Johnny Blue Skies Plays Three Hours in Columbus, and the Jams Are the Weakest Part

The Mutiny For The Masses tour came with terms attached. The announcement for this year’s Johnny Blue Skies album, Mutiny After Midnight, promised arenas and theaters played “with a vengeance,” no opening act, and every minute the venue would allow. Wednesday night at Columbus’s Nationwide Arena, Sturgill Simpson and his band honored that commitment, roughly three hours of it, in a room that was only half full.

The set opened on a descending guitar riff heavy enough for doom metal, then a disco ball rose while Simpson played a smoky blues solo over jazz chords. That resolved into the syncopated groove of “Venus,” his Kentucky twang landing country to the bone on top of it. It was a fair overture for a night that moved across outlaw country, bluegrass, and several kinds of dance music without asking permission.

The sprawl cut both ways. “Venus” stretched past twelve minutes, gathering a saxophone solo and a double-time beat from drummer Miles Miller, while the power chords of “Fastest Horse In Town” arrived as volume more than argument. The bluegrass-tilted “Railroad Of Sin” made the same case in less time, racing like something that had gotten loose. On record, Mutiny After Midnight holds its momentum even when tracks run five or six minutes. On stage, that momentum is the variable, and the songs that keep it are the ones worth the three hours.