The Dood abides
Kentucky son continues his wondrous bluegrass odyssey. By Andy Fyfe.
Sturgill Simpson
★★★★
The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN/THIRTY TIGERS. CD/DL/LP WHAT A difference a couple of Grammy nominations (and a win) make. After rootlessly drifting from high school drug dealing to the navy to failing at his first attempt to gatecrash Nashville, Sturgill Simpson is now accepted as country music’s outlier present and future. So much so, in fact, that he can pretty much do as he damn pleases.
Right now, what pleases Sturgill Simpson is a bluegrass concept album about a Civil War veteran who sets out for revenge against the bandit who left him dying in the dirt after kidnapping his wife.
This isn’t Simpson’s first concept album. His 2014 breakthrough Metamodern Sounds In Country Music tried to bring traditionalism into the modern world; Grammy-winning
A Sailor’s Guide To Earth was Simpson teaching his newborn son how to navigate life; Sound & Fury was also an anime film.
And then there’re the two Cuttin’ Grass volumes, where Simpson re-recorded a large chunk of his back catalogue as bluegrass tunes. While not concept albums
per se, the idea of a major artist re-recording their songs in a different genre – not just rearranging them with an orchestra – may well be unprecedented. That his songs not just survived but actually thrived shows not only how strong Simpson’s songwriting is, but also that he is revelling in the confidence success has bestowed on him.
Although his latest album’s title has been in Simpson’s head for years, the songs were not. Driving home after acting in Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming DiCaprio/De Niro movie Killers Of The Flower Moon (see where success can land you?), he put Willie Nelson’s Red Headed
Stranger on the car stereo and by the journey’s end he had mapped out his new concept.
In just 25 minutes the 10 songs tell the linear story of Dood (named after his late grandfather) and Juanita’s separation at gunpoint, his resolve to rescue her and the peace he finds in revenge: “A man and his rifle, a mule and his hound, one in the saddle and one on the ground…” (spoiler alert: the dog dies – this is, after all, a country album).
Rather sweetly, Simpson comes full musical circle on Tex-Mex ballad Juanita with a guitar solo from his initial inspiration, Willie Nelson. It’s a tune straight out of Marty Robbins’ songbook, albeit played with the same bluegrass band who cut the Cuttin’ Grass sessions. The only unsatisfactory element of The
Ballad Of Dood & Juanita is that it’s too short, and how many concept albums can boast that? And if Sturgill Simpson was to spend the rest of his career purely as a bluegrass artist, well, that would be just fine too.