Sturgill Simpson Makes a Jam Session Out of Stagecoach

by Julian Spivey

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Sturgill Simpson and his incredibly talented band turned the Mane Stage into an hour-long jam session on Saturday, April 26, night two of the 2025 Stagecoach Festival from the Polo Empire Club in Indio, Calif.

Simpson has been a musical chameleon throughout his career, going from traditional country singer to more Americana/folk performer to a rocker to a bluegrass picker to the mixture of it all known as Johnny Blue Skies on his latest release. The Johnny Blue Skies persona and the tour that’s come along with it has seen Simpson as more of a jam-band and the musicians he’s brought with him, Laur Joamets on guitar, Kevin Black on bass, Miles Miller on drums and Robbie Crowell on keys, have left many comparing his shows to a modern day Grateful Dead.

He brought this jam session performance to the Stagecoach Festival on Saturday night. With a 10-song, hour-long set, Simpson and the band went from one song to another without much stoppage in between, giving the packed crowd a bit of an appetizer as to what they might get from a full-length Simpson road show, which has been going three-plus hours as of late.

Simpson peppered songs from most of his discography throughout the set, with perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening being that “Mint Tea” was the only track off last year’s Johnny Blue Skies record, Passage du Desir, to make the cut. It does happen to be my favorite track on that record, so that was pretty cool to see.

My favorite Simpson album is 2014’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, which broke him to a bigger following after 2013’s more traditional sounding High Top Mountain. He performed four songs off this album on Saturday night, including the first three songs of his set, which was my favorite portion of his show. Those songs in order were, “Life of Sin,” always a great way to begin a show, “Turtles All the Way Down” and “Long White Line.” Later in the set, he performed a rocking performance of “It Ain’t All Flowers” that flowed flawlessly into a reggae-influenced cover of the Eddie Murphy 1985 hit “Party All the Time,” which was a No. 2 hit – yes, you read all of that right. It’s certainly been a surprise at Simpson shows since he broke it out recently.

Among other highlights during the set were “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)” from his 2016 Grammy Album of the Year-nominated A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, “Railroad of Sin” from High Top Mountain, “Best Clockmaker on Mars,” from his 2019 rock album Sound & Fury, and his consistently stellar performance of the William Bell/Otis Redding R&B/soul classic “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”  

Frankly, I would’ve preferred more Simpson songs instead of some of the jamming and the Murphy cover, but this is what Simpson has been bringing to his live shows lately and when you’re getting three hours’ worth of great music, allowing his repertoire to be thoroughly enjoyed I’m sure it’s a blast of a show.

It wasn’t too long ago that Simpson considered being done with the music business as a recording and touring artist. Then he seemingly stopped giving a damn and set out to do it the way he wanted to do it and it seems like jamming with some of his friends and fellow musicians has done a lot of good for him. I hope to catch one of those epic shows on tour when possible.