INTERVIEW: Chris Stapleton On Recording 'From A Room: Volume 1' | Straight From The Studio
May 5, 2017
The extremely talented, Grammy-winning country star Chris Stapleton released his sophomore studio album From A Room: Volume 1, which follows his 2015 debut Traveller. On the new album, Stapleton teams back up with Dave Cobb (who produced his award-winning first album) and was recorded at Nashville's famed RCA Studio A.
From A Room: Volume 1 features nine songs, including the lead track "Broken Halos," and his latest single "Either Way." But what's most interesting about Chris' new album is that the songs are not new, in the singer/songwriter's own words. He tells iHeartRadio, "There are no new songs on this record at all. All these songs pre date the last record. And part of that's a function of time, and part of that is a function of, as my friend Mike Henderson would say, we had all these perfectly good songs sitting around going to waste, so might as well record them. And, a lot of these things are songs that I've always intended on recording, or I've always loved, or even have played live quite a bit. But, for whatever reason it, never made it on the tape."
Chris says that making this album means a lot to him, in the same vein as what making Traveller meant to him. He says that he had a lot of fun making the record, and hopes that's reflected when fans listen to it. Stapleton explains, "I have the good fortune of getting to make music for a living, but I also just love music. And, we went in there with that spirit of loving music like we did last time, and trying to do things that we loved, and having fun and playing a little too much, or staying up a little too late, and seeing what that leads to, musically. I love this record for those reasons, and hopefully whatever it is, somebody can hear how much fun we had making this record, because we did."
On where the album title From A Room: Volume 1 comes from
"From a room is a reference to the RCA A room, where we made the record, and [where] we also made the last record. It was a weird circumstance that brought me to making records in that room. There's been a lot of records made in that room. Dolly Parton made 'I'll Always Love You' in that room, and a lot of Janet's records and Elvis's were recorded in that room. But, back when we made the Traveller record, we thought that they were going to tear it down, and so we kind of just said, 'well we should make a record in there before they tear it down just to say that we did.' And then it became this thing for me where now I'm going to have a hard time imagining making records somewhere else. And so, the title of the record, hopefully, is a tip of the hat to how much we really feel like that room informs what we do."
On his single "Either Way"
The latest single from From A Room: Volume 1 is called "Either Way," and Chris explains that he actually wrote the song over ten years ago. And what made him bring the song back was his wife, along with the people he has played it for over years, have always been a big fan of the tune.
"I wrote that song, it was more than a decade ago, and sometimes you just can't remember what happened. But, I wrote it with Ken Marvin and Tim James, and we used to write pretty regularly. Those guys were a whole lot better about having good ideas than I am. So, I'm sure that one of them had the idea, and I got to get coffee or be in the room that day. But, they're both tremendous song writers as well. So, it was a recipe for hopefully writing a good song, and we got out of there with a pretty good one I think." He adds, "My wife loves that song and has always loved that song. I find out as I play it more and more for people, the same is true for other folks."
On what it's like working with Dave Cobb
"Dave Cobb, and I'm sure I've said this about him before, he's a really fearless guy to work with. There's nothing you're going to throw at Dave that he doesn't want to try or is not interested in trying to figure out how to do, if it's something you want to do. He's always about serving the song and serving whatever the vision of whoever he's working with is, and that's my experience with Dave. Also, he's a tremendous player, and a lot of people don't talk about Dave's playing very much, but he plays acoustic on most of the things that we've recorded. He has a tremendous right hand, he's a great musician. People don't talk about Dave Cobb as a musician, and I think they're missing the point if they don't realize what a great musician Dave Cobb is as well."