Austin City Limits showcases Sturgill Simpson Presents Johnny Blue Skies as the iconoclast returns for Austin City Limits Anniversary Season 50

Austin City Limits is proud to feature shapeshifter Sturgill Simpson in a highly-anticipated return to our stage for the first time in nearly a decade: presenting as “Johnny Blue Skies,” he brings songs from his recent album Passage Du Desir as well as tried-and-true numbers from the Simpson playbook. The new episode premieres Saturday, February 8 @8pm ET/7pm CT as part of Austin City Limits anniversary Season 50. ACL airs weekly on PBS stations nationwide (check local listings) and full episodes are made available to stream online at pbs.org/austincitylimits immediately following the initial broadcast. 2025 continues the yearlong 50th Anniversary of the revered music institution, which celebrates its extraordinary run as the longest-running music series in television history, providing viewers a front-row seat to the best in live performance for an incredible half-century.

It’s fitting that Sturgill Simpson—or is that “Johnny Blue Skies”?—is featured during Austin City Limits’ milestone Season 50; he is a singular artist who exemplifies the freewheeling, eclectic spirit that is in the series DNA. Respected, beloved and fiercely independent, Sturgill Simpson finally returns to ACL after making his series debut in 2015. He delivers a career-spanning set of musical highlights and choice selections from his first album in three years, Passage Du Desir, recorded under his Johnny Blue Skies moniker. 

A distinctly original artist, Simpson has relentlessly pushed against expectations, earning widespread acclaim and countless accolades including a Grammy Award in 2017 for Best Country Album and six Grammy nominations across four genres: country, rock, bluegrass and Americana. 

Simpson takes the ACL stage with a hot band—Laur Joamets (guitar), Miles Miller (drums), Kevin Black (bass) and Robbie Crowell (keys), and opens the captivating hour with a Passage Du Desir highlight, “Jupiter’s Faerie,” a beautiful tribute to a lost friend. The Kentucky native returns to, and expands upon, the metamodern country sounds that made him an outsider Nashville star in the early 2010s with a blistering take on his early career highlight “It Ain’t All Flowers,” driving the number into a psych-rock jam. He performs a trio of songs from 2019’s Sound & Fury, his red Gretsch blazing on the muscular, Southern soul burn “Best Clockmaker on Mars.” 

“Since this is the 50th season and the gentleman that started this show recorded this…we’re gonna play it,” says Simpson before launching into “I’d Have To Be Crazy,” a classic he included on his 2013 debut High Top Mountain. He pays tribute to the outlaw country scene that inspired him, acknowledging his debt to Willie Nelson, and to Austin cosmic cowboy Steve Fromholz, with an impassioned reading of the Fromholz-penned number Nelson made famous in the ‘70s; it’s a perfect showcase for Simpson’s rich, distinctive baritone. Simpson reaches back to his breakout debut for the racing rockabilly of big-finish set-closer “Railroad of Sin” as the fascinating hour reveals a genre-bending artist who’s still exploring and pushing the boundaries of where his music can go. 

Sturgill Simpson setlist:

Jupiter’s Faerie

Welcome To Earth (Pollywog)

It Ain’t All Flowers

Best Clockmaker On Mars

I Don’t Mind

All Said And Done

A Good Look

One For the Road

I’d Have To Be Crazy

Railroad of Sin

Season 50 Broadcast Schedule (Second Half):

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