Sturgill Simpson – Beacon

In his long-awaited return to music, Sturgill Simpson under his new name Johnny Blue Skies brought a mesmerizing, marathon performance to the Bristol Beacon under the banner of the “Why Not?” tour.

The Kentucky native adopted this moniker after bidding a so-called farewell to his solo career once he finished a five-album cycle with 2021’s country concept LP The Ballad of Dood & Juanita. Shortly after releasing Dood & Juanita, Simpson ruptured his vocal cords and left the road for the foreseeable future. Simpson’s onstage revival comes in the wake of a new album, Passage Du Desir.

Now Simpson and his four-piece band — Laur Joamets on lead guitar and steel, Miles Miller on drums, Kevin Black on bass and Robbie Crowell on keys – are back to play nearly three-and-a-quarter hours of loud and rowdy riffs.

Largely playing his red Gibson hollow-body guitar, Johnny Blue Skies sang with unflagging intensity and energy while his bandmates perfectly followed his lead through a push and pull of ballads and rockers, long jams, classic rock and vintage country in a 28-song mix of covers and original songs.

When Simpson’s first album came out in 2013, audiences and critics christened him as a rising traditionalist of country music. The follow-up, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, found Simpson redirecting his music to serve up a sharper brand of contemporary alt-country.

Then came a soul album, full of songs inspired by the birth of his son. Next came a hard rock record, followed by three albums infused with bluegrass and traditional country music. All that unpredictable variety paved the way for this year’s new album.

Simpson pulled all his musical strands together into one big sprawling performance. He swerves aplenty, but he remains unmistakably Sturgill throughout.

Opening with Steve Fromholz’s hit for Willie Nelson, I’d Have to Be Crazy, they leaned into an epic rendition of Fastest Horse in Town. Earlier work was also present, with gems such as Turtles All the Way Down and Living the Dream (both from 2014) which still evoke images, memories, and emotions.

After a surprise reggae transition from A Good Look he also offered covers “Pinball Blues” by Moore and Napier, William Bell’s You Don’t Miss Your Water, and Spanish Moon by Little Feat. Other crowd-pleasing covers were Purple Rain by Prince and Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale.

The new Johnny Blue Skies songs - Mint Tea, Right Kind of Dream, If the Sun Never Rises Again, and seven-minute Jupiter’s Faerie - turned out to be one of the night’s highlights because they tapped into the concert’s emblematic embrace of a variety of moods and motifs.

The band dips into Sound and Fury’s Best Clockmaker on Mars, before landing a possible summit of what was an evening full of highs with an epic rendition of the Passage du Desir closer One For The Road.

And, when Simpson was not playing others’ songs, affectionately bowing to his influences, he was summoning musical spirits in the many long jams he and the band locked into.

Over an hour into the setlist, Simpson made his first direct address to the packed-out Bristol Beacon: ‘We’re not even halfway done yet’ he said with a smirk on his face. A fleeting promise that the music we’d heard so far wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

He put himself out there as someone who, after too long away from the stage, was back because he was in love with playing for the sake of playing. And he was extending an enthusiastic invitation to the entire sold-out house to listen in.

A rendition of the headbanger “Fastest Horse in Town,” a foot-stompin’ Long White Line and then The Promise, a crooning cover of the 1988 hit by U.K. pop group When in Rome.

The most captivating part of the concert was listening to the band riff off one another to craft extended, complex instrumental solos. Keyboard player Robbie Crowell moved back and forth between two sets of keys to get the intensity just right, while drummer Miles Miller set the rock tone.

Laur Joamets is a legend, and that’s not just with a Fender in his hands, but when he takes a seat behind his pedal steel too, reigning us back into the country elements that so much of Sturgill’s music is rooted in.

Despite his years away from touring, Simpson still knows how to save some of his best for last and cruised into the night’s closer: a rendition of protest rock tune “Call to Arms” that played the role of ferocious send-off without wasting a second.

This antiwar anthem was summed up in this lyric: “Well son, I hope you don’t grow up/ Believing that you’ve got to be a puppet to be a man.” It came off as a powerful message of hope, as well as a warning, leaving the crowd with a new name to admire.

A man with a Midas touch. Every string that Sturgill Simpson touches, and every note he throws out, are all completely golden.