Picture it: You’re a 30-something singer-songwriter who’s been struggling for years. When your music finally starts to connect on a national level, it propels you from virtual unknown to musical savior. Your sophomore album is suddenly credited as a beacon of hope for your identity-crisis-plagued genre.
You begin to sell out larger venues and your name is on the lips of every music critic. The late-night TV shows come callin'. You're officially a thing. This is all happening as your first-born child experiences his first few months outside the womb.
{"type":"Event","title":"Sturgill Simpson (SOLD OUT)","_id":274211,"html":"
","providerType":"guidelive","providerLink":"http://www.guidelive.com/oembed"}
Most folks would have a difficult time juggling so many life events at once, positive as they are. But if you’re Sturgill Simpson, who went through all of it and more in the last two years, you roll with the flow. You also parlay the range of new experiences into a piece of art that serves both your own needs and the voracious musical appetites of your fans.
In case you don't know him yet, Simpson (who plays the Bomb Factory May 7) is a 37-year-old Kentuckian with a voice as guttural and lived-in as the late Waylon Jennings', and a musical point of view that reaches far beyond his "country" label. His third album, the recently released A Sailor's Guide to Earth, is a taut, satisfying concept record that serves as a father's wisdom-packed dialogue with his son.
It begins as does a boy's life, with the sweet and tone-setting tune “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog).”
The longing of a father who's always on the road is at play in the lyrics: "When I get home it breaks my heart/seeing how much you've grown all on your own." From there, more fatherly concerns and advice come fast and loose, accompanied occasionally by both steel guitars and the soul horns of the Dap Kings. There are street smarts spewed directly in "Keep It Between the Lines" ("Motoroil is motoroil/just keep your engine clean) and indirectly in the sailor-themed "Sea Stories."
Another curveball on the album, considering Simpson’s so well regarded for his own lyrics, is a stripped-down, reflective take on Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” With the band's living players' permission, he add a new line at the end of the chorus: “Don’t know what it means/to love someone.” Under Simpson’s care, with considerable twang in his vocals, an alt-rock classic becomes laser-focused on the coming-of-age chaos tied to adolescence.
Simpson told NPR recently that he was "trying to figure out how to embody those years in a young boy's life where you're sort of just aimlessly going through it all."
But the beauty of Simpson's new album is that it meets the confusion and aimlessness with a common-sense musical roadmap, courtesy of dear ol' Dad. The album's first single (appearing in the track list right after "In Bloom") is "Brace for Impact," a muscular rocker that convinces its listener to seize the day as well or better than anything before it.
Although the new record finds Simpson expanding his influences from the more traditional sounds of his highly addictive first two LPs, he’s happy to go right back to a classic country croon in “Oh Sarah.” The song shifts his road-weary devotion from the kid to the kid’s mother: “It’s the tender in your eyes/that keeps me safe and warm at night.”
That Simpson puts emphasis on telling stories and singing from the heart is what makes him a natural antidote to the Pro Tools-happy country party bros of the world. But he seems not to be concerned with righting popular music’s wrongs or restoring tradition.
As he told friend and role model Merle Haggard in an eerily-timed Garden & Gun feature just before the legend's death, "I made the record I wanted to make and the record I needed to make, I guess. … I'm not even sure it's a country record, to be honest with you."
The artful priorities and conviction seem to be working better and better for Simpson — A Sailor's Guide to Earth currently rests at No. 2 on the Billboard country albums chart. He sold out the Bomb Factory gig shortly after it was announced.
A testament to Dallas' in-the-know music crowd: Simpson performed before sold-out crowds here already, at two back-to-back Dada sets back in 2014. Folks sang along with nearly every tune from the sophomore album that had helped him reach new heights — Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. He returned to the area months later to sell out Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth, where he paid tribute to Willie Nelson with a version of "I'd Have to Be Crazy."
Thousands more should be at Bomb Factory on Saturday, joining in on tunes designed to guide Simpson's child through the complicated mess of life. The artist and his fans will also certainly reprise the sage advice from an older Simpson song, "Turtles All the Way Down":
"So go and try to have some fun showing warmth to everyone/
You meet and greet and cheat along the way."