Sturgill Simpson has had it up to here (I’m holding my hand up way above my head) with those who don’t understand the Johnny Blue Skies career shift.
The country star is now two albums into his “JBS Era,” if you want to call it that. Yet still, not everyone is on board with referring to the artist formerly known as Sturgill Simpson as the Dread Pirate Johnny Blue Skies. Heck, even I’ll go back and forth with what I call him.
And speaking of… Johnny Blue Skies is still riding high off the release of Mutiny After Midnight back in March. His second album underneath the new JBS moniker was a funky, disco country record, and it was originally only available via physical media (vinyl, CDs, cassettes).
It’s since become available digitally – if you still use iTunes – but it’s still absent from any streaming sites.
Though you’d think that would have affected the album’s performance, it hasn’t. Johnny Blue Skies shared that the unique rollout of his latest album led to the biggest “first week” of any project of his career. Which is wild, because it really just came through an organic, grass roots movement. No interviews. No performances. Nothing extra… just a whole lot of memes posted through social media.
There’s no doubt that was an intentional move. Especially when you hear what he had to say last year at one his concerts at Red Rocks. It seems like he’s out to stick it to the promoters and prove them wrong with every musical step that he takes now. While he was at the iconic venue last year, he went on a rant about how all of the higher ups think fans aren’t smart enough to put two and two together to realize that Sturgill Simpson is Johnny Blue Skies:
“All the promoters think you are too stupid to figure out that he’s me. They won’t let me take Sturgill off the g**damn billing and I’m getting really tired of it. We sold a bunch of t-shirts last year, none of them had my name on it. Sold out a g**damn tour, that didn’t have my name on it either. What’s so hard to figure out? This is the path forward.”
The later part of the video – where Sturgill Johnny Blue Skies teases a new album – is obviously a little dated at this point (that album is already out, and has been for a month).
However, that initial quote from JBS apparently slipped past the masses when it was proclaimed during last year’s tour. And it’s really interesting to revisit that now, especially with how the rollout of Mutiny After Midnight went. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?
And just in case you are still behind on why Simpson shifted to Johnny Blue Skies, Sturgill always promised that he would release only five albums, and he reaffirmed that promise with the release of #5, The Ballad of Dood & Juanita. But he did not say that he wouldn’t continue making music under a new name. Lo and behold, Johnny Blue Skies.
After unveiling his new identity, Simpson sat down with GQ and first revealed the shallow reason he went with Johnny Blue Skies:
“When I was about 21 years old, there used to be this bar in Lexington, Kentucky with this bartender named Dave who was like Silent Bob and Charles Bukowski, literally in the long trench coat, and he could do way more Zippo tricks than anybody should know.
When I started performing and getting my confidence at open mics and stuff, he’d come to this other bar and see me because it was his night off. And he started every time I’d walk into his bar, he’d say, ‘Johnny Blue Skies.’ So I just started using it.”
It’s a shallow yet profound answer to the question. However, the reason why he went all in on Johnny Blue Skies is the deeper – and my preferred – story. Simpson elaborated that as his celebrity grew more and more over the years, he associated with the name Sturgill less and less:
“I’d be at an airport or a restaurant, and I’d hear somebody say my name and I’d turn around and realize I had no idea who the person is. All of a sudden, I’d hear that name, and it was like it didn’t belong to me. It was just a commodity or a brand. Sturgill served his purpose, but he’s dead, he’s gone, and I’m definitely not that guy anymore. That’s why I put that skeleton face on that (reissued) cover of Metamodern. I just can’t even relate.”
Though that explanation explains the “how” of Johnny Blue Skies, it still doesn’t pull back the curtain on the “who”. Simpson made sure to address that in the interview as well, and said that Johnny Blue Skies is (or complexly) whoever you wish him or imagine him to be:
“He’s anybody you want him to be, man. He’s a mythological hero, come to usher us into this new era of love and light.”
And if you were to watch the music video for Johnny Blue Skies’ song “Situation,” you’d know that Johnny Blue Skies is HIM.
