans deserve it."
WHAT'S BEHIND THE "MUTINY AFTER MIDNIGHT?
In a word, kinship...
The majority of this band has been on the road together on and off and on again for over thirteen years. We have all grown sometimes together and sometimes apart. But we've never felt more "together" than right now. I couldn't be happier. This is the band I've dreamed about being in since middle school. Last year we did two complete laps around the U.S. and a tour of Western Europe. Between gigs this past September, we went into a brand new gorgeous studio in Nashville, Tennessee. Inspired heavily from endless hours on the bus watching old clips of the great fusion-funk band 'Stuff, and revisiting off-the-beaten-track concept records like Marvin Gaye's "In Our Lifetime", where, in what looks like the end of the world, the artist's response is, "Let's dance and make love."…we decided to make an album centered firmly on groove.
We started every day from scratch with a basic groove, I wrote the songs and lyrics in the moment on-the-spot, and everyone established their individual parts servicing the songs and not the individual ego.You can break down the songs on this album into two categories-the dark state of the world and the bright state of love. Light lives in darkness just as darkness lives in light. I have come to find over time that it's far easier to just embrace contradictions rather than attempting to resolve them.
Hence "Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds…The enjoyment we experienced in making this album of songs will be quite evident for the listener. But it's a lot more than joy. You can call it a mutiny,... an open rebellion.
In any case, despite the motivations behind it the mutiny in the studio turned into a party. To categorize Mutiny is tricky, but many will no doubt come with their glass ceilings to try. We believe the term American Music pretty much says it all. And for all the big ideas behind the 'Mutiny,' there's a simple goal we as a band set out to achieve: to make a dance record.So this protest, this mutiny is really more about the primary dance. The dance of all creation. To be clear it is a protest against oppression and suppression, and the only tried & tested true antidote to that is pure, unfiltered, unapologetic, relentless disco-hedonism
My voice is just one element in this band and at all times this band is far too good to ever be overshadowed by a vocalist. So I just want to say how grateful I am to be a part of this band of brilliant musicians-drunner and backing vocalist Miles Miller, lead guitarist Laur Joanets, bassist Kevin Black and keyboardist/saxist Robbie Crowell. Each is a star in his own right. And together, we reflect each other's shine.
I've spent the greater part of the last few years trying to escape what we shall refer to as "the static". Mostly through intense travels. One thing I will say based on observations about the French is their unmatched ability to threaten injustice with a good time. If they feel infringed upon by overreach in even the slightest form, French people will simply go on a country wide labor strike, shut down the subways and the economy, and completely fill the streets with music and people from all walks of life dancing together, sometimes butt ass naked on top of bus stops. It's refreshing and beyond inspiring to witness this type of manifested unity in humanity. You could say this is where the idea was born.
Touring behind 'Mutiny' is something we greatly look forward to. Something we will cherish. Just as I have come to see and harness my own neurodivergence and the weaponized autism of our collective members as a superpower in the studio—the same is true live. We're going out to play arenas and theaters with a vengeance. No opening act. We're going to take every minute the venue gives us. We're gonna rock this Mutiny as hard as humanly possible. It is our privilege and our honor because our fans deserve it.
Beyond the static, the only things that truly matter are the sounds we make and the ears that absorb them. Everything won't be for everyone, but everything tends to eventually find everyone it was meant for. You win some, you lose some, but in the end you're left with the real ones.
And the real ones are for life…For over a decade of navigating and charting the depressions of this industry's cold and salty trenches, I have found my true North. I now wake up every day with the sole intention of doing my best at what I'm best at simply being a pirate. And by now everybody knows our crew runs the tightest and deadliest ship on the water. This band has less than zero interest in accolade's, trophy's, or being the definitive this or that of our generation. We're in search of something far more meaningful and rewarding…and we're collecting heads for the journey.
So with that all said, to any and all who see our flag flying off your stern, know this… There will be no quarter nor mercy offered nor given.
I'm excited. Are you excited?
