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Sturgill Simpson [1978-0] American

Rank: 102
Musician, Singer-songwriter

John Sturgill Simpson is an American country music and roots rock singer-songwriter. To date, he has released three albums as a solo artist. He released two albums independently, High Top Mountain in 2013 and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music in 2014.

Quote	Tags	Rank
The art is what can't be put on a timeline. You can't say, 'Well, I'm going to make a record in May because that's when the producer has a window.' So just recording and getting things out is paramount for me.		101
All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.		102
I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.		103
I had a great job with the railroad, a good salary.		104
I knew I wanted to make a concept record in song-cycle form, like my favorite Marvin Gaye records where everything just continuously flows.		105
I'm grateful to all the non-risk-takers.		106
Elvis was a way bigger influence than Waylon Jennings, but you don't wanna tell people, 'I never really listened to Waylon.'		107
I'm just gonna write a record for my kid, and if people hate it, it doesn't matter.		108
I didn't graduate from college, so I might as well be on Atlantic Records, right?		109
I knew I loved playing bluegrass, so I'd end up down there on Sunday nights at the bluegrass jam.		110
I just have to do what it is going to make me happy, first and foremost - what is honest and what is sincere. Anybody that listens will hopefully connect with that.		111
Let's just cut a live record with three microphones in four days and talk about lizards and aliens. If I had taken that idea to even an independent label, I don't see a label out there that would've said, 'Oh yeah, that sounds great. We know how to market this.'		112
It's a long road, so we are just trying to stay focused and grounded and keep moving forward. I'll take it, though.		113
Willie Nelson, Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and Keith Whitley - guys like that were huge influences.		114
It's hard enough to sit at a table and talk to most people as it is. But we can go to some town, and there's 300 people we've never met before, and by the third song, we're connecting with everyone in that room.		115
I've been reading about the idea of cyclical lives - it matches up to the idea of string theory and a multiverse. So I wanted to write a record about that instead of another song about broken hearts and drinking.		116
You spend all this time reading or thinking or praying or searching or exploring.Maybe there's an Omega Point of love.		117
I tried to make a honky-tonk country record - rough-hewn, cut fast, and all analog - like I wasn't hearing anymore.		118
There's a lot going on in country music, with indie-label hipsters and underground bloggers arguing their interpretations of what country is, and pop-country stars defending themselves. That deserves to be poked fun at.		119
My wife thinks I'm crazy.		120
Both my grandfathers and my mother's brother were musicians.		121
Back home, playing music is never anything you imagine you can do for a living. It's what you do after work.		122
Country music especially can get very formulaic - you know, you have to have your verses and a bridge and a chorus, and a lot of the songs are written as just plain and simple poetry on the road.		123
Anything that I'm naturally curious about, I get really into. Maybe it's O.C.D. I get really consumed by something until I absorb it, then I'm done with it.		124
I used to play a lot of electric guitar. I don't really consider myself a guitar player anymore. Then I got really into how the pickups work. And winding and de-winding Telecaster pickups. And then building Telecasters. And I became more fascinated with making them than I was with actually playing them. So it's a slippery slope.		125
I grew up listening to everything. I was in rock n' roll bands and punk bands, and I loved bluegrass and country music, too. Then, when I moved to Nashville, I put out a very traditional country record because that's just what you do. I had a bunch of very traditional country songs. Next thing you know, you're a country singer.		126
I just don't see myself as a songwriter or a country singer or any of those things anymore. It's more trying to express ideas and emotional textures.		201
I walked in, looked around, and the navy recruiter was a really hot brunette, so I signed up with her.		202
I want people to focus on listening, not the image. And I want to play to everyone: rednecks, dubstep kids, punk rockers, and people who like as-real-as-it-gets country music.		203
You make a little noise, and you can sell out your local hometown club. But then you drive an hour down the road to the next town, and there might be eight people there.		204
I pretty much just hang out with the kid. I want, like three more, because that's all I ever want to do.		205
Kentucky isn't particularly religious.		206
I love tape. It's another member of the band, the way it settles and blankets everything.		207
Saviours get crucified.		208
I want all that dirt and grime and life-sauce. A lot of my favorite old soul records have it, but you don't hear it on country records anymore.		209
I someday hope to find the time and coin to invest more of my creative energy towards the visual media side of releasing music.		210
I'd love to make short film videos pushing the conventional standards of what a country music video can be.		211
Even with most finite planning, you never know what the final result will reveal itself to be until it's staring back at you.		212
I lived in Japan when I was younger for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night.		213
Some people will say, and have said, that I'm trying to run from country, but I'm never going to make anything other than a country record.		214
I thought it was hilarious when 'Brace for Impact' was released, and people said I had abandoned country, even though the song is dripping with pedal steel. If anything, that tells me I'm making progress.		215
Atlantic has been great to me. They didn't flinch when I told them I was self-producing, and nobody was popping their head in the studio.		216
There are no expectations other than those I place on myself to be a great father and husband.		217
I wanted to make an album that takes a journey through all my favorite periods in music and then culminates in something that will most likely end my career.		218
I could go back to the railroad. I liked that job.		219
I worked for Union Pacific. I started out as a conductor at an intermodal switching facility outside of Salt Lake City. We'd pull in trains from all over the country, break them apart, consolidate the freight, and build other trains. It was great until I screwed up and took a management position. Then it became no fun very quickly.		220
I never really had any grand aspirations of mainstream country success because I know what that entails, and I'd probably be too much trouble for people to work with. If I can just reach the point where I can get 200 or 300 people in small clubs and I'm carving out enough money to pay my bills, then I'm the happiest guy I know.		221
There have been many socially conscious concept albums. I wanted to make a 'social consciousness' concept album disguised as a country record.		222
I'm interested in exploring various forms of newer media that might allow those who otherwise don't listen to country to find and connect with my music.		223
Part of me still feels like I've never had the opportunity to properly express all my earliest influences, so for now, I find isolation to be my biggest influence.		224
Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.		225
My paternal grandfather, when he was in the army in World War II - he was over in the South Pacific, and he thought he was gonna die. And he wrote a letter to my grandmother and their newborn son, thinking he wasn't gonna come home.		226
London's been really good to me - England as a whole - but the Scots and the Irish especially are very appreciative because that's kind of where it all came from.		301
I'm very grateful, but at the same time, I'm glad all this happened when I'm 36 instead of 26 because I - I'm just such a homebody, and I just want to write songs and make the best record that I can.		302
I find that I have to just kind of avoid the Internet as much as possible. And even more so, when I go and look at it, I remember why I should be avoiding it.		303
I fail to see how anything can still be weird in 2016.		304
I needed a writing space to get out of my house with the little guy. Because any time I try to write or sit down and do things, he wants to be there with me and play the guitar.		305
That might be completely self-indulgent, to write your first major-label debut as a dedication to your family. But, you know, that's where my heart was.		306
I just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.		307
Fewer and fewer bars are doing live music. Instead it's more DJs and dance parties.		308
I saw Dolly Parton play at the Glastonbury Festival to about 120,000 people. It was an ocean of human beings. I was a mile away from the stage, and I swear to God, I could feel her energy.		309
I'm not meant to sit on the couch and not play music. But I never want to feel like I have to put out a record. I don't want to ever make those records.		310
The only way I'm going to support my family is to tour. I love playing, don't get me wrong. That 90 minutes every night, that's free. We get paid to travel. But every night, I have to get myself locked in. There are a thousand people that don't want to be disappointed, because they have a lot of expectations.		311
I'll never get tired of being told I sound like Waylon Jennings, but I don't hear it myself.		312
Music Row gets dragged through the dirt, but they're just trying to survive.		313
Looking back on it, now I can identify the points in my life when I wasn't playing, and music - and didn't have that outlet - those were the points when I was most unguided and self destructive because I didn't have that channel to get those energies out. I'm a much healthier person when I play music.		314
You can embrace nostalgia and history and tradition at the same time - it has to progress or it can't survive.		315
I don't pretend to be an astrophysicist or anything, even though I do read about certain things like metaphysics and cosmology that I've always just been really interested in. I don't pretend to be able to sit down and pontificate on any of these subjects.		316
Anytime I ever have met someone that was very angry or full of negativity, nine times out of ten, if you really take a good look at that person's life, there's probably not a whole lot of love going on there.		317
I've always played music. But you know, in eastern Kentucky, everybody plays music.		318
I think when you're dealing with any issues about trying to become a better human being, you have to look at a lot of things about yourself that maybe you don't want to or aren't able to.		319

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