Stuart Duncan, Tim O’Brien, Sierra Hull, Scott Vestal, Sturgill Simpson, Miles Miller, Mike Bub, Mark Howard (photo credit: Semi Song)


Sturgill Simpson is the featured cover artist for the January/February edition of Relix magazine. In an interview with Relix, Simpson discusses his recent bluegrass records Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, his 2019 album Sound & Fury and its accompanying film and much more.

In the fall and winter of 2020, Simpson released two bluegrass records, titled Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions and Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 2: The Cowboy Arms Sessions. The albums contained reworked versions of songs on his previous albums. Simpson recruited lauded acoustic pickers such as Stuart Duncan, Tim O’Brien, Sierra Hull and more to contribute. Simpson shares his thoughts on the two records in the Relix piece.

“To me, the most fun part about making those records was just being in the room. I felt so confident having that level of musicianship moving underneath me because that makes it very easy to strum my guitar and sing,” he said. “That’s the easiest way I can describe it. We didn’t go back and punch solos or anything— whatever they played is what you hear on the record.”

Simpson also looks back on his 2019 album Sound & Fury and its accompanying film. “The film came about because I made this record and I was like, ‘This isn’t weird enough,'” he explains. “I was inspired to make the record by reading Macbeth and watching Akira Kurosawa films, if you had to whittle it down. I was high as hell on edibles, recovering from a sinus surgery. And I was just like, ‘I’m going to make a homage to Billy Gibbons and Eliminator, one of my favorite records when I was a kid. But I want to put a visual landscape to it because this is a visual age.'”

After the piece was released in print, Simpson wrote a note regarding it on his Instagram account (which he often resets), commenting, “I don’t do many interviews anymore but this one was highly enjoyable since he [Relix editor-in-chief Dean Budnick] actually asked me questions about music and other topics I find interesting,” he wrote. “It was honestly a very refreshing conversation.”

Read the full piece here. To subscribe and receive the Jan/Feb issue as your first, head to relix.com/sturgill and use the code STURGILL. $5 from all subscriptions will be donated to the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.