Heartaches, highways inspire Chris Stapleton's 'Traveller'
At age 7, Chris Stapleton picked up a guitar for the first time while touring RCA Studio B with his music buff father. Thirty years later, that scrawny coal miner's son has become one of Nashville's most in-demand songwriters.
Stapleton has written hits for George Strait, Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney and many more, been nominated for three Grammy Awards during his tenure as lead singer of gritty, hard-driving bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, and now he's releasing his debut solo album, "Traveller," Tuesday on Mercury Nashville.
The record's roots can be traced to a tumultuous 2013. That summer, Stapleton released his first single as a solo artist, "What Are You Listening To." It failed to crack the Top 40. Weeks later, his father — the one who filled Chris's childhood home with outlaw country and classic R&B music and bought the guitar he learned to play on — died.
"It was one of those signs from the universe that I needed to regroup a little bit," Stapleton says.
Enter Morgane Stapleton, Chris's wife of nearly eight years. Knowing her husband could use a diversion, she bought him a 1979 Jeep Cherokee online and suggested they fly to Phoenix and drive it back home.
"I've owned old vehicles before," Chris Stapleton says. "I knew it was going to break down."
But he agreed to go anyway.
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Long drive home
Joined by photographer and videographer Becky Fluke, the Stapletons made the trip out to Arizona in December 2013. They picked up the Jeep and drove it to a gas station five minutes down the road to fuel up for the road trip.
"We looked at each other like, 'Yeah, we're finally doing this,' and then gas started spewing everywhere," Morgane Stapleton said. "We called the seller and he said, 'Oh, you can't fill (the tank) all the way.' "
"We were like, 'We're not going to make it back.' "
The trio spent about 10 days driving back across the country. It rained so much that the motor that controlled the Jeep's windshield wipers gave out. An alternator had to get replaced. Every time the Stapletons stopped to half fill the gas tank, they had to check the oil. They hadn't planned for the cold weather. If Morgane Stapleton was looking for ways to distract her husband, mission accomplished.
For all of its tiny errors, the trip somehow worked.
With Fluke documenting their journey, the Stapletons made their way across the United States. Soon, Chris Stapleton found song ideas breaking into his head. While driving into a New Mexico sunrise, the lyrics for "Traveller" emerged. With his companions asleep in the car, Stapleton whisper-sang the words into his phone: "I'm just a traveler on this earth / Sure as my heart's behind the pocket of my shirt / I just keep rolling 'til I'm in the dirt."
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Somehow, the Jeep and its passengers made it to Nashville unscathed, and soon, the singer was ready to get back to work.
"I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do musically and I heard about half a song from Sturgill Simpson's 'Metamodern Sounds in Country Music,' " Stapleton remembers, "and I thought, 'Whoever this (producer) is, he gets into sonic things that I like.' "
So he sought out Dave Cobb, who produced that record as well as several releases by Jamey Johnson, Jason Isbell, the Oak Ridge Boys and others.
Flipping a switch
Cobb had heard Stapleton's work before. When the producer was living in Los Angeles, a rock band he was working with, Rival Sons, showed him a SteelDrivers video on YouTube.
"Even hearing it through an iPhone, that voice just knocked me out," he said. When Cobb moved back to the South, one of the first things he wanted to do was find Stapleton and make a record with him. The men's first meeting was less than auspicious.
"I briefly ran into him once at a guitar store and talked to him for a second," Cobb said. "I asked, 'Are you Chris Stapleton?'
"He said, 'Yeah.' I was like, 'All right, cool,' and left. I didn't know what to say (to him) after that.'"
Luckily their next encounter — after Stapleton heard "Metamodern Sounds" and tracked Cobb down — went much better. They hit it off and decided to proceed with the album, which they'd co-produce.
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While these plans were coming together, the future of RCA Studio A was uncertain, and nobody knew if the iconic studio would be saved or demolished. Stapleton wanted to record there, thinking it could be one of the final albums made in that room.
With that in mind, Stapleton assembled a top-notch band: his Jompson Brothers bandmate J.T. Cure on bass, Derek Mixon playing drums and Cobb himself contributing acoustic guitar. Other musicians such as Mickey Raphael (harmonica) and Robby Turner (steel guitar) were added as needed.
In summer 2014, they began tracking the album, but although the days were long, they weren't particularly labor intensive.
"It was a lot of hanging out, in the best way," Cobb said. "We booked the studio beginning at noon, and people would pile in randomly around one or two o'clock. Then we'd order some food, goof around, maybe order dinner, drink a little bit of whiskey and start recording at maybe eight or nine o'clock at night."
There were no chord charts or checklists. They performed what they wanted when they wanted and recorded nearly the entire album live, with very little overdubbing. Stapleton's vocals are all unedited, and he's never sounded better.
"(Dad's passing) flipped a switch: It made me want to do some things musically that I think he would have liked," Stapleton said. "It was so odd to me. My dad was a straight-laced teetotaler, but he loved all this music that was not that."
"Traveller," with a tracklisting full of songs such as "Might As Well Get Stoned" and "The Devil Named Music," is certainly "not that."
It's also an effortless blend of the music Stapleton's father filled their home with: country, soul and Southern rock. The title track and album opener is a loping, alt-country song, while "Parachute" is a blistering rocker. Stapleton's soulful delivery of Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove's "Tennessee Whiskey" sounds equally influenced by George Jones and Otis Redding, and "Daddy Doesn't Pray Anymore" might be one of the finest story songs released this year.
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Stapleton wrote that song in 10 minutes a decade ago. "My wife and I were fixin' to go somewhere. She was getting ready, I was bored and she said, 'Write a song.' " So he did.
"There was a lot of fiction in the song at that point in time," Stapleton said. "Now that my dad's no longer with us, it means something a little different now. Songs do that to you."
Nearly 15 years after his move to Nashville, it seems as though Stapleton's life has come full circle. With his imposing build, gravelly voice and mountain man beard, it's hard to believe he was once a grade schooler posing for a photo in Studio B with someone else's guitar strap resting on his skinny shoulders.
But when he starts to sing, the musical influences of those years race through the stereo speakers like a Jeep speeding across the New Mexico desert.
"Traveller" may celebrate roaming and rambling, but it sounds like Chris Stapleton has found his way home.
Reach Juli Thanki at 615-259-8091 or on Twitter @JuliThanki.
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Songs written by Chris Stapleton
•Luke Bryan, "Drink a Beer" (written with Jim Beavers)
•Patty Loveless, "Higher Than the Wall" (written with Mike Henderson)
•Josh Turner, "Your Man" (written with Chris DuBois and Jace Everett)
•George Strait, "Love's Gonna Make It Alright" (written with Al Anderson)
•Adele/The SteelDrivers, "If It Hadn't Been for Love" (written with Mike Henderson)
•Alison Krauss & Union Station, "Miles to Go" (written with Barry Bales)
•Alan Jackson, "Talk is Cheap" (written with Guy Clark and Morgane Hayes)
•Darius Rucker, "Come Back Song" (written with Casey Beathard and Darius Rucker)
•Lee Ann Womack, "Either Way" (written with Tim James and Kendall Marvel)