Road Trip Review: Chris Stapleton – “Starting Over”

Spoiler alert…it’s really good.

There are two artists that I will automatically download new albums from, sight unseen, ear unheard…Chris Stapleton and Miranda Lambert.  I say that just to be clear how biased I am about Stapleton.

But I didn’t love it the first time through, and that surprised me.  It was a true “road trip review” and my first listen was in an airport, and then on an airplane, so maybe I was just distracted.  But it turned out to be a “creeper”, the more I listened the more I liked it.

If you listen to Stapleton albums, there are lots of familiar themes here.  Gratitude & love for his wife (When I’m With You/Joy Of My Life), deep hurting (Cold/Whiskey Sunrise), the devil (Devil Always Made Me Think Twice/Watch You Burn), and getting stoned. (Worry Be Gone).

Chris wrote 11 of the 14 songs, but as always he does some obscure (to me anyway) covers that seem to fit so comfortably. (Guy Clark’s Old Friends & Worry Be Gone and John Fogerty’s  Joy Of My Life)

And Chris’s sound wouldn’t be “Chris’s sound” without wife Morgane in the background.  I often wonder if it’s something that developed, or they just sounded that good together from the start.

Highlights for me:

Arkansas – My favorite on the album right now, a bluesy southern rocker that just cooks.  To steal a phrase from the great Jerry Reed “…that boy picks I’m afraid!”

Maggie’s Song – A song about the passing of the family dog.  I know, I know, a Country song about a dog dying.  It could so easily be cheesy & cliched, but it’s not.  It’s just sweet as hell.

Watch You Burn – A blistering middle-finger to the shooter of the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas in 2017, and then terrorism in general.

Nashville, TN – I’ve talked a lot about the 8 minutes that turned Chris’s life upside down.  This is a very personal look at the aftermath of that performance, and how uncomfortable Chris was with that new life.  I think it’s hard for us to comprehend things like buses of tourists pulling into your driveway while you play with your kids.    After reading a couple of different things, it seems to me like Chris wants to distance himself from the lifestyle, not the music industry itself. (Whew!)

Just some thoughts, give it a listen, see what you think.