Halle-fucking-lujah, it’s a great day to be alive.
Sturgill Simpson’s new track “The Dead Don’t Die” just dropped today, the theme song from the new Jim Jarmusch film of the same name (due out June 14th). The comedic zombie flick features an all-star cast of Bill Murray, Selena Gomez, Chloe Sevigny, Adam Driver, Tilda Swindon and more. Bill Murray, Sturgill Simpson, zombies… sign me up.
Anyways, after Sturgill Simpson said that his next album definitely won’t be a country record on Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America, many of his fans were wondering if we’d ever get to hear the old-time country Sturgill Simpson of days past. Thankfully, “The Dead Don’t Die” is country as FUCK.
Sturgill FaceTimed into Zane’s Lowe’s World Record, a popular radio show in the UK, to talk about the moment when Jim called him to do the song, and what the future holds in store for him.
“Jim Jarmusch called me and asked me if I wanted to write a song for his movie. And I think I said yes before he even got the question out. I’ve always loved his work, probably since I was too young to really even understand or be watching, so like Ghost Dog, movies like Dead Man, they had a huge impact on me. I’ve probably seen Ghost Dog like two or three hundred times, so it really is like a sort of a bucket list thing getting to work with him. [It was] the title of the film, so I knew it had to be the title of the song. And then, I’m just reading the script; some little anecdotes and takeaways from what I thought the real underlying message that Jim was getting across. It was different because I’ve always … I’ll usually write my own stuff from a perspective of my own life experience, and this was more … This was fun. It was a lot of fun.”
However, when asked if he was going to put out his own album later this year, Sturgill offered up an answer that only Sturgill Simpson himself could offer:
“Working on two or three. Yeah, just stocking the ammo up. Most of it has just been focusing on, I think I’m going to coach some peewee soccer and maybe run for sheriff or something. I just want to walk around with one pant leg tucked in my boot and no gun, like Andy Griffith. I’ll make them and then step away. So the rest of it has nothing to do with me.”
Drop a double/triple album and ride off into the sunset? How very Sturgill Simpson of you.
