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"Don&amp;apos;t count on Sturgill Simpson to do anything by the book.\r\n\r\nTen months after the independent release of&amp;#xA0;Metamodern Sounds in Country Music&amp;#xA0;&amp;#x2014; an album that was recorded in less than a week, with a budget of $4,000 and an Estonian lead guitarist who&amp;apos;d grown up playing blues and rock &amp;amp; roll instead of country &amp;#x2014; the singer has signed a major-label deal with Atlantic Records. The news arrives on the tail end of a busy year that also&amp;#xA0;included a surprise Grammy nomination, multiple late-night TV appearances and a win at the 2014 Americana Music Awards. Not to mention acclaim from virtually all corners of the music-loving public, from cowboy-hatted country fanatics who herald Simpson as the next Waylon Jennings to psychedelic hippies who are familiar with the &amp;quot;reptile aliens made of light&amp;quot; mentioned in&amp;#xA0;Metamodern&amp;apos;s lead-off&amp;#xA0;track, &amp;quot;Turtles All the Way Down.&amp;quot;\r\nWhile Simpson&amp;apos;s publicist confirmed the signing to Rolling Stone Country today,&amp;#xA0;country-music blog Saving Country Music&amp;#xA0;began&amp;#xA0;putting the pieces together last night by pointing out a list of Atlantic artists on the label&amp;apos;s website, Simpson among them, slated to play Coachella. Then&amp;#xA0;Simpson&amp;apos;s&amp;#xA0;Facebook page made&amp;#xA0;it official by uploading&amp;#xA0;an image of an old-school 45 record with the artist&amp;apos;s name printed beneath the Atlantic logo. The image also&amp;#xA0;included a list&amp;#xA0;of icons who&amp;apos;ve recorded for the label, including the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles&amp;#xA0;(another artist who explored modern sounds in country music) and fellow country rule-breaker Willie Nelson.&amp;#xA0;\r\nSimpson will spend much of 2015 on the road, playing a handful of festivals &amp;#x2014; including Coachella, Stagecoach and Bonnaroo &amp;#x2014;&amp;#xA0;and, in the final show currently listed on his website, opening up for the Avett Brothers&amp;#xA0;at Red Rocks Amphitheater this summer. In the meantime, he&amp;apos;s already begun working on a new record with Dave Cobb, who produced&amp;#xA0;Metamodern Sounds in Country Music&amp;#xA0;and 2013&amp;apos;s&amp;#xA0;High Top Mountain.&amp;#xA0;\r\n&amp;quot;Sturgill is in his prime and we&amp;apos;re going to capitalize on that,&amp;quot; Cobb told&amp;#xA0;Rolling Stone Country&amp;#xA0;last&amp;#xA0;summer.&amp;#xA0;&amp;quot;We&amp;apos;re already doing something totally different, and it will probably make a lot of people mad.&amp;#xA0;It&amp;apos;s already crazy.&amp;#xA0;We&amp;apos;ve already plotted it and started it.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sturgill-simpson-signs-major-label-deal-with-atlantic-20150116>