Our esteemed editor has labelled Chris Stapleton as the Marmite of artists for the writers here at Americana UK. It may be that our readers likewise fall into two camps and it took me a while to decide whether the man behind the beard was my cup of tea. With Stapleton’s debut album being heralded in 2015 as the best thing since sliced bread, it was tempting to dismiss it as just so much hype. Was he simply a one-hit wonder, soon to be toast? More than ten years on, the questions have been settled, and Stapleton is rightly in the forefront of contemporary country music.
The name of that album was Traveller, and it opens with the title song. Stapleton had a hand in writing twelve of the fourteen songs on the record, but only three were his alone, Traveller being one of them. According to the artist, it was written in about fifteen minutes as he drove across the desert at sunrise, his wife, Morgane, in the car with him. The lyrics arrived quickly, and he hummed the melody into his phone, later explaining that the journey from Arizona to Nashville was a deliberate attempt for the couple to clear their heads. Stapleton’s father had just passed away, and they took with them the photographer Becky Fluke to document the trip. The cover shot for the album was just one of many photos taken on the road; this one, somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico. At that stage, they didn’t have a plan for the album; this was December 2013, and Stapleton was making a living writing songs for established country artists like Kenny Chesney, Luke Bryan and Miranda Lambert. Speaking of his plans for the record while driving and being filmed by Fluke, Stapleton said he thought Travellers would be a good title as the songs deal with the transience of life.
“I think I’m going to call the record Travellers because… It all came out of driving this Jeep to the desert. I didn’t really know what I was setting out on, but the song is about life, and we are all just kind of passing through it”.
Later dropping to the singular Traveller for the title, the album was recorded in the late summer of 2014 at RCA’s Studio A in Music Square, Nashville. Dave Cobb was enlisted as producer on account of his work with Sturgill Simpson and on albums such as Jason Isbell’s Southeastern. The admiration was mutual on account of Cobb being impressed by Stapleton’s work as lead vocalist and guitarist with the SteelDrivers from 2007-2010. The late Robby Turner was engaged to play pedal steel, and he can be seen performing the title song with Stapleton on David Letterman’s Late Show at the time of the album’s release in April 2015. Despite his lengthy career as a successful songwriter, this first appearance on network TV shows Stapleton to be a humble man, his face barely visible behind the beard and under his trademark Stetson. As ever, he fixes his gaze on his wife, Morgane, who, as Stapleton says, provides not just the harmonies to his songs but the emotional support for his live shows.
As well as the gorgeous pedal steel, Traveller features some dextrous finger-picking from Stapleton, an accomplished guitarist. The song has a simple enough arrangement, with bass and drums adding rhythmic depth, while there is real quality in the lyrics. Take these gems as examples;
“And I’m just a traveller on this earth / Sure as my heart’s behind the pocket of my shirt / I’ll just keep rollin’ ’til I’m in the dirt” and “My heartbeat’s rhythm is a lonesome sound / Just like the rubber turnin’ on the ground / Always lost and nowhere bound”
The vocal delivery is gentle, almost conversational in the verses, before becoming impassioned in the chorus. In 2016, the song won the Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance, a category he would win again in 2018, 2019, 2024 and 2025. Aged 37 when the album was released, Stapleton’s subsequent rise has clearly been meteoric, and there’s no doubt as to his talent as a musician and songwriter. Whether he pleases your taste buds or you remain unconvinced, allow yourself just 4 minutes and 35 seconds to sample this live performance of a beautiful song.
