Back to Cuttin’ Grass

Although it’s taken him five albums to put out a project with the bluegrass arrangements to match, this is exactly what Sturgill Simpson has done on Cuttin’ Grass - Vol.1 and 2 (The Butcher Shoppe Sessions).  Bluegrass music has long been a part of Simpson’s upbringing—something he credits to his paternal grandfather. However, it took many years of pushing it away before bluegrass unexpectedly hit home. Sturgill’s grandfather (a World War II veteran and Purple Heart recipient assigned as an Army sniper in the South Pacific) happened to be an avid connoisseur of bluegrass, and an occasional mandolin player.  Simpson described his late grandfather, who passed away from complications with Alzheimer’s in 1999, as a quiet, reserved and widowed man who spent most of his life after the war at home alone in Knott County, Kentucky…except when he’d jump into his camper in the summer and travel around to bluegrass festivals, where he captured field recordings.  A