Chris Stapleton Photo: supplied
Nick Bollinger tries on the big-hatted balladry of Nashville's Chris Stapleton
Chris Stapleton is one of a familiar breed: a bearded, bearish, be-hatted troubadour. For the past decade or so he’s been based in Nashville, where he played both bluegrass and Southern rock, while farming his original songs out to some of country’s biggest stars: Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Brad Paisley and Tim McGraw have all recorded them, with Chesney and Strait taking them all the way to number one. Stapleton is a songwriting success story. But lately he seems to have got serious as a solo act.
From A Room: Volume 1 Photo: supplied
His second solo record mixes solo or near-solo performances with others that go back to his Southern rocker roots.
Stapleton’s songs might seem personal, but they are more like little screenplays waiting for the right actor. In one he’s a pothead who’s down to smoking stems while his dealer is missing in action; in another he’s a convict on death row. Others are in the timeless misunderstood hellraiser genre.
There’s something impressive about Stapleton’s ability to write a song you feel you’ve heard before, yet with enough standout lines in it to let you know you haven’t – ‘the Picasso of painting the town’ being just one of them. In a sense, that’s Nashville songwriting in a nutshell.
Chris Stapleton is hardly the first successful backroomer to make a bid for the spotlight. Willie Nelson legendarily spent the better part of two decades as a hit writer for other singers before his uniquely quirky voice ever made it to radio.
But while Stapleton’s voice is huge, it’s not as characterful or appealing as Nelson’s, and the performances on this just-off-the-main-road country album might ultimately prove to be no more than excellent demos for some bigger, hat-wearing stars to cover.
From A Room: Volume One is available on Mercury
