“It’s easy to hear why such popularity has finally come to Stapleton, as there’s much of the good-timing honkytonking that’s easy to stomp your feet to. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find someone else around who can extoll and denounce the virtue and vice of booze more poetically than Chris, as his biggest hit, “Tennessee Whiskey” can smoothly attest.”

I’ve been thinking about pledging such allegiance since 2015’s Traveller successfully brought outlaw into mainstream country (thanks in no small part to his CMA performance with Justin Timberlake), but that’s my definitive conclusion after spending a good amount of time with Stapleton’s follow-up, From a Room: Volume 1.

Of course, I believe that all country should be outlaw country, or at least not the cheesedick variety of candy popcorn the majority of Nashville seems to have been putting out since long before The Highwaymen fell out of favor. But even though Stapleton has been writing hit songs for all sorts of folks around that town for many a year now, and has been embraced by the country establishment, I don’t hold that against him. More so I find comfort that such a bridge has been laid; if you’re going to be a savior, you have to start with the masses.

It’s easy to hear why such popularity has finally come to Stapleton, as there’s much of the good-timing honkytonking that’s easy to stomp your feet to. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find someone else around who can extoll and denounce the virtue and vice of booze more poetically than Chris, as his biggest hit, “Tennessee Whiskey” can smoothly attest. This album’s “Up to No Good Livin’” only cements that rep, as he sadly remembers the time he used to be the “Picasso of painting the town.” And then there’s “Them Stems,” which recalls a dark day without a bag of weed, and having to resort to smoking its remnants.

While I certainly appreciate the stuff which likely makes him so popular, for me, it’s his authenticity that propels him aloft as an artist worth revering. I’m easily compelled by the open-hearted, closed-knuckled way he goes through life and music. Just like the best of bluesmen, Stapleton brings you right into his hardest moments, plucks you down in his shitty living room, and in three minutes of simple, heartbreaking poetry, makes you understand everything that’s truly vital about that hurt, and how it came to be.

That’s the blues, right? Especially when you mix in Stapleton’s stellar guitar skills, so sweet as to make Lucille envious. But when his wife and musical partner, Morgane Stapleton, starts harmonizing along, the way that only family members can, that’s when it begins to transcend. And with stud Dave Cobb returning to produce yet again, the new album (comprised of songs written before Traveller but recorded after) gets right back into saving territory.

The post Chris Stapleton – Or Should We Just Call Him Christ? appeared first on FactoryTwoFour.

That’s why I first started listening to him, because we had that in common. Soon I started really hearing him. And I haven’t been the same since.

“I’ve seen Jesus play with flames in a lake of fire, that I was standing in. Met the devil in Seattle and spent nine months inside the lion’s den.” The first words sung on Sturgill’s genre and mind-bending Metamodern Sounds in Country Music grabbed me right from the get-go, mostly for personal reasons; I was just getting to know Seattle myself, and Satan may have been my barista.

“Perhaps it is psychedelic country, but it still rocks. All of it. As much as any outlaw country band I’ve ever loved. Yet his cover of When in Rome’s “The Promise” not only doesn’t sound like country music, it doesn’t sound like the original at all. It took me a full two years of listening to realize it was even the same song.”

So that drew me in. That and KEXP and NPR going gaga for him. And a buddy proselytizing about him being the savior of country music. But I didn’t even know if saving country music was that great of a plan in the first place. Certainly not new country. Well, as I found out, Sturgill is an old soul, and he even sounds like a soul singer at times too.

But listen to that baritone, and you know Sturgill’s country. Unmistakably so.

His 2013 debut album, High Top Mountain, is perhaps even more country than Sturgill was shooting for. Albeit in all the best outlaw ways, with legendary old-time pickers giving it even more authenticity, and lyrics that cut right to my wandering and wondering core. Like when he growls, “the most outlaw thing that I’ve ever done was give a good woman a ring.” As a reluctant married guy, that got me for sure.

Sturgill’s next album, 2014’s aforementioned Metamodern…, sounds completely different. Some have called it psychedelic country, as Sturgill gets deep, both philosophically and sonically. Listen to “Turtles All the Way Down,” the first song I was discussing earlier, and you’re presented with ideas of not just Satan, but Buddha, “reptiles aliens made of light,” “the pain caused by some old man in the sky,” and how that can all be compared to the world being a giant turtle, which rests on the top of another much greater turtle, and so on down the line. So perhaps it is psychedelic country, but it still rocks. All of it. As much as any outlaw country band I’ve ever loved. Yet his cover of When in Rome‘s ’80s one-hit-wonder “The Promise” not only doesn’t sound like country music, it doesn’t sound like the original at all. It took me a full two years of listening to realize it was even the same song.

His third album, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth, the one being played on excellent radio stations now, sounds completely different from both the others, what with the addition of soul breathing organ and horns (the Dap Kings, no less). It also covers a song that bears little resemblance to the original, and again defies anything in country music, or music in general for that matter: Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” The concept album is the first that Sturgill produced on his own, without today’s go-to producer, Dave Cobb at the helm. And it’s visionary.

It’s a concept album conceived as a love letter to his first kid, conveying the lessons Sturgill wants to pass down, which seem to be rooted in the idea that love is all around, if you can just let go of the pain. But then on “Call to Arms,” it explodes into a cacophony of defiance, rocking in the not-so-free world, and screaming “bullshit’s got to go.” And there you are with your mind blown again.

Then you see him live. And you realize that his band is as good as any jam band gets, with Miles Miller clicking the skins and harmonizing like a family member, Laur “The Estonian Sensation” Joamets picking and sliding right up there with Nashville’s finest, and Sturgill—who grew up fashioning himself a guitar player more than a singer/songwriter—strumming the acoustic, driving it all.

That’s when I started proselytizing too, not just about Sturgill saving country music, but all music.

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