Sturgill Simpson Cuttin' Grass - Vol. 1 (The Butcher Shoppe Sessions) 2LP

2021 Americana Music Association Award Nominee For Album Of The Year!

Since breaking through in 2014 with his Grammy nominated Metamodern Sounds In Country Music album, Sturgill Simpson has established himself as one of the most daring and most acclaimed artists of our time. His music stretches across genres and styles, from the psychedelic soul of 2016's A Sailor's Guide To Earth (Grammy nominated for Album of the Year and winner for Best Country Album) to the fuzzed-out rock attack of Sound & Fury in 2019. Now Simpson returns to the music of his native Kentucky with his first bluegrass project, Cuttin' Grass - Vol. 1 (The Butcher Shoppe Sessions). The album, which he calls "a mixtape for the fans," was dreamed up while he was recovering from Coronavirus, and sees him reimagining songs from across his catalogue backed by some of Nashville's finest acoustic virtuosos.

"All the songs I've ever written were written on one guitar, my old Martin D-28, and sung in a fashion that's probably closer to bluegrass than to anything else," Simpson explains. "I had it in my mind for a long time that someday I want to cut as many of these songs as possible in this fashion, just organic and stripped down to the raw bones of the composition. If you can't sit down and play a song like that, it's probably a pretty shitty song."

Cuttin' Grass was produced by Sturgill Simpson and Dave Ferguson, and features a bluegrass supergroup backing band including Mark Howard, Scott Vestal, Mike Bub, Tim O'Brien, Miles Miller, Stuart Duncan and Sierra Hull.

Simpson lovers will enjoy tracing the way this band's work both transforms and highlights what's great about Simpson's songs. The players he and Ferguson have gathered are Olympian in prowess, but graceful and flexible in the way they use their chops to adapt these songs. The big-band vibe of Simpson's Sailor's Guide ballad for his first-born son, 'All Around You,' becomes sweeter adhering to the patterns of a country waltz. The simmering ballad 'Just Let Go,' from Metamodern Sounds, gains swing from Stuart Duncan's fiddle and Sierra Hull's mandolin. 'Living the Dream,' a citified blues, goes rural under the guidance of banjoist Scott Vestal. The Kris Kristofferson-esque 'Turtles All the Way Down,' the signature song of his psychedelia-influenced phase, is now redolent of Bill Monroe - precise, but like a jazz dance, every step offering a little twist.