Watch Sturgill Simpson Cut Live Song in Historic Nashville Studio
As recently as 10 days ago, things were looking grim for RCA Studio A, the Nashville recording studio where dozens of country music’s biggest stars — from pioneers like Dolly Parton to torchbearers like Kacey Musgraves — recorded hits over the last half-century. Nashville’s music community spent the summer rallying behind the building, hoping to preserve a place that had played such an important role in shaping the city’s sound. One of those supporters was indie-minded country outlaw Sturgill Simpson, who visited the studio several weeks ago with his three-piece band — as well as Americana super-producer Dave Cobb — to record a pair of tunes.
One of those songs was a live cut of “Long White Line,” a Buford Abner original that rocks harder in its live incarnation than the twang-heavy studio cut that appears on Simpson’s award-winning Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Maybe the idea of playing in a soon-to-be-demolished building — which, thanks to a last-minute purchase by a Tennessee-based philanthropist named Aubrey Preston, wound up getting saved after all — put some extra swagger in the band’s performance.
Watch the clip above, and stay tuned all the way until the outro, where lead guitarist Laur Joamets — a native of Estonia — cranks up the reverb, slips on a glass slide and catapults the whole thing into outer space.
Simpson is currently on tour of the U.S. with his band. They perform in Atlanta tonight.