{"id":380494,"date":"2026-10-23T05:25:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T05:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/380494\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T05:25:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T05:25:46","slug":"johnny-blue-skies-and-the-dark-clouds-outlast-brooklyn-we-play-as-long-as-the-curfew-allows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/380494\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds outlast Brooklyn: \u201cWe play as long as the curfew allows.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thoroughly enjoyed Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds at Barclay\u2019s Center last Friday. So much so that I called up guitarist Laur Joamets to discuss the show and the band. I\u2019ve gotten to know Laur since I reached out to him on social media a couple years ago after being so impressed by his playing. I am really looking forward to his solo album, Foreign Feathers, which will be out at the end of next month. Stay tuned for more on that. <\/p>\n

This article was commissioned by Live for Live Music,<\/a> where I will be contributing regularly.<\/a> You can see that here. Read my earlier feature interview with Laur here<\/a>. Share this post if you enjoy it, and please subscribe while you\u2019re here! <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Photo by Charley Crespo<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure whether or not Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds are a jam band, but they are definitely the best jamming band on the road right now. That fact was underlined by their performance last Friday, October 16 at Barclay\u2019s Center in Brooklyn. <\/p>\n

The Dark Clouds came out promptly at 8:00 PM, lit into \u201cLong White Line\u201d with nary a word and basically didn\u2019t stop playing for three hours, with every song segueing into the next via extended jams. The studio version of their setlist clocks in at 2:15<\/a>, or 45 minutes less than they played.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe play as long as the curfew allows,\u201d says guitarist Laur Joamets, who spent the night leaning on a stool, his left leg in a walking boot thanks to a hairline fracture of the fibula.<\/p>\n

Sturgill Simpson was a rising star when he stopped touring in 2021. He returned three years later under a new name, Johnny Blue Skies. The name was ambiguous, but the music was not. Over the course of two albums, 2024\u2019s Passage du Desir and last March\u2019s Mutiny After Midnight, and the tours that have followed, the band featuring Joamets, bassist Kevin Black, keyboardist\/saxophonist Robbie Crowell and drummer Miles Miller have returned to being a formidable, hard-hitting quintet.<\/p>\n

In Brooklyn, the band\u2019s relentless, dynamic performance was thorough and career-spanning, including \u201cSitting Here Without You\u201d from Simpson\u2019s 2013 debut High Top Mountain and seven songs from Mutiny. The sound was remarkably crisp and separate, like listening to an excellent, very loud stereo, giving each instrument room to breathe and stand out. Kudos to sound man Chris Mitchell.<\/p>\n

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One could hear the clear separation between Joamets and Simpson\u2019s guitars. The latter mostly played a red Gibson 335, with hard-driving rhythm that sometimes pounded like Roy Clark backing Al Green. The two guitarists played beautifully together, sometimes in unison, sometimes in a push and pull or call and response.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just listen to each other,\u201d says Joamets. \u201cStu is a great guitarist. There was a track on the last album where i had layered so many guitars and I really thought they were done, that there was nothing left to add, but Stu came up with a part that was so necessary and very percussive. I was wowed by his ability to hear something missing and lay it down. That\u2019s just how we work. We try to finish and complete what the other guy is playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

An hour into the show, Simpson switched to a Les Paul without the music pausing, for a few songs, and his playing became heavier and less funk-driven. \u201cHe\u2019s more aggressive and plays bigger chords on that guitar, which is tuned to some sort of mountain Open G that I think Stu made up himself,\u201d says Joamets. \u201cIt serves a similar purpose to Keith Richards\u2019 Open G thing, but it\u2019s totally original to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joamets says that the jamming transitions, which create a musical suite, developed during the Passage du Desir tour. \u201cWe never really had a conversation about it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just started happening.\u201d They are aided by their in-ear monitors and the fact that Simpson and Miller have microphones that can connect directly to the band, helping guide each other.<\/p>\n

The setlists, which change every night, are usually written by Simpson or Miller. They all get them about an hour before the show, then meet up in the warmup room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose transitions are super necessary to rehearse, especially for the rhythm section,\u201d says Joamets. \u201cI honestly don\u2019t know how Miles and Kevin do it, because they steer the ship. I can always just sit out for a second, but they don\u2019t have that luxury. Miles is probably the most musical drummer that I know of. He\u2019s a great songwriter and singer and plays most of the instruments on his solo albums [Mr. Runaway, 2025 and Solid Gold, 2023]. He\u2019s a very intentional player – there\u2019s a reason for everything he does, and he plays music, not drums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the transitions develop into full songs. In Brooklyn, in between \u201cBrace For Impact\u201d and \u201cWelcome to Earth,\u201d two songs from 2016\u2019s A Sailor\u2019s Guide To Earth, they played Creedence Clearwater Revival\u2019s \u201cRamble Tamble,\u201d which Joamets says they sort of stumbled into during a soundcheck rehearsal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat jam was developing and Stu just asked, \u2018What are we doing with this? It sounds familiar,\u2019\u201d Joamets says. \u201cSomeone said \u2018Ramble Tamble\u2019 and, bam, we were playing it. Who doesn\u2019t love CCR?\u201d<\/p>\n

The setlist in Brooklyn<\/a> was on point, moving from outlaw country to funky dance grooves, deep blues with echoes of Gov\u2019t Mule, psychedelic rock that evoked Pink Floyd and headbanging metal. It felt seamless and whole to me, so I asked Joamets if it felt as good to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the thing about setlists is they reveal themselves on stage and it\u2019s totally subjective how good or bad they are. I enjoy the fact that they\u2019re different every night. As my friend Audley Freed (currently playing with Sheryl Crow) says, you can\u2019t be objective about what\u2019s happening on stage because you\u2019re so in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, he adds, the group is in such a strong, consistent groove together that the floor is 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.<\/p>\n

They do a mean cover of Nirvana\u2019s In Bloom\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you play that long together, you establish almost a telepathy,\u201d says Joamets, whose debut solo album Foreign Feathers will be released in late November. \u201cThe band gets so tight that things can just happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just about anyone seeing Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds on this tour understands what he means, certainly anyone who was in Brooklyn. My friend Janine, a music fanatic who goes to more shows than anyone I know and was riding the rail at Barclays, texted me an hour into the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am BLOWN AWAY. Where do we put him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWrong question,\u201d I responded. \u201c\u201cDon\u2019t think about that. He just is what he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leave a comment<\/a><\/p>\n

Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s<\/a> was my third straight book to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan<\/a> and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band<\/a>. My first book was Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing<\/a>, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band. It was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman\u2019s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer who fronts two bands, Big in China<\/a> and Friends of the Brothers<\/a>, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I thoroughly enjoyed Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds at Barclay\u2019s Center last Friday. So much so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-380494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}