North Charleston, South Carolina (2020)

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.