Before Chris Stapleton found success on the solo front with his three albums Traveller, From A Room: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, he carved out a successful career in Nashville as songwriter, penning tunes such as “Never Wanted Nothing More” (Kenny Chesney), “Your Man” (Josh Turner) and “Drink a Beer” (Luke Bryan).
In addition to writing the lion’s share of songs on this solo albums, Chris has not shied away from covering songs made popular by other artists, including George Jones (“Tennessee Whiskey”) and Willie Nelson (“Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning”).
As Chris tells Kix Brooks of American Country Countdown, he’s comfortable recording others artists’ songs—and he feels it’s an honor when other artists record his material.
“I always just find songs and figure out where they belong, whether it’s with me or somebody else,” says Chris to Kix. “I miss the days when if a song was really good, everybody would just do a version of it. Like, how many times has ‘Crazy’ been cut? Or stuff like that. I miss those days—not that anything I ever wrote is that. I don’t know if we’ll ever see the return of that ’cause people feel like, ‘Oh, he did that, I can’t do that.’ But I don’t feel that way about songs, so if somebody else wants to record a song that I wrote, I think it’s a great honor and I welcome it, and it doesn’t mean I’ll never do a version of it.”
