The rise of Sturgill Simpson from acoustic guitar-picking barman to arena rocker was on full display Tuesday night at his first of two shows in Asheville. The North Carolina music hub welcomed the Kentucky crooner to the annoyingly named ExploreAsheville.com Arena, which once hosted a late-era Elvis concert.
There is a beauty in the ego death of the new Johnny Blue Skies moniker, and Sturgill clearly had no desire during the show to be anyone’s King. He was perfectly content just being one of the boys jamming underneath a beautifully mundane light setup that at no point offered the show’s namesake any sort of spotlight. In one of his rare interactions with the crowd, Simpson joked, “The last time we played here, we didn’t get to play here,” referencing his 2024 arena show thwarted by Hurricane Helene and moved across the state to Cary.
“Living the Dream” kicked off the show with a polite introduction to the Southern crowd, before Metamodern Sounds in Country Music cut “Life of Sin” arrived in the number two slot. The diversity of Mr. Blue Skies’ catalog was on display as the Japanese anime-soundtracked psychedelic groove of “Make Art Not Friends” followed. Tuesday marked the Sound & Fury standout’s third performance since Simpson took it off the bench for a five-year hiatus.
From there, the arena floor quickly filled up with fans raising their cups and hollering out as one song transitioned to the next. The fans in the lower-level chairs and upper stands remained seated for much of the show, but were completely engaged in a family at MerleFest vibe. Whether sitting or standing, drinking or toking, dancing or guffawing, the early weekday crowd represented Asheville well. But Simpson himself was unaffected by the crowd, very much content to segue from one song to the next without the need for the crowd to acknowledge him, and vice versa.
Traditional bluegrass was given the lysergic treatment with two back-to-back covers of obscure (yet influential) duo Moore & Napier before Simpson landed back in his catalog with “Brace for Impact (Live A Little)”. The Sailor’s Guide To Earth track even had a “China Cat Sunflower” tease in the extended jam, confirming that overall-clad ‘shine swillers with farmers’ tans could indeed co-exist next to stoned heads in tie-dye Grateful Dead gear.
Simpson and guitarist Laur Joamets destroyed any notion of lead and rhythm guitar, becoming a two-headed, twelve-stringed monster, particularly on the recent “Who I Am” and the well-aged Metamodern Sounds deep cut “It Ain’t All Flowers”. Johny Blue Skies himself took lead on Passage du Desir favorite “Scooter Blues”, with the floor crowd seemingly syncing up for a collective head nod. During another rare monologue, Simpson teased that it was about time for the band to get back in the studio once this tour is over next week.
The soft-spoken leader’s lack of ego ensured that each member of the band put their spin on Sturgill’s songbook. Drummer Miles Miller and bassist Kevin Black held down a pumping and thumping rhythmic pulse, providing a steady groove for a full three hours. Robbie Crowell added organ and keys flourishes to the jams, but his sporadic saxophone solos drew the most attention from the Asheville crowd, whose hoots and cheers did their best to drown out the one-man horn section.
But there was no doubt this was indeed a Sturgill Simpson concert. A late-set run of covers spanned quite possibly the most distance between influences imaginable, with Strugill’s song-redefining take on Nirvana’s “In Bloom”, to ’80s synth jam “The Promise”, to the are you f**king kidding me Eddie Murphy cheese pop song “Party All The Time” (played in reggae style). It did not matter in the slightest who is credited with writing the song—Johnny Blue Skies, Kurt Cobain, Moore & Napier, or even Rick James—every song became unmistakably that of John Sturgill Simpson.
Sound & Fury‘s penultimate track “Fastest Horse In Town” brought the show galloping to the finish line with one final dual guitar jam before Simpson and pals nonchalantly gave a polite farewell and shuffled offstage at 11 p.m. on the dot.
Simpson has such a deep catalog that he didn’t even get around to playing the recently unshelved fan favorite “You Can Have The Crown”, but certainly expressed the same sentiment throughout the marathon three-hour set. Take it, it’s yours. Sturgill does not need crowns or accolades.
Rarely does someone so uninterested in being the center of attention command an audience as easily as Sturgill Simpson did on Tuesday night. Sure, the King of Graceland may have once graced the same stage in The Land of the Sky at one point, but Tuesday in Asheville clearly belonged to the self-effacing “King Turd of Shit Mountain”.
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Sturgill Simpson will wrap his tour this week with shows in Charleston, SC and finally Columbia, MD. He has a few sporadic dates throughout the summer, including festival sets at FairWell in Redmond, OR (7/19) and Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville (9/11–9/14, exact date not yet confirmed), and he’ll open for Dead & Company in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (8/2). Find tickets and tour dates here.
Setlist: Sturgill Simpson | ExploreAsheville.com Arena | Asheville, NC | 5/20/25
Set: Living the Dream, Life of Sin, Make Art Not Friends, Pinball Blues (Moore & Napier) > Long White Line (Moore & Napier), Brace for Impact (Live a Little) [1] -> All Around You, Breakers Roar, Who I Am, Right Kind of Dream > All Said and Done, If the Sun Never Rises Again, Turtles All the Way Down, One for the Road, Water in a Well, Welcome to Earth (Pollywog), Jupiter’s Faerie, Scooter Blues, It Ain’t All Flowers -> Party All the Time (Eddie Murphy), Best Clockmaker on Mars [2], I Don’t Mind, In Bloom (Nirvana), A Good Look [3] -> Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton) [4] -> A Good Look, The Promise (When in Rome), Fastest Horse in Town
[1] w/ “China Cat Sunflower” tease
[2] w/ “Bulls on Parade” snippet at end
[3] w/ “La Grange” (ZZ Top) riff
[4] First two verses & chorus