After reports circulated this week that Johnny Blue Skies (the artist formerly known as Sturgill Simpson) had something cooking with The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, the reclusive country singer-songwriter made a rare post on social media to set the record straight.
Late last year, The Tennessean published a profile of Auerbach, proprietor of Nashville’s Easy Eye Sound. Per Whiskeyriff, the paywalled piece states, “In 2026, Auerbach’s got work on the horizon with Sturgill Simpson.” Regardless of that sentence’s brevity and vagueness, it was enough for several outlets to pounce on, touting that Sturgill Simpson and Dan Auerbach were working on a project together.
Johnny Blue Skies, who recently launched a new official Instagram page to further cement his new moniker, took that personally.
“Fake news!!” JBS wrote late Monday evening. “Although it prolly wouldn’t suck, Dan Auerbach and Johnny B & The DC’s have not worked together… But the band did hi-jack and pop the cherry shit out of his new studio months back[.]”
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The post also included a photo of Simpson Blue Skies in a recording studio, with the Easy Eye Sound insignia clearly visible on the mantle. The caption “Keep holdin’ yer horses,” refers back to the inaugural post on the JBS Instagram (one of only three in four months), with his newly adopted skeleton horesmen imagery and the slogan, “Hold Yer Horses”.
Two weeks after making that initial post, Johnny Blue Skies and his backing band, The Dark Clouds, closed their Who the F–k is Johnny Blue Skies world tour at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. During the nearly four-hour, no-set-break concert, the bandleader revealed that their new album was already finished and “in the can,” before calling out “all the record labels out there acting like record labels that wanna f–k around. F–k around. Find out. I just wanna make America f–k again.”
Sturgill Simpson — “Brace For Impact (Live A Little)” — 9/17/25
[Video: Royce Witherspoon]
Johnny Blue Skies, Sturgill Simpson, or whatever you wanna call him, has no tour dates on the calendar. The singer-songwriter returned from a three-year vocal injury-induced touring hiatus in 2024 with his new name, plus a gorgeous studio album, Passage du Desir.
While we patiently await more breadcrumbs, fans can listen back to shows from the kerosene-soaked two years JBS and The DCs just spent on the road via nugs. Not a nugs subscriber yet? Sign up here for unlimited access to audio from thousands of live concerts by hundreds of artists, plus weekly subscriber-exclusive livestreams, all at no additional cost. Start streaming today.
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