December 2017 Singer/Songwriter ROTM - Chris Stapleton - From A Room: Volume 2

From A Room: Volume 2 was a highly-anticipated album for the BTRC staff. Fast fans of From A Room: Volume 1 and Stapleton’s debut Traveller, we knew the record was going to be something special, once again.

Chris Stapleton was already an award-winning songwriter working in Nashville prior to his infamous performance at the 2015 CMA’s with Justin Timberlake. In fact, over 150 of his songs have been cut by other artist including six Country number ones.  

Traveller, Stapleton’s debut solo album reached No. 1 on Billboard, went double platinum, and took home Album of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, and New Artist of the Year in 2015, propelling him to the forefront of traditional country music. Led by No.1 single “Tennessee Whiskey” the record was a mix of Southern rock, blues, and country in perfect harmony.  Stapleton is the recipient of two Grammy Awards, five Academy of Country Music Awards, seven Country Music Association Awards, two Billboard Music Awards, nine ASCAP Country awards for his work as composer, including the Vanguard Award, among others.

B.T.R.C. chose From A Room: Volume 2 as our December Singer/Songwriter Record of the Month because we had to; Artists like Stapleton do not come around that often. He’s crossed outside of the genre of Country music and is one of the most influential artists performing today.

From A Room: Volume 2 was co-produced by Stapleton and Dave Cobb, (who’s worked with artists like Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell, and Anderson East) and recorded at the legendary RCA Studio A right here in Nashville.

What People are saying about From A Room: Volume 2…

‘[Chris Stapleton] the 39-year-old Kentucky native relies on Dave Cobb, Nashville's leading studio naturalist, to capture the leathery twang and blues-basted analog brawn of his power trio, in which it falls upon Stapleton to supply both sinewy rhythm guitar and snarling lead licks…’

‘There's no clutter to it, nothing to hide behind, nothing competing with the furnace-blast force of Stapleton's belting.’

‘Who the music is coming from is no less important. It's Stapleton's performing persona — not some imagined antagonism toward the Nashville music industry (in which he first thrived as a hit songwriter) — that links him to the '70s Outlaw Movement, recalling the masterful self-mythologizing of lionized figures like Waylon Jennings. Stapleton is in his element conjuring characters with tortured souls, those who hang their heads at how their hard-living ways have sabotaged everything good and stable in their lives, yet persist in their ornery isolation. He's sung, with hangdog self-deprecation, of bringing his woman's vengeful rampages on himself.’

‘For Chris Stapleton to inhabit these songs, with wife Morgane's voice as present as ever, doesn't contradict his image. If anything, folding these songs into his repertoire lends greater emotional weight to his entire body of work. Wise and sensitive storyteller that he is, he knows that deprivation and loss are felt the most deeply when it's clear what's at stake. It's no wonder so many fans have come to count him as a musical hero.’

Jewly Hight, NPR Music, ‘Chris Stapleton, 'From A Room: Vol2'