Sturgill Simpson A Sailor's Guide to Earth

Sturgill Simpson has announced the follow-up to his 2014 album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. It's called A Sailor's Guide to Earth and it's out April 15 on Atlantic. Simpson self-produced A Sailor's Guide to Earth. It was recorded primarily at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville with engineer David Ferguson (Johnny Cash, John Prine) and assistant engineer Sean Sullivan. The album features Simpson's touring band, as well as Dave Roe on bass, Dan Dugmore on steel guitar, Dougie Wilkinson on bagpipes, Garo Yellin and Arthur Cook on cello, Jonathan Dinklage and Whitney LaGrange on violin, and special guests the Dap-Kings.

In a press release, Simpson discussed his inspiration for the record:

I really questioned whether I wanted to spend however many more years on this bus, not being there and seeing all that was happening. That’s where this record came from, just processing all that guilt and homesickness. I had to figure out a way to put that into music, so I decided to write the whole record from the perspective of a sailor going to sea and not knowing if he's ever coming home.

I remembered an old letter that I read, written by my Grandfather Ora to my grandmother when he was in the Army. He was in the South Pacific during World War II, and he thought he was going to die. So he wrote a goodbye letter to her and their newborn son. He finally made it home five years later.

I knew I wanted to make a concept record in song-cycle form, like my favorite Marvin Gaye records where everything just continuously flows. I also wanted it to be something that when my son is older and maybe I'm gone, he can listen to it and get a sense of who I was. I just wanted to talk as directly to him as possible.

01 Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)
02 Breakers Roar
03 Keep It Between the Lines
04 Sea Stories
05 In Bloom
06 Brace for Impact (Live a Little)
07 All Around You
08 Oh Sarah
09 Call to Arms

There's a "first listen" stream of the album available now on NPR.