Description
Following two volumes of roots renditions of his own songs, the shapeshifting country musician returns with a bluegrass concept album about love among the legends of the Kentucky frontier.
Sturgill Simpson does not do half measures. Almost a decade ago, following vagabond stints in the Navy, a railroad yard, and a Seattle IHOP, the Kentucky songwriter circumvented country music convention with ‘Metamodern Sounds in Country Music’, the kind of once-in-a-long-while reappraisal of the genre’s core values that only a lifetime outsider might dare make. Embracing new wave and honky-tonk, it was vivid and urgent, an inspiring revelation.
Then, amid COVID-19 lockdowns last year, Simpson again pivoted, recruiting a crackerjack, intergenerational crew of bluegrass musicians like Sierra Hull and Tim O’Brien to quickly record twin volumes of traditional renditions of his own songs. A quiet act of confident defiance, Cuttin’ Grass suggested that traditionalism to evolve could also be a form of subversion. The Ballad of Dood and Juanita, a bluegrass concept album recorded with the stunning group he has dubbed the Hillbilly Avengers, is an even more audacious salvo in Simpson’s back-to-the-roots campaign. By turns romantic, playful, sympathetic, and solemn, The Ballad of Dood and Juanita is a compelling update on American frontier mythmaking, delivered by a band good enough to push lovingly against genre conventions.
