Sturgill Simpson does not like to talk. Or, actually, maybe this is a better way to put it: Sturgill Simpson does not like to talk to journalists. On a recent afternoon, the oft-heralded “savior of country music” is sitting across from me as both of us avoid eye contact, explaining the way he believes he’s been presented in the media. “I've been painted in some lights [as] this angry guy,” he says. “Just because when you say things in print it's so easy for context to get twisted.”

Earlier this year, I wrote an article called “A Brief Appreciation of Sturgill Simpson’s Instagram Account” which was exactly what the headline said it was. The story was casual, just some screenshots of his funny account with commentary below. In one comment, I pointed out Simpson’s use of the word “pussy” as derogatory within the context of the caption. Several of his fans made sure to let me know I was being an over-sensitive snowflake and a social justice warrior. Simpson, on the other hand, emailed me. He wanted to apologize, and told me an interview was the only way he thought he could do that.

“Most of the time the two hour conversation is me providing two or three sentences to fill in the blanks on a piece they've already written in their head,” Simpson continues. “I can't tell you how many outlets I've just said no to or don't give passes to the shows because it has nothing to do with what me and the fans are doing in the room, just somebody's take of what they think I'm trying to do or say.”

We’re seated on a bench in a park near the East River, staring at the heart of media and civilization just across the water. In the year 2017 when cable news can hardly tell left from right, it’s hard to argue with his point, what he calls print media’s “theatric element.” He’s not alone in this belief, either. Beyoncé barely talks to the press anymore. Same goes for Taylor Swift. Lana Del Rey records all of her interviews. And Drake has felt a certain way about music journalists since he lost his Rolling Stone cover a couple years ago .

“I had to write a whole album just to get away from that,” he laughs. The album he’s referring to is 2016’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, the first of two records he signed to release with Atlantic Records, and a record that would go on to be nominated for Album of the Year by the Grammys. Simply put, it’s one of the best albums of the last decade.

If High Top Mountain was his hillbilly tribute to where he was raised in Kentucky, then his follow-up album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music was his tribute to his time in the Navy as a young man, partying his tits off as often as possible to escape the rare monotony of being in the Navy when there wasn’t a war going on. It was this release—again, paid for out of pocket—that truly set him apart from his contemporaries, earning him that “savior” label because of its honest-yet-snarky depiction of modern country music. At one point during our conversation he mentions a movie he recently watched whose main character is a turtle. “I shouldn’t have said turtle,” he says, interrupting himself, referring to the press coverage he got for his psychedelic country song “Turtles All The Way Down,” the first song on Metamodern that caused such a ruckus he told one Guardian reporter that “people think I wake up in the morning and pour LSD on my Cheerios.”

He's not one to say it, but this is the kind of sensibility that’s made Simpson such a compelling star. That, of course, and his unbelievable skill as a musician. The story of how Simpson got here is a bona fide country music cliché: In 2012, he and his wife Sarah sold almost everything they owned, packed an old Ford Bronco to the max, and moved to Nashville as a last-ditch attempt to make it. A year later he released his self-funded debut, High Top Mountain, which was produced by legendary country producer Dave Cobb. The positive reception of the record led to comparisons to Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard which—in the language of country music—means he was a good artist with just enough edge to be considered an outlaw.

“I just thought you had a good point and I wanted to tell you that, that’s it,” he says. “It’s funny. No one ever wants to listen to that sort of stuff, especially in the country world because you can just ignore it if you want to and say ‘I'm not doing it on purpose.’ You can ignore a lot of things but there's a lot of responsibility with it.”

But Simpson is not normal, and life is often better to some people than they feel they deserve. Through our three and a half hour long conversation and exchanging multiple emails (in one note to me he clearly states our conversation is his "final interview"), it’s clear that Simpson is hyperaware of that idea, unconsciously or not. It’s there in the way he credits his wife for being the reason he escaped the depressive misery of a middle-management job. It’s there in how seriously he takes the job of making music providing “maybe 20 minutes of distraction in a person’s life.” It’s there in his daily life as a father: “For the first time in my life I’m scared. I never really gave a fuck before I got married if the world ended. [Then] you have kids and all of a sudden it’s the sobering reality of this immense responsibility that you have to try to let them hold on to positivity and innocence as long as you possibly can.” All Simpson wants to do is a good job.

The path of a greasy, teenage pot dealer doesn’t usually lead to a $100,000 recording budget and a two-record deal with one of the largest labels in the United States. Nor does it lead to turning down “a sizeable amount of money” from a car company to use one of his songs in their commercials, as he told the New York Times in 2016 , or spending the CMAs outside on the street protesting fascism rather than accepting awards, as he did earlier this month . It rarely allows you to enter the music business at age 35, long after any normal person would give up on the dream.

Noisey: Do you feel you owe it to people listening to your music and following your career to police your language or own up to your mistakes? Sturgill Simpson: Yeah, the mistakes part. I don't really watch my language much, which I should and I know I should, but it's like I said [in the initial email]: Years in the Navy and on the railroad, those are both high-stress, tyrannical environments. For some reason foul language just becomes a side effect of intense pressure and stress. I don't like to consider myself to be small-minded, but I talk small-minded a lot. Kinda balances the poetry, I guess.

That’s definitely something people don’t want to speak out about as much lately because they’re afraid of getting in trouble, saying the wrong thing, alienating people.

It’s so easy to say the wrong thing. For instance, we’re talking because I said the wrong thing. I didn’t even know it was the wrong thing. My wife says it, so I just assumed maybe it was OK. There are probably other words much more worthy of concern but at the same time it is a wrong thing, because, to me, feminism is nothing more than the idea that women are equal to men. So you’re equating weakness—or a term used to describe someone as soft or weak—with female genitalia. That is kinda fucked up when you step back. If I fuck up, I’ll be the first to own it. I'm pretty good at fucking up. I made a life out of it.

It's worked out well for you so far.

The last few years have been—I'm not really sure that all this is even happening because of me. It's happening because my family deserves it more so than maybe I do.

Really?

That's how I look at it.

Did you ever see yourself becoming this sort of family man?

No.

What changed?

I met someone who is more important to me than what I wanted or saw or ever thought about even thinking I knew what I wanted. I try not to think about any of it too much, especially with the career thing. You'll go crazy if you worry about what's next, you know.

You don't worry about what's next?

No. You just can't. My career has happened the way it has, more than anything, because I don't think about expectations or what I'm supposed to do. It's not even about maintaining a career so much as it is I've been given this opportunity and this giant toolbox to make records. For me, it's more cathartic release. I'm just trying to constantly improve and become a better artist and then hopefully make records that people—I mean it's great if they buy them today—but I’m more interested in making records that maybe people will still talk about in 30 years. That's the goal for me. You can go crazy if you let yourself think, "How do I remain relevant?" or you can just go and try to make great music and the fans will react to it and it takes care of itself.

You fought getting into music for awhile, didn't you?

I didn't think I was good enough to do it for a living. I played guitar, I've written songs since I was probably in middle school. My uncle played and both my grandfathers played, and a lot of people in my family played, but they all had jobs. It was something they did after work. Honestly I never had any ambition, I think is the answer to your question. It was more just something I enjoyed, it made me feel good. I don't have any ambition but anything I do and throw myself into, I'm gonna give it everything I got and go until I kill myself, probably. Even with this touring thing, I've had to step back and realize it's time to take a break or I'm going to burn out.