Sturgill Simpson was a rising star of Americana when he abruptly stopped touring in 2021. He returned three years later under a new moniker: Johnny Blue Skies. The name was ambiguous, but the music was decidedly not. Over the course of two albums, 2024’s Passage du Desir and last March’s Mutiny After Midnight—and the tours that have followed—the Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds band, featuring Estonian guitar virtuoso Laur Joamets, bassist Kevin Black, keyboardist/saxophonist Robbie Crowell, and drummer Miles Miller, have evolved into a formidable, hard-hitting quintet capable of some of the finest extemporaneous playing on the planet. 

That fact was underlined by their superb, three-hour show last Friday, October 16th at the massive Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn, NY. The Dark Clouds came out promptly at 8:00 p.m., lit into “Long White Line” with nary a word, and barely paused for air over the next three hours, each song segueing into the next via extended jams that never seemed to lack real substance. Interestingly, the studio version of their setlist clocks in at 2 hours and 15 minutes, or 45 minutes less than they played at Barclays Center.

“We just play as long as the curfew allows,” shrugged guitarist Joamets, who spent the night leaning on a stool, his left leg in a walking boot thanks to a hairline fracture of the fibula. 

The band’s relentless, even tireless set was thorough and career-spanning, including “Sitting Here Without You” from Simpson’s 2013 debut High Top Mountain and seven songs from JBS’s Mutiny. The sound was remarkably crisp and well-separated, like listening to an excellent, very loud stereo, giving each instrument room to breathe and stand out. Kudos to front-of-house engineer Chris Mitchell. 

One could easily hear the distinction between Joamets and Simpson’s guitars. The latter mostly leaned on a red Gibson 335, knocking out hard-driving rhythms that pounded like country picker Roy Clark backing soul king Al Green. The two guitarists played off each other in dynamic fashion, sometimes in unison, and at other times in a kind of push-and-pull or call-and-response exchange. 

Johnny Blue Skies: “Sitting Here Without You” | 10/16/26

Video: Sean Goes To Concerts

“We just listen really well to each other,” said Joamets. “Sturgill is a great guitarist, both live and in the studio. There was a track on the last album where I had layered so many guitars that I really thought there was nothing left to add. Somehow, Stu came up with an additional part that was really percussive, and completely necessary to complete the song. I was wowed by his ability to hear that something was missing, and then just lay it down like that. That’s just how we work. We try to finish and complete what the other guy is playing.”

An hour into the show, Simpson switched to a Gibson Les Paul for a few songs without so much as a break in the groove, and his playing pivoted to a heavier rock sound, less funk-driven. “He’s more aggressive and plays bigger chords on that Les Paul, which is tuned to some sort of mountain-music open-G that I think Stu made up himself,” Joamets offered. “It serves a similar purpose to Keith Richards’ open-G tuning, but it’s totally original to Sturgill.”

Johnny Blue Skies | “The Fastest Horse In Town” | Barclays Center | Brooklyn, NY | 10/16/26

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Joamets said that the jamming transitions, which create a musical suite out of disparate songs, developed during the Passage du Desir tour. “We never really had a conversation about it,” he said. “It just started happening.” The band is aided by in-ear monitors and the fact that both Simpson and Miller wear microphones that can connect directly to the other band members, helping them guide each other through thick improv sections.

The setlists, which change every night, are usually written by Simpson or Miller. Each band member gets a copy of the setlist about an hour before the show, then all hands meet up backstage for a pre-show warmup. “It’s absolutely necessary to rehearse those transitions,” said Joamets, “especially for the rhythm section. I honestly don’t know how Miles and Kevin do it, because they’re responsible for steering the ship. I can always just sit out for a second, and get the lay of the land, but they don’t have that luxury. 

“Miles is probably the most musical drummer that I know of. He’s a great songwriter and singer and plays most of the instruments on his solo albums [Mr. Runaway, 2025 and Solid Gold, 2023]. He’s a very intentional player; there’s always a good reason for everything he plays. I like to say he plays music, not drums.”

Some of the transitions have even developed into full songs. In Brooklyn, in between “Brace For Impact” and “Welcome to Earth”—two songs from 2016’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth—they interjected a quick take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Ramble Tamble,” which Joamets said they virtually stumbled into during a soundcheck rehearsal jam. “That jam was developing into something familiar, and Stu just asked, ‘What are we doing with this?’” Joamets recalled. “Someone shouted ‘Ramble Tamble’ and, bam, we were playing it. C’mon—who doesn’t love CCR?”

The setlist in Brooklyn galloped from outlaw country to funky dance grooves; deep blues with echoes of Gov’t Mule to airy psychedelic rock reminiscent of Pink Floyd; and even some surprisingly convincing heavy metal. That’s an eclectic mix, to be sure, but somehow the entire show felt unified, not disjointed. “The thing about setlists,” Joamets opined, “is that they reveal themselves on stage, and it’s totally subjective how good or bad they are. I enjoy the fact that they’re different every night. As my friend Audley Freed [currently playing with Sheryl Crow] likes to say, you really can’t be objective about what’s happening on stage because you’re so in the moment.”

But, he adds, Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds are currently in such a strong, consistent groove together that the bar for improvised quality is set very high. When a band is hitting the note together like that, there are no bad nights; they start with good and get better from there. “If you play that long together, you establish a kind of telepathy,” suggested Joamets, whose debut solo album, Foreign Feathers, is set for release in late November. “The band gets so tight and connected that those great moments can simply happen.”

Johnny Blue Skies: “Viridescent”>”Sitting Here Without You” | 10/16/26

Video: Radarosen

Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds will continue their fall U.S. tour through October 30th. For a full schedule, click here.