Johnny Blue Skies (the artist formerly known as Sturgill Simpson) still has a few tricks up his sleeve after a very busy 2026.
It’s been a fun year to be a JBS fan, with the surprise rollout of Mutiny After Midnight earlier this year, and the Mutiny for the Masses Tour that just concluded in Lexington, Kentucky at the end of October. Faithful and fellow pirates were able to “set sail” and hear Johnny Blue Skies play some of his new, hedonistic disco music live when he toured all across the country.
And while he was out on the road, Johnny Blue Skies gave fans a warning: after this trip around the U.S. of A., Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds are gonna go away for a while:
“This is our third year in a row that we’ve done a big ol’ lap around the United States. We’re gonna go ahead and warn you now, we are gonna take a little break after this one and recharge the batteries and starve your asses. Y’all chose wisely.”
That got a lot of people out to his live shows (including myself). Knowing that Johnny Blue Skies may not be on stage for a while certainly motivated me to get out and see him.
When he wrapped up his tour in Lexington, Kentucky – which is not far from where he grew up, in case you didn’t know – Sturgill doubled down on the whole “you won’t see us for a while” messaging. This is the statement he provided to the crowd as they brought the Mutiny for the Masses Tour to a close:
“This concludes our mutiny. The rest is up to you.”
And in all honesty, that’s the last thing that many fans expected to hear from Johnny Blue Skies. Many were preparing to go into what I have coined a Stu-bernation period, where the music and the concerts the artists has already gifted us with would be on repeat until we heard that he was returning.
But then today, after 10 days of radio silence, the official Johnny Blue Skies social media account shared three cryptic, seemingly-connected images. As you’ll see below, one is a cherub holding a regular skull, the second was the good vs. evil skeleton flag the Sturgill Simpson brand has become synonymous with, and the third was a cherub holding what looks like a devil skull.
Check it out:
Those are so cool… wonder what he means by that?
The comment sections of the post were disabled, so fans weren’t able to start discourse right on the social media profile of Johnny Blue Skies. But the JBS faithful moved the conversation over to another, well-known social media platform to take some stabs at what these three posts could mean.
Here are some of the guesses from fans on the internet (many of them come from Reddit, since the comments on the posts themselves were limited):
-Live Album incoming
-Sturgill is just trolling with these posts
-5 different versions of “Stay On That”
-Johnny Blue Skies Cruise
-A new album/surprise companion album
-European Tour
-10 year anniversary release of A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
-A tombstone reading “Here Lies Johnny Blue Skies”
Some of those are legitimately possible guesses. Others – like the “Johnny Blue Skies” cruise – is a stretch… but a fun one at that. With all of this pirate talk, it would be fun to get out on the seven seas with Sturgill. Then there’s the guess that the image of what looks like a frame could actually be a headstone, marking the end of the Johnny Blues Skies moniker.
There’s really not enough there to make a solid case for anything. It does appear that all of the posts are meant to come together and form a full picture, so maybe JBS just wants us to sit tight and wait for the rest of the puzzle pieces.
Or, like one of the guesses proposed, Johnny Blue Skies is just pulling one over on us… and these posts don’t mean anything.
Regardless, Sturgill Simpson said he was going to “starve our asses,” and he’s already online dropping riddles not even two weeks after the conclusion of his tour. I take that as a good sign.