![]() I'm always thankful when anybody wants to record my songs. I've always been someone who tries to do things that will stand up over time. Do you think of yourself as walking a line, with your solo music on the rougher side of things and the mainstream artists you write for on the shiny other side? Do you think it's kind of weird? I think it's kind of weird that I get to play music for a living, period. You've written songs for a lot of big commercial acts. It's a part of the fabric of things that influenced me over the years. By the time we got into the studio, it was something we all enjoyed playing. But we decided to do the song that night and every night since. Me and the guys in the band started playing a little bit and got into that groove, so I started thinking, “Man, what song could I sing over top of this?" For whatever reason, I started singing “Tennessee Whiskey." At the time, we had a steel player by the name of Steve Hinson who used to play with George Jones on the road-maybe that was part of the equation. We had a show in Charlottesville, Virginia, and we were sound checking, waiting around for the mics to get set up. What made you want to do it? It's always been a favorite song of mine. “Tennessee Whiskey" has been recorded by David Allan Coe and George Jones. That certainly operated as a catalyst for the record, and from there she was really instrumental in sorting out songs to do and how to do them. Along the way, I wrote the song “Traveller" while everybody was sleeping. We flew out in Arizona in December and drove all the way back to Nashville in kind of a head-clearing moment. The whole album is sort of owing to her, right? My father passed away in 2013, October, and she bought me an old Jeep out in Arizona. It's an interesting and fun thing all the time. It's always wonderful that we get to sing together and travel together. Your wife was singing onstage with you-what's that like? To get to stand on that Sullivan Theater and play a song was a surreal thing, for sure. The song is by Dean Dillon-the songwriting icon who was George Strait's go-to guy-and Linda Hargrove, the low-key “Blue Jean Country Queen." Beyond being a fantastic throwback and a romantic cut, I like to think of the song as doing double duty: a tribute to that kind of writer country's always had, more than any other genre, where their solo work never feels like a shrewd career move so much as it does it does the inevitable spilling-over of some uncontainable talent.Ĭongratulations on your performance on Letterman last week. While most of the album was written by Stapleton, of course, it also includes a rendition of “Tennessee Whiskey," which I'm excited to debut today. Out May 5th, it's got the best parts of the genre: softness within toughness. Co-produced with Dave Cobb, who's made a name for himself doing rock-solid, tradition-minded work for Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell, Traveller is easily, and naturally, the year's strongest country debut. This year, Stapleton is finally releasing an LP all his own: Traveller. Who else can say that? The songs he writes aren't lead singles, usually-they're the substantial, soulful cuts without which there would be no justification for someone's album in the first place. ![]() George Strait recorded a Chris Stapleton song, but then so did Adele. ![]() In Nashville, where he moved from Kentucky 15 years ago, he's penned songs for the upper crust of country: Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Sheryl Crow, Luke Bryan. ![]() Chris Stapleton is one of those songwriters.
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