Sturgill Simpson: Man Of The Hour

“He was a strip miner. He and my grandmother were both born in a coal camp, down around Hazard,” Simpson says of his grandfather. “He grew up in feedsack dresses and no shoes, came from absolutely nothing. He set a good example in some ways. I went down some wrong roads, but knowing how much it’d disappoint them was kind of a break pedal.”

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After high school, Simpson joined the Navy – “I passed the Armed Forces Service Center and had an epiphany” – but only stuck around long enough “to know it wasn’t for me.” Later, he moved out West to work on the railroad.

Around 2004, Simpson started his first band, Sunday Valley, which played a mash-up of punk and country styles. In 2011, Zale Schoenborn, the founder of the eclectic Pickathon Festival outside Portland, Oregon, got a tip about Sunday Valley from friends in Kentucky and booked the band to play the festival that year. “Sturgill has one of those voices,” says Schoenborn. “It makes you feel great when you hear it. There’s so much emotion.”

Kyle Coroneos, of the influential blog Saving Country Music, saw Sunday Valley at Pickathon that year and remembers the show as a “top musical experience.” “The energy level was out of control,” recounts Coroneos, who chatted with musician Pokey LaFarge about the bluegrass fundamentals underlying Simpson’s electric guitar playing after the set. Saving Country Music became one of Simpson’s biggest supporters, chronicling his hard country style (which the blog is known for championing) and announcing the beginning of his solo project in the spring of 2012.

It’s taken over a year for High Top Mountain to see a release, but it promises to finally put Simpson’s talent in the spotlight. But Coroneos is quick to point out that Simpson still a major secret. “He’s so dramatically under the radar,” Coroneos says. “He’s one of the guys to watch. But Sturgill is going to do it his own way. He takes the hard path to keep his integrity.”

 

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