Chris Stapleton: Two Music Icons He Can Not Say No To
Chris Stapleton is currently on tour and just completed his latest stadium date at Chicago’s Solider Field on July 20 with George Strait.
In a new interview, Chris said the Strait dates are something he will never say no to. Stapleton noted of Strait, “He doesn’t play many shows, and we have so much fun. One thing we’ve been doing is we play ‘Pancho & Lefty’ together. To 17-year-old me, it’s like, what kind of weird world are we living in? That was pretty cool. So I plan on doing them as long as he does them.”
There is one other country icon that Chris could not say no to. That’s Dolly Parton. he sang a duet with Parton for her RockStar album. He said of getting the call, “Dolly Parton called me; I’m sitting in my kitchen talking with Dolly about singing a Bob Seger song. When Dolly Parton calls, you pick up the phone. She’s an all-time great. Any time you can spend with someone like that is time well spent.”
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Stapleton recently talked with CBS Mornings and revealed an album he heard as a young man, which changed him musically. That album was Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, released in November 1994.
Chris said, “I have this theory that people discover what is their favorite thing between the ages of like 16 and 24. Somewhere in there, it kind of shapes their opinions of music and things like that. That was that record for me.”
When asked what he heard in it, Stapleton said there were “no skips,” which was a new experience for him at that moment, “It’s kind of my barometer; this is the goal.”
Chris went on to say that Tom could always write things so lyrically, so simply but in ways that were “so impactful” and in ways that got you to the “meat of what you wanted it to be.” He noted that he always felt like that was the goal in songwriting: “less words mean more.” To find the things that people could “attach themselves to” or “find themselves in.”
Stapleton joins Lainey Wilson, George Strait, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson with Lukas Nelson, Margo Price with Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers, Wynonna Judd, and Dierks Bentley to pay tribute to Tom Petty on a new tribute album. The new record, dubbed Petty Country: A Country Music Celebration of Tom Petty, is out now.
