STURGILL SIMPSON TO HEADLINE OUTSIDE LANDS 

Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.

Sturgill Simpson will headline this year’s Outside Lands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—the Grammy Award-winner’s first full show in three years. For the performance, Simpson will reunite with bassist Kevin Black, guitarist Laur Joamets and drummer Miles Miller. Tickets for the festival, which will be held August 9-11, go on sale to the general public tomorrow, Wednesday April 24 at 10:00AM PT exclusively at www.sfoutsidelands.com.

The performance comes after the recent confirmation that Simpson’s landmark 2014 album, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, will be reissued on May 10 in celebration of its ten-year anniversary (pre-order). Originally released May 13, 2014, the album marked a career breakthrough for Simpson personally and proved to be a seismic shift-maker within the larger country music genre. The new special edition features a fully reimagined album cover and vinyl package, pressed on 180g Black Vinyl with an “Old-Style” Tip-On Jacket. Full details are available at sturgillsimpson.com.

Ushering in a new chapter within country music and setting the stage for countless other outsider artists to push the genre forward for years to come, NPR Music called it, “one of the few albums in 2014 that nearly everyone on the team agreed was pure genius,” while No Depression declared, “a breakthrough not only for the artist himself but also for country’s continuing horizons as a progressive yet rooted musical form…he’s reshaping country not by finding his place within the broad scope of its fringes, but by pushing outward from its very core,” while American Songwriter praised, “2014 was, undoubtedly, the year of Sturgill Simpson… he is the genre’s poet laureate, bringing nuance back to a form that, especially recently, so desperately needs it.”

Named one of Rolling Stone’s “Greatest Country Albums of All Time” in 2022, The New York Times called it, “one of the most jolting country albums in recent memory, and one that achieves majesty with just the barest of parts,” while Stereogum asserted, “will endure as one of this young century’s best traditionalist country records” and The Fader affirmed, “a take on the genre that seemed totally renegade to where country sits in popular culture now, and wholly in line with its original principles.” The album landed on best-of the year lists at numerous publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop, NPR Music, American Songwriter, Stereogum, the Los Angeles, Times, Pitchfork, Paste, KCRW, The Washington Post, the Nashville Scene and many more. In the year following its release, Simpson performed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Conan” and the “Late Show with David Letterman” and was featured on the BBC’s “Later Live with Jools Holland,” “Later…with Jools Holland” and NPR Music’s “Tiny Desk Concert.”

 

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