Chris Stapleton doesn’t have much use for beer.
The country singer was kicking back in a Beverly Hills hotel suite when his wife, Morgane, offered a round of cold ones to a small group of folks gathered on a recent afternoon.
“You don’t drink beer,” Morgane said, gesturing to her husband as she handed out bottles. Asked why in the world not, Stapleton shrugged.
“Just not into it,” he said, then he chuckled. “It wasn’t for lack of trying. But I like bourbon. I’ll stick with that.”
Clinging to the hard stuff after giving the softer stuff a try: The preference tells you something about this impressively bearded 39-year-old, who spent a decade writing hit songs for mainstream country acts — Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Darius Rucker, Lee Ann Womack — before striking out on his own in 2015 with “Traveller,” a solo album proudly modeled on the 90-proof work of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
Those influences alone didn’t set Stapleton apart. Even in its most pop-oriented eras, Nashville has always maintained a healthy traditionalist wing.
After being named album of the year at the 2015 Country Music Assn. Awards — a ceremony in which Stapleton performed a duet with Justin Timberlake — “Traveller” topped the Billboard 200 on its way to sales of nearly 2 million copies, according to Nielsen Music.
Now Stapleton is back with his follow-up, “From a Room: Volume 1,” which came out this month and debuted at No. 2.
True to his steadfast tastes, though, Stapleton hasn’t shaken up his style. If anything, “From a Room” — titled in honor of Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where he made it — is even more old-fashioned than “Traveller,” with songs about tough luck and broken love set against warm, rootsy arrangements that could’ve been crafted in 1976.
Though the renditions on the album were newly recorded, the tunes themselves predate those on Stapleton’s debut; they were part of a large stockpile he drew from too for “From a Room: Volume 2,” due later this year.
That approach was partly a matter of logistics. Given his busy schedule since “Traveller,” he simply hasn’t had much time to write of late. But Stapleton also said that going back to older songs is a “good litmus test” for judging their quality.
“It’s easy to write something in a day and think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to write something that’s been around for 10 years and you still want to sing it. Letting the songs get some age on ’em – that was really cool.”
How do you have these songs stored? Sheet music? Recorded demos?
We had, like, a Dropbox of songs. And they’re all stored on a giant system at the publishing company. We can go, “Hey, send us this one.” But you also have your favorites that you just know, that have always been there.
Like what?
On this record, “I Was Wrong.” I played that song for years, I just never recorded it. Or “Whiskey and You” on the last record.
Tim McGraw recorded that before you did. What’s it like to reclaim one of your songs?
You know, I don’t ever think of it as reclaiming it.
You’re just offering your interpretation.
Right. And that’s the way I feel about other people doing songs that I write. I know I wrote them and technically they belong to me. But I don’t feel like that — I feel like you put a song out in the world and somebody can do a version of it that’s nothing like what you would do with it.
You change up your own songs too onstage.
Oh, yeah — I’ll flip a song on its head, change the tempo, change the meter.
Is that a way to preserve some spontaneity as your shows get bigger?
It’s a constant struggle. If we’re trying to create anything out of a show, it’s a feeling of intimacy, which is easily lost as you get more and more people and they’re farther and farther away.
