Sturgill Simpson Joins The Black Keys In Nashville

Sturgill Simpson might be gearing up for his own tour as Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds this fall, but he joined the Black Keys Thursday night at Nashville’s the Pinnacle for a cover of the soul classic “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney played the first of two hometown dates to close out the North American leg of their Peaches n’ Kream run. Wielding his cherry Gibson guitar, Simpson reportedly came to the stage without any announcement from the band, helping to extend the song into a dynamic, nearly seven-minute psychedelic blues jam. The Keys were also joined by Marcus King for a cover of Willie Griffin’s “When There’s Smoke, There’s Fire.”

Contrary to previous rumors, Simpson and the Black Keys frontman have not previously collaborated. But Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds’ new LP, Mutiny After Midnight, was recorded at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Studios in Nashville. Auerbach and Simpson also both shared a close relationship with the late John Prine.

Simpson only recently made Mutiny After Midnight available to stream: it was originally only released in physical formats for purchase, to show “support and show solidarity with independent record shops and to promote an increasingly bygone physical and tangible connection between music and music fans,” he said in a statement at the time. It debuted at Number Three on the Billboard 200 albums chart, as the first physical-only release to achieve the feat since Taylor Swift’s Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions in 2023.

Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds, arguably the best live band around, will launch their Mutiny for the Masses tour this fall, kicking off Sept. 4 in Austin and wrapping in Oct. 30 in Simpson’s home state of Kentucky.