Three years ago, Laur Joamets just wanted to play the blues in the United States.
For most of the remainder of this year — including a two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium in October — the Estonian-born guitarist will find himself playing pedal steel backing breakout cool-country star Sturgill Simpson on another world tour.
As Simpson begins the European leg of his tour this month, his guitar player will have a sort of homecoming. Joamets moved to Nashville from Estonia to work with Simpson in recording his 2014 breakthrough Metamodern Sounds in Country Music and continued through Simpson's major label debut A Sailor's Guide to Earth earlier this year.
If Simpson is an outsider to the Nashville country music establishment, Joamets is the perfect sideman. His slide guitar marks some of the most adventurous moments on Simpson's past two records, but his picking in a live setting — and now his pedal steel — is classic country through and through.
Not that Joamets had any grand plans to leave Northern Europe to be play country music.
"I wanted to see America, and [Sturgill] wanted a guitar player," Joamets tells the Scene.
Around age 15, Joamets played in bars with his father's bands in Tartu, the second-largest city in Estonia. At the time, most of what they played was Estonian dance music, which Joamets describes as, "German schlager-influenced. It was really upbeat, almost a polka." Meanwhile, the band would sprinkle in American classic rock covers from bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Joamets' exposure to country music then was limited to Estonian interpretations of standards, and his father, Andres, was part of a group that organized a small country music festival outside Tartu.
Country music, though, stayed in the background. Joamets played in three or four different rock bands a week for several years. Despite the steady work, he was in a rut.
"I was doing pretty well as far as getting my bills paid and so forth," he recalls. "I had been a hired gun for four, five, six years, and it's a really ungrateful way to make a living."
All that grinding, though, led him on the path to Simpson and Nashville. His band, Dramamama, opened for the Long Beach, Calif., hard rock band Rival Sons when they toured Estonia. The drummer of Rival Sons, Michael Miley, met his eventual wife in Estonia and moved there part time. As Joamets and Miley worked on a project touring Russia, Miley urged the guitar player to look into moving to Nashville.
"At the time, I wasn't too fancy about that idea because I didn't know what Nashville was really about," Joamets says.
Meanwhile, Miley worked his connections in Nashville — including Rival Sons and Sturgill producer Dave Cobb. Cobb already had produced Simpson's debut High Top Mountain and Jason Isbell's Southeastern record.
"I didn't think twice about it, but Michael said this guy wants to come to America and play the blues," Cobb recalls. "I didn't think a lot about it because it was really far-fetched."
But Miley stayed on Cobb, and Joamets sent Cobb via Facebook a few licks of his playing and a video of him with his band. Weeks later, Joamets was in Nashville for a couple of months before Simpson started recording Metamodern Sounds. Soon after, he was in Simpson's backing band, touring as support for Dwight Yoakam.
"By the time he got to Nashville, he learned everything there is to know about country guitar," Cobb explains. "He went from not knowing much to becoming Danny Gatton in a really quick amount of time. He lived it and breathed it."
Simpson fed Joamets a diet of his favorite country music, and Joamets, whose father was a tinkerer in tubes and amplifiers, came up with his own touches. The guitar flourishes on "It Ain't All Flowers," a signature song of Simpson's country psychedelia, are a product of tunings Joamets invented.
"You can tell when someone is living it," Cobb says. "It's completely fluid when [Laur is] going for a solo. He doesn't have to think about it. It kind of flows out of him."
Simpson's next record would bring another challenge. The interplay between Simpson and Joamets now extends to a horn section, played on the album by Brooklyn's Dap-Kings and on tour by a trio from New Orleans. Simpson also asked him to pick up the pedal steel.
"Sturgill hit me up two weeks after the last gig and told me he wants me to play pedal steel on the next tour," Joamets recalls. "I asked him how much time do I have. He said until spring or late-night TV. I got my ass working."
In between tours with Simpson, Joamets also worked on Elmwood Park: A Slightly Melodic Audiobook, the upcoming album from East Nashville's Darrin Bradbury, whom Rolling Stone Country recently included on its latest list of 10 Country Artists You Need to Know.
Simpson's European tour, though, will give Joamets a chance to return home. His parents will be able to catch him at a show in Stockholm, Sweden, and Joamets is planning on spending a few weeks back in Estonia.
"If I were a father, and my kid went to the other side of the world, I would be a little bit worried about it," Joamets says. "Having a kid and the kid leaving town, I couldn't imagine it."
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