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Sturgill Simpson
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Eastern Kentucky native Sturgill Simpson has been
setting the music scene on fire lately and we're glad to share
his work with you here at Still: The Journal. Simpson hails from Breathitt County, Kentucky but moved to the bluegrass region when he was in high school.
"For all intents and purposes, it felt like I’d had two childhoods," he says. "In the summers, I was always back in eastern Kentucky with my grandparents. It felt like my mom and I went home about every weekend. In my heart I guess I’m from Appalachia." Simpson's mother's family were coal miners.
Simpson has played guitar since he was eight years old. He formed the band Sunday Valley in 2004 and worked for awhile in a railroad freight-shipping yard in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he began to play local gigs and got more interested in pursuing the music career that led him to settling in Nashville. He released his debut solo record, High Top Mountain, in 2013. The album is named for the Simpson family cemetery near his family's homeplace in Jackson, Kentucky.
In 2014, Simpson released his second album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music to positive reviews. He says: "I wanted to make a 'social consciousness' concept album disguised as a country record." The album has led to him appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, playing on the Grand Ole Opry, and opening for artists such as Dwight Yoakam and the Zac Brown Band.
Find out more about Sturgill Simpson.
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