Laur Joamets' Amazing Ride to the Peak of Nashville Guitar

An interview with Sturgill Simpson's phenomenal guitarist Laur Joamets. His inspiring journey from Estonia to the top of Americana music, and all the bumps and bruises along the way.

When I finally saw Sturgill Simpson live last October 18 in my hometown of Pittsburgh, I was so taken by the music that I broke my ankle. No, really.

I have been a fan of Simpson’s for a decade, and I have no reasonable excuse or explanation for why it took me so long to finally see him in person. But when I did so on his Why Not Tour in support of the Passage du Desire album, for which he adopted the name Johnny Blue Skies, I was stunned by the excellence and intensity of Simpson, er Blue Skies, and his four-piece band - lead guitarist Laur Joamets, bassist Kevin Black, drummer Miles Miller and keyboardist Robbie Crowell.

I would have been most focused on Joamets anyhow, but I was seated on his side of the stage just a few rows up so I could really watch what he was doing. The guy is a terrific guitar player. I mean, he’s really good, combining clean, precise country style Telecaster licks with overdriven rock riffs, all underpinned by a clear blues grounding, something I can sense in my sleep and is crucial to me. I hear so many guitarists fake blues feeling, and this was NOT that. I felt more excited by his and Simpson’s playing, and their interplay together, than I have by a guitarist in a long, long time.

Unfortunately, my beautiful evening of music, falling in love with the band through a non-stop, hard-hitting three hour set, did not end well. Walking back to my seat after a bathroom break, with my eyes fixated on Laur and Sturgill playing harmonized licks rather than on the steps in front of me, I slipped on a spilled drink and my body went down while left foot was turned up. Boom, boom, boom. I slid down the stairs, with my left foot wrenched and my ankle smashing along. I was happy I had caught myself, arresting my stop on the railing, so it took me a while to realize that my ankle was swelling like a balloon and I had really hurt myself.

I had to get out of there before the show ended, but they hadn’t played “Midnight Rider” yet, which I knew they had been doing every night and I needed to hear it. And then bam there it was. I listened with appreciation and limped my ass out of there. I had fractured my ankle in three places and was in the ER in the morning getting casted. A week later I had surgery and that damn slip defined my fall and winter. I wish I had a better story to how I got hurt, like maybe kicking a fascist in the head. But I guess that falling down steps at a concert in my hometown because I was swept away by the killer music in front of my face was probably pretty fitting.

I was so blown away by Joamets that night that I had to learn more – which I should have done almost a decade earlier when I fell in love with Simpson’s sterling 2016 album, A Sailor's Guide to Earth. I had somehow missed that Joamets is Estonian, which thrilled me. In Beijing, I had a band with these brilliant Chinese musicians who nobody believed existed and always had the dream of getting my partner Woodie Wu, a great lap steel player, here and helping him get a gig with and American band. It never worked for a lot of reasons, but Joamets had taken an almost as wild journey! He was proof tome that my idea wasn’t nuts.

I went deep down the Laur rabbit hole and reached out to him on Instagram because I really wanted to talk to him. He started subbing for his guitarist father, when he was 15 in Tartu, Estonia. The details of how he got from there to touring with one of the greatest Americana acts in America is told below.

After four years and two terrific albums together, Joamets left Simpson’s band in 2017, shortly after landmark performances on Saturday Night Live and the Grammy Awards. He then played with a host of others, including seven years with Drivin N Cryin and forming his own band Lore. Then Simpson returned after a three-year break, performing as Johnny Blue Skies – and he put his terrific band together, including Joamets, who is now both an established Nashville badass and an American citizen.

They are just departing on a month-long European tour, which includes a March15 show in Tallinn, Estonia, for which his whole family will be in attendance. An American tour will resume April 5 in Durant, Oklahoma. Visit www.sturgillsimpson.com for tour dates.

Here’s our conversation, edited for length and clarity. This is a Low, Down and Dirty exclusive, and it’s free to all. If you enjoy, please subscribe and share.

Let’s talk about your music experiences in Estonia. Your father is a guitarist. Was he your first point of contact to American roots music?

Yes. Back in the day, he had these old Soviet vinyls that I listened to over and over. CDs were a little too expensive for us, but he had a lot of classic rock – Deep Purple, Zeppelin, Hendrix, that kind of stuff. And he started a Jerry Lee Lewis tribute band and the piano player was a great source of information on 50s rock and roll, rockabilly, and blues, as well as Danny Gatton and the 80s resurgence of rockabilly, like Stray Cats. That all came from my dad and his friends. I was drawn to the blues.

Your father war born in 1961, so he grew up during the Soviet era, so it had to be harder to access this music. You grew up in a more open society.

I was 3 years old when the wall came down, but what I've heard is it took six months for records by the Beatles or Zeppelin to get to Soviet Estonia. Even though there was the Iron Curtain, people found a way how to get that stuff. It’s impressive how scarcity makes people value the product a lot more. Old time musicians told me like they had like one copy of things like Zeppelin 2 and the whole town had to make listening schedules.

Photo by Chris Brush, Edwin Keeble

Describe how you went from playing in Top 40 cover bands in Estonia to touring with Sturgill Simpson.

Michael Miley, the American drummer in Rival Sons, lives part time in Estonia, my band Dramamama opened for them a couple of times and we became friends and he kept saying I should consider going to the States. I was in my early, mid-20s and he said, “Dude, if it doesn't work out, you can always come back and you'll only be 30! You never know what might happen. What you don't want to do is not try anything in life, then wake up older and with regrets.” After a couple years, I had some money put aside and figured I’d give it a try, but my networking skills have never been good, so I asked him to introduce me to someone, so I wasn’t just walking off the plane blind and he sent some links of me to Dave Cobb, who had been producing them for years. Dave happened to be in the studio with Stu at the time. He played my clips for him, Stu asked for my email and that started it all.

Amazing. What did he say to you?

I honestly don’t remember the specifics, but I'm surprised that he didn't change his mind right away, because I didn't know anything about country music. I said in the email that I used to watch CMT recordings of mid 90s country stuff like Garth Brooks, not knowing that there's a very big difference. I knew a little bit about Willie Nelson, but I didn't even know who Waylon Jennings was, other than he had a Fender Telecaster signature model.

Stu probably realized that my background is in blues and rock and roll and maybe that would serve what he does better than your regular Nashville guitar player. There’s so many great guys here who do that, so there’s no point of trying to get a guy like that from anywhere else. Lucky for me, he wanted something different. Truth be told, he's a great guitar player himself, and he had a lot of that covered on his own. If you watch the Sunday Valley videos, he's shredding all over the place.

When you started playing together, did he give you specific directions of what he wanted you to do or did that evolve naturally?

He really knows music and what he wants and has been very clear about that. Initially, I don't think I played enough, so he told me to try to fill every hole when he's not singing. It took time to understand how to phrase correctly and I'm still working on it, because you're not supposed to play when a singer is singing and take attention away. Lately I've become a little more comfortable with that. In the early days, he was mostly playing acoustic guitar and that's the biggest change.

How quickly did you start to realize that he was a special talent, that this wasn't just another gig, but you were in a truly great band?

Oh, that's a good question. Straight away, basically, but I was too busy with myself to think like that, just trying to wrap my head around being in a different country without any family or anybody that I grew up with. Seeing how people reacted to the music and how rapidly things were moving along made it obvious that something was happening. A big highlight was recording Metamodern Sounds in Country Music [in 2014], which happened very organically, playing live. We didn't record with headphones, so I had no clue what was going on while we were playing and when I heard it back, I was kind of blown away. Every other time I had been in the studio I felt great until I heard a playback, and something seemed wrong or missing. When I heard the unmixed playbacks of Metamodern, it was probably the first time I really felt like we were doing something right, and I could step back and appreciate what was happening.

Tickets for all shows at www.friendsofthebrothersband.com

The Saturday Night Live performance in 2017 was terrific. I watched it again getting ready to talk to you and was blown away again. That represented a moment when a lot of people outside the hardcore fan base started really tuning in. Did that period feel like you were really on top of your game?

Not really. We had been grinding for a long time and it's hard to see how fast the train is going when you're in it as the saying goes. Honestly, I may have started to burn out a bit by then.

How did that manifest itself? Did you feel like you needed a break from the road?

A little bit of everything. I may have had a personal identity crisis. I didn't really understand who I was as a musician, or maybe even as a person. The moving to another country part turned out to be a little harder than I thought it would.

It makes sense that jumping on a moving train in a new country is going to catch up with you at some point. What did you do about that? You never moved back to Estonia for a significant time, did you?

No. I've played in a couple of different bands and tried to musically broaden what I'm doing and just stick to it. The longer you are in a place, the more you get used to it. A lot of people who’ve had some success, especially in entertainment, say the same thing: once your dreams are coming true, you recognize, Wait a minute. I'm not happy, I'm not fulfilled. There's something wrong. This is not what it was supposed to be. It’s kind of hard to describe, but I had to learn how to enjoy it all. I know it sounds stupid to say, but things are not black and white. Honestly, I'm having a hard time explaining it as well I want to.

You’re doing great at expressing something important for people to understand and which I’ve heard versions of from so many musicians. Given all that, was it exciting to rejoin Sturgill’s band and have another opportunity to tour with more awareness and comfort?

Absolutely, and to do it with the same people who picked me up from the airport in a minivan. Now I enjoy every minute of it. When we got together again, just to jam and brush up on things, everything was there immediately. It just became very effortless, and it was more enjoyable than it ever had been. I have now lived and played with a ton of different musicians and learned a lot more. There was much less stress involved worrying if I was doing this the right way. “Am I good enough? Why, why am I here?” I didn't have as much self-doubt. When I first came, I felt responsible for not messing up this long history of music. I mean, this is American culture and I wasn't born here, so I felt a huge responsibility to not screw it up.

It makes sense that quickly being at the pinnacle of a very American art form would be both exhilarating and terrifying. How was your English when you first arrived here?

Awful. I think for a long time my bandmates suspected that I was autistic because I was so quiet. I'm still working on it. Some days I feel like I can comfortably express myself and some days are like today and I can't remember words. That was one of the harder things to get used to. We start learning English in the second grade and I could write quickly once I got here, but reading and writing is very different from one another and from talking.

You said you were attracted to blues. Was there any one person who became like your main guy, whom you wanted to learn every lick they played?

All the obvious ones. Probably the biggest for me was Jimi Hendrix. He’s considered a rock virtuoso, but he had all the blues under his belt, and that's why he became who he was. Also, Jimmy Page, Johnny Winter and all the Kings - Freddie, Albert, and BB. I'm sad to say that I'm not a music historian and don’t know a lot of the more obscure things.

I hear Johnny Winter in your slide playing.

Yeah, for sure. I have a hard time understanding his thought process because what I've learned from interviews is he just wanted to play blues and playing rock and roll made him unhappy. I love all of it, but his 70s rock and roll stuff is so powerful - just pure and in your face.

I don’t hear much Duane Allman or Derek Trucks in your slide playing, which is unusual – at least in my world.

It's by design, because when you pick up a slide, the first thing that comes out is some lick that Duane played. You can't get away from it, because it’s just what makes sense to play, especially in open tuning. But there is a lot of it around, and I want to have diversity in my playing.

Did you always play slide or did you pick it up with Sturgill?

I've always had an interest, but the problem is, I always played in four-piece bands and it was hard to fit in. I come from the bar band world where you play top 40 covers and I may have had at best a couple of slide solos through a whole night, like “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty. I needed to figure out how to play slide and rhythm guitar without another guitar accompanying me, and I finally figured out that if I put it on my pinky, I can play chords and I can do it in standard tuning. Then I saw a video of Sonny Landreth fretting behind the slide, and I fell into that right before I moved to the States, which got me thinking that if I do that in standard tuning, I can use the same vocabulary that I already have developed. It’s a lazy way of creating a new vocabulary and I'm still working on it.

I think it’s the opposite of lazy. It's hard work to master slide, especially in standard turning, where it’s so much easier to hit a bad note than in open.

I call it lazy because instead of having to learn a bunch of new licks. I just basically transcribe them from my regular standard playing into slide playing. If I'm making a 3-note run, I only slide on the last two notes and I don't have to be as accurate because I start from my index finger and then move up. It has helped me to connect the fretboard because I can move more easily from one position to another.

After you left Sturgill you played with Drivin N Cryin for seven years. Kevn Kinney is a terrific artist. Can you talk about playing with them?

I was touring with Darrin Bradbury, a buddy and a great singer/songwriter, and we opened up for them. I listened to them soundcheck – which I later realized they almost never do -and play “Madman Blues,” a badass Kevn tune and I just admired everything about it. I hit it off with Tim [Nielsen, bassist] and we exchanged numbers. A couple months later they needed a sub and asked me and that got started. They’ve always been very easy to be around and are almost like a bunch of uncles who showed me the ropes and how to do this thing right. They've seen it all and are a very encouraging and forgiving bunch of people.

What is the latest with your band Lore?

We recorded an album in Asheville that’s waiting to get mastered, and we're trying to find a way how to put it out. We're just waiting for the right opportunity and I hope that comes sooner than later.

Your father must be very proud of you. To some extent you are living his dream.

Yeah. We don’t really talk about it a lot, but I think he’s proud. I definitely wake up every day trying to remind myself to be grateful because this doesn't happen ever. That's all I can do - remain as humble as possible and try to do a better job and appreciate that I’m here.

I know he’s proud of you. It's amazing what you've done and it’s a very cool story. Congratulations!

The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.