Sturgill Tells the Story: The Ballad of Dood & Juanita
Sturgill may have had the title for his latest concept album, The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, in his head for years, but he reportedly kept hitting a wall when it came to actually bringing the idea to fruition. Simpson stumbled upon inspiration during his recent drive home from Oklahoma after wrapping up filming for Sorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, in which Simpson co-stars. According to Simpson, the drive proved fateful when he found himself in the clutches of Willie’s 1975 conceptual masterpiece Red Headed Stranger. After listening to the album 7 or 8 times on repeat, he mentally blended the album’s style and purpose with a picture his wife had recently sent him of two antique Kentucky long rifles and his long-held notions of a tribute album for his grandfather Dood, whom fans met in Panbowl and came to know better in Hero. Sturgill says it took two days for the entire album to culminate lyrically, with Sturgill’s grandfather Dood stepping into somewhat of a historical fiction protagonist role and each supporting character, Sham, Sam, and Juanita, being paid homage with their own individual tune. With the writing done, Sturgill called upon the talented musicians who helped him create his last two bluegrass albums to help give his bird of a story a song in its throat. Willie even lent ol’ Dood a hand, cranking out a signature Spanish guitar solo on Trigger that deftly gives structure to our meeting with Juanita during the tune by that name. The entire process “from coming into [Sturgill’s] head and out of the speakers” took a mere five days.
Dubbed an ambitious collaboration of “traditional country, bluegrass, mountain music, gospel, and a cappella” by Sturgill’s camp, the album certainly maintains the inspired feel of cathartic artful genuinity that defines Sturgill’s body of work. We meet Dood, son of a mountain miner and a Shawnee maid, just as he finds his true love Juanita, with long black hair and blue eyes like the sea. A daughter and a son are born, and must’ve been playing in the house or woods when the bandit Seamus McClure rides up and shoots an unarmed Dood at his plow, making off with Juanita while Dood crumples to the ground. Sam, the Hound of Hounds and the Wonder of all Walkers, loyally licks ol’ Dood’s wound clean before he regains consciousness and waits patiently for Dood to come round. When Dood does, and upon noticing that Seamus’s lead ball passed "clean through," he wastes no time in saddling up Shamrock, a 19 hand mule with 32 inch ears and hooves a foot thick. After bidding his son to tend to his sister and assuring them both of his swift return with their mother, he begins the Kentucky civil-war era odyssey that will end with poor Sam running himself to death on McClure’s trail during the tune Played Out and the eventual rescue of Juanita, found intact and tearfully grateful with a camp of Cherokee who had traded McClure horses for her person. The Cherokee elder, seeing Dood to be half Shawnee, graciously grants the couple to return home in peace; however, peace just doesn’t sit right with Dood with Seamus still running the Kentucky hills freely, and after depositing his love at their home, continues to hunt the bandit. He finds him at night and delivers him to his maker with a death shot from 300 yards out, finishing him with his tomahawk when he noticed the bandit playing opossum and making ready with his knife to end ol’ Dood for good.
For those of us who, along with Sturgill, adored and somewhat idolized their grandfathers, the tale is markedly spun and threaded through the needle of the tales we heard as children on our grandfathers’ knees, as well as upon the classic western archetypes that so many of these men loved. During the prologue, I found my inner child pulling up a proverbial piece of carpet to sit cross legged at the album’s feet, eagerly awaiting Dood to tell me his adventure story via the adroit harmonies of Sturgill and company. Sifting through Sturgill’s own account of the album, one particular line struck a resonating chord wherein Simpson states, “I wanted to make something that really honored his memory, and that my grandmother could hear and know that he was still with her - and that he’ll find her again someday.” In the end, it seems this album wasn’t for us, Sturgill, the critics, or really even for Dood. This album is for Dood’s one true love, who like so many of us, is struggling to find her rhythm and place in a world without her heart’s closest companion.
Hold on, Juanita. He’s got Sham and Sam, a tomahawk and a flintlock rifle. He’ll find you again.
The album is available for download on nearly every platform. The vinyl is available for pre-order and is set to be distributed in December.
