In the early 2010s, he moved to Nashville to become a full-time musician. Literally getting back to his roots, Simpson began blurring the lines between bluegrass and outlaw country, a unique contribution to mainstream country music that has brought Kentucky’s contributions to the genre back to the forefront. After a brief stint living in the Pacific Northwest, he eventually drifted back to Kentucky, where in the early 2000s he started to take music more seriously. After witnessing extreme instances of poverty in Southeast Asia, he became disaffected and left the military. His career in the military took him to Japan, among other places, and his worldview began to broaden – and darken. As a result, much of his musical catalog deals with the economic disparities and hardships that Eastern Kentuckians face as coal mining continues to decline.Īfter graduating high school, he took another path familiar to many rural Kentuckians and decided to join the military. Moreover, Simpson was the first man through his mother’s side of his family not to work as a coal miner. While his parents didn’t work in the mines, Simpson’s family had practically a century-long lineage of working in coal. Sturgill Simpson’s meteoric rise in the country music industry over the past few years is hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with his upbringing in Jackson, Kentucky. Sturgill Simpson and the Art of Reinvention But in order to understand fully how they resist these recurring stereotypes, it’s important to look at where they came from. We don’t really rehearse, we just knock the rust off.īoth musicians fight against common caricatures projected onto the state. We haven’t played in a year and we’re going back and working up material we recorded two-and-a-half years ago. At the same time, though, they’re eager to collaborate, with Simpson stating:
While both come from Eastern Kentucky, they have built distinct sounds and positioned themselves uniquely in the country music universe. Sturgill Simpson announced on September 30 that he plans to conduct a full-fledged tour with fellow Kentuckian and country music star Tyler Childers in 2020.
From reviving classic outlaw music to feature length anime films, two Kentucky musicians are harnessing their talents to take a wrecking ball to the prevailing narrative about their homeland. Much like there is no one way to define Kentucky, there is certainly no one way to define the vibrant and creative spirit of Appalachia.
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