Sturgill Simpson Goes Off the Rails With ‘Life of Sin’ Performance
If you’ve caught Sturgill Simpson in concert in support of his buzzed-about album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, you’ve no doubt witnessed him let loose on the microphone. Even on his most subdued performances or during shows where he’s nearly losing his voice — as happened at a standing-room-only gig at Nashville’s Station Inn back in May — Simpson can’t resist a meter-spiking growl. In this exclusive performance of “Life of Sin,” produced by acoustic guitar pickup manufacturer LR Baggs, the Kentucky country singer doesn’t disappoint. Although Simpson and his band start out the Metamodern track more subdued than the album version, it all goes to hillbilly heaven around the minute-and-a-half mark.
Simpson filmed the stripped-down but no less ferocious “Life of Sin” inside Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where many of the songs that make up the fabric of country music have been recorded and where some of his own influences made their albums.
“I wanted to capture a more reflective, softer, intimate side of the song,” he says. “I’m not sure how much of that was the influence of the room or my own short attention span. I think it fleshed out a lot of my obsession with all the late Sixties Marty Robbins and Merle and the Strangers albums I love so much.”
Simpson is scheduled to perform tomorrow night at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, before heading north for shows in Canada and New York with the Zac Brown Band.