“TREASURE HUNT ALERT”: Sturgill Simpson Surprise Drops ‘Mutiny After Midnight’ At Select Record Stores & Shares Snippet Of New Song

What’s a pirate era of your music career without a little treasure hunt?

In case you didn’t get the memo, Sturgill Simpson is no more. If you are looking for him, you are actually looking for a pirate named Johnny Blue Skies. He and his band, the Dark Clouds, have an album coming out Friday, March 13 that’s titled Mutiny After Midnight. The artist formerly known as Sturgill has stated that the only way to get your hands on the new music will be through physical media such as vinyl, CD and cassette.

And some fans don’t even have to wait until March 13.

The official Johnny Blue Skies social media accounts fired out a cannonball of an update earlier today. The “Swamp of Sadness” singer let everyone know that the new album is already out in limited capacity… you just have to know where to find it. Using a picture from Sturgill Simpson’s time in the Navy, the social page sent out this exciting message:

“TREASURE HUNT ALERT! 10 copies on shelves at your local record shop in select markets… run b****es. I’M THE CAPTAIN NOW.”

Oh, how sweet it would be to be able to get your hands on one of those limited copies.

The most interesting part about this latest update in the Mutiny After Midnight saga is that… well, there’s not much specificity there. A whole lot of Sturgill/Johnny Blue Skies fans are going to be running from record store to record store hoping to find the vinyl that’s out two weeks prior to its actual release date.

Talk about a pirate-like adventure.

For the lucky souls that do find the treasure, they’ll be able to experience what has been described by JBS as a protest disguised as a disco record. In the Mutiny After Midnight letter, Johnny Blue Skies described the upcoming project as this:

“We decided to make an album centered firmly on groove. We started every day from scratch with a basic groove. I wrote the songs and lyrics in the moment on the spot, and everyone established their individual parts servicing the songs and not the individual ego…

There’s a simple goal we as a band set out to achieve: to make a dance record. So this protest, this mutiny is really more about the primary dance. The dance of all creation. To be clear, it is a protest against oppression and suppression, and the only tried and tested true antidote to that is pure, unfiltered, unapologetic, relentless disco-hedonism.”

And lucky for us, it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a sneak peek.

The Johnny Blue Skies account has been active today. Shortly after the “TREASURE HUNT” post was sent out, audio paired with a He-Man meme (the memes from the JBS account have been nonstop hilarity) was shared. A quick Shazam of the music was met with no matches… meaning that the funky groove you hear when you press play on this video below is likely from one of the nine songs included on Mutiny After Midnight:

That’s certainly the disco sound that Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies has been promising.

Now that I’ve heard a snippet, I really wouldn’t mind hearing the whole thing. I can either a) wait until March 13 like I originally intended to or b) drop everything and go on a treasure hunt at my local record stores… and hope that no one else had the same idea. I’m torn on what to do.

If you happen to go out searching for it, here’s what you are looking for:

Hope some lucky Sturgill/JBS fans out there are able to sniff out the “X that marks the spot” at their local record store. Some might call it unconventional to only release a new project on vinyl, CD and cassette… but it’s certainly building up some hype for the new project.