March 13, 2021

I’ll have to write more about this some other time, but just stumbled across this article.

Back in the early days before Social Media, “blogging” was the new thing.

I admit I got a bit sucked into it.

I had one blog for which I would spend literal hours writing posts. My wife would get so annoyed and shamed me constantly. And she was right.

After that, I decided really to limit how much time I spent writing things as I have so many more important items on my personal agenda.

But because it was a new thing, it allowed people in similar geographic locations to form friendships they normally would never have had. To this day I have three individuals whom I met through my first blog whom I consider to be friends – two of them I consider to be close friends. And I’ve been in their physical presence very few times.

The free daily Metro commute newspaper that was a product of the Washington Post even used to devote the back page of its issues to what local bloggers were saying. My blog was quoted on several occasions.

In fact, I was seen as one of the minor “leaders” of this movement, loosely called DC Bloggers. (And when I say “leader,” I mean I was well known. Because I wrote regularly. And people thought I was crazy.)

The undisputed leader, however, was this guy named Roosh.

We talked back channel several times via our blogs and I met him and the other bloggers in person once at a Happy Hour in downtown DC.

(That really made my wife mad. She was like, “Why are you meeting up with these people you don’t even know?”)

I won’t even go into how he obtained that position or his personality or what happened to him as I have better things to do with my life, but this article will tell you what became of him.

He’s actually pretty famous. Or infamous.

But I remember him when he was just getting started.

He was a dickhead then and is apparently still a dickhead.

One year ago yesterday I was fortunate enough to see Sturgill Simpson and his amazing band on the final show of what was promising to be a massive tour for him.

He had last released an album, “A Sailor’s Guide To Earth,” in 2016 and it was critically lauded.

He toured relentlessly and was massively feted by the media, but due to his innately taciturn nature, soon burned out and wanted nothing to do with any of that.

He poured all his hatred and loathing into an album called “Sound & Fury” that could not have been sonically more opposite of “A Sailor’s Guide.” It was abrasive and raw. Some called it a combination of a Spaghetti Western, Black Sabbath, and Wu-Tang Clan.

It was absolutely unbelievable. My favorite album of 2019.

Upon its release in September, I listened to it from beginning to end over and over.

In today’s age of digital music and mp3s, no one does that anymore. You listen to singles. You don’t listen to an entire album from beginning to end.

But I did it for this one.

At the same time, he released an entire Japanese anime movie set to the music of the album.

I watched that thing four times, including once while working out on the rower. Sat through the whole movie. 45 minutes worth. Couldn’t turn it off it was so good.

Around December 2019 he announced he was going on tour.

My friends and I who were all fans excitedly sat at our computers, waiting for the moment Ticketmaster opened up sales for shows in different cities. But I’d get to see him first as North Charleston was the ninth city on the tour.

In seconds, all of the prime floor seats were gobbled up, but I managed to get one to the left of the stage. I’d spent hours watching bootleg videos of his prior shows to notice he favored the left side of the stage so I figured I’d have a great view even from the seats of the coliseum.

He had assembled an amazing backing band and you could tell he was serious about ripping the face off the music world.

He even had his band outfitted with matching red and black Las Vegas Cowboy Elvis suits. For the first eight days of the tour they wore the red ones with black highlights. For the North Charleston gig I saw, he switched to black ones with red highlights. They looked completely badass.

Momentum was really building for him. Tyler Childers was opening for him and the hype Sturgill had generated in 2016 was beginning to repeat itself. Except this time he had an agenda. He wasn’t kissing anybody’s ass. He was going to tell everyone exactly what he thought of them and if they didn’t like it, well, they could go fuck themselves.

However, rumors of the lethality of the Coronavirus were slowly making their way to the United States after seeing terrifying images from China and Iran. I began to wonder if I should even go to the concert.

The show was on a Tuesday night, so after asking nicely, my wife kindly let me go. I reserved a hotel room a short walk from the coliseum and had the most amazing time. The concert was one of the best I’d ever seen. I screamed my fool head off and acted like a complete fanboy dork after giving myself permission not to worry about what anyone else thought

After this show, they cancelled the tour.

The whole thing.

All of that work. All of that preparation. All of that talent. Possibly never to be assembled again. Because of COVID-19.

I was so fortunate to be able to go. Yesterday I saw his amazing bass player, Chuck Bartles, made a post on Instagram about how North Charleston was the last show he had played at and I commented that I had been there and the band had been out of this world. He gave it a like.

And that whole tour and concert and their negation are one of those things where I really think, “If only…”

LINK from a previous show on the tour.