All Around You - Sturgill Simpson
To celebrate our next LCM featured artist winning a Grammy for best 'Country album' and also nominated for 'Album of the year'. Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is the new single 'All Around You' by Sturgill Simpson from his excellent 'A Sailor's Guide To Earth' album. A perfect slice of Country soul and blues. https://youtu.be/wdlk3W_pfcI
Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is the rare album that traverses the entire world, both musically and lyrically. It’s dizzyingly diverse, jumping from one style to the next, with ports of call in Motor City and Music Row, Harlem and Stax, Berlin and London, yet it never leaves Simpson’s very specific point of view. It’s his most personal album as well as his most ambitious: a song cycle penned as a sailor’s poignant letter home to the wife and child he left behind.
Aptly, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is all over the map, presenting Simpson as music’s most daring auteur. He combines the sophisticated soul of 70s Motown, the stomping r&b flash of the Dap-Kings, the reckless rave-ups of the Stones and the Clash, even the countrypolitan flare of legendary Nashville producer Owen Bradley. “I wanted it to be an exploration of all the different types of music that I love—a musical journey,” he says. “I listen to a lot of Marvin Gaye, a lot of Bill Withers. I like the way George Harrison sings and tried to incorporate that. Some people will say I’m trying to run from country, but I’m never going to make anything other than a country record. As soon as I open my mouth, it’s going to be a country song.”
On A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, Simpson comes across as a man torn between the lure of the road and the security of home, between his love of family and his responsibilities to them, to himself, to his art. “I know what music has done for me in my life in terms of offering some kind of direction and comfort,” he says. “I might be out there in the middle of tour wondering how I’m going to keep doing this when I’m missing everything at home. But it’s also making a lot of people happy that I’ve never met before. So it’s worth it. I think my wife understands that. Hopefully my son will too. When he’s old enough, maybe he can come with me.”