Melissa Miller
Not even seven months ago, Sturgill Simpson played the Turner Hall Ballroom the same week his second solo album, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, was released to hosannas of praise from critics inside the alt country/Americana press and beyond. The 120 or so gathered to see him, a few of whom had caught him in his one prior Milwaukee appearance, may not have anticipated the juggernaut Simpson’s career has become.
With about five times as many filling the same venue Friday night, the recently Grammy-nominated singer/guitarist and his three-piece band strode to stage with a lean ferocity belying the slack they could have easily taken by now. As Simpson said toward the end of his set last May when it came to performing encores, he’s “bullshit-averse.” The same attitude followed from him and his mates when it came to between-song patter. He acknowledged his honor from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, though he wondered aloud what exactly the Americana category in which Academy voters placed him entails (nevertheless stating that it’s better than the commercial mainstream of country, singling Bahamas-fixated Kenny Chesney out for special upbraiding).
Simpson has received particular attention for his lyrics, which pair observations about cosmological studies and quantum physics with more traditional country themes of the Saturday night rowdiness/Sunday morning solemnity. But the ecumenical, universalist conclusions he draws in songs such as the often name-checked “Turtles All The Way Down” aren’t all that much of a stretch from Willie Nelson’s more philosophically ruminative side. Fittingly enough, Simpson’s singing recalls that of the star whose name was most often said in tandem with Nelson’s at the height of country’s 1970s outlaw movement: Waylon Jennings.
Songs that expand country’s conversation about metaphysics weren’t the only attraction. The musical interaction among Simpson acoustic rhythm guitar and an electric axe player with a couple of effects pedals alongside bass and drums was noticeably more discursive, even jamming, than his last time in town. Simpson’s background in bluegrass virtuosity and speed coupled with the twang and trance-like repetition of his accomplices culminated in the imaginary specter of Buck Owens’ Buckaroos confabbing with The Allman Brothers on Bill Monro’s tour bus. Though the sound may run a parallel to Brad Paisley’s manner of in-concert instrumental shredding and may bear the influence of the band’s dates opening for Zac Brown Band last summer, Simpson and company aren’t nearly so conspicuously showy about their display. And though commercial country sounds to be making a slow, tortuous turnaround from the ill winds of bro-ism, the sort of retro-futurism on tuneful display at the Turner Hall Ballroom show Friday night had naught to do with even much of the best of the format. Simpson is bucking trends, but that seems not to have impeded his career the least bit.
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