CHRIS STAPLETON STARTS OVER

“I’m 40 years old,” Chris Stapleton intones on “When I’m With You,” equal parts resignation and exhaustion, evoking Waylon Jennings’ quintessential “Dreaming My Dream” as a waft of steel barely rises, “and it looks like the end of the rainbow ain’t no pot of gold/ The things that I’ve done, well, I doubt anyone will remember after I’m gone.”

Stapleton, who blasted into public consciousness with a soul-scalding live duet of “Tennessee Whiskey” alongside Justin Timberlake at the 2015 CMA Awards, has—like Willie Nelson—defied every commercial Nashville trope. He understands his blessings, sees the curse and realizes jettisoning all but the essential is the path to true happiness.

Starting Over (Mercury Nashville), recorded before pandemic shutdowns, Black Lives Matter and election drama, reaffirms American values without preaching. Musically engaging, it allows listeners to disappear into the playing and the torque of Stapleton’s sweating the notes in his vocals or absorb the deeper truths and places the Kentucky native’s occupied along the way.

A pungent stew of influences—The Band, Nirvana, The Allman Brothers, Jessi Colter, Steve Earle, even the yacht-rock side of Michael McDonald—the project examines how our priorities should make personal integrity a survival mechanism. From the early Emmylou Harris’ hippie country of “Starting Over,” the arena-ready roots rocker cooks down his folk, country, blues and rock nuggets for a philosophical portrait of a man emerging from uncertain times.

The album was recorded after a yearlong “block,” with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers vets Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench adding a new kind of muscle, especially on the strutting blues number “Devil Always Made Me Think Twice” and the full-bore free-for-all “Arkansas.” But it’s the tromping, tension-inducing “Watch You Burn” where that muscle flexes taut and exact. Anchored in the Route 91 Harvest festival tragedy, it’s a cautionary note to those who think harming others might be a good idea that ultimately explodes into a swaggering guitar against Stapleton’s feral yowl and the All Voices Choir in full-gospel churn singing out, “You’re gonna get your turn.”

That same swagger overhauls Guy Clark’s dope-smoking chiller “Worry B Gone” into a powered-up New Orleans funeral march, a swinging rager and a far more carnal take than Clark’s —or Nelson’s—version. Clark’s “Old Friends” is also revisited, more vulnerable and fragile but very much an exhalation of faith into the darkness, limning a deeper dimension than even Clark’s original explored.

Like Nelson’s Phases & Stages, this is an album weighing costs and losses, telling truths most never look for. Whether that's the elegiac sunshine celebrating his dog on “Maggie’s Song,” the true-love offering to wife/creative foil/harmony singer Morgane in “Joy of My Life” or even the backwoods counter-economy of “Hillbilly Blood,” which sticks it to Hillbilly Elegy with a dignity that surfs Hank Williams Jr.’s brio on “A Country Boy Can Survive,” Stapleton stands tall—and owns his purview.

Fourteen songs in, he closes with the contemplative “Nashville, TN.” The lullabye-esque ballad could read as a metaphor for a breakup with a woman—“You be you and I’ll be me”—but given all that’s befallen Stapleton and country music, it’s not. Having blazed his own path since releasing Traveler, this is a full-circle moment. Twined in Paul Franklin’s steel, Stapleton looks over his shoulder at the place he grew up as a creative spirit, learned to write songs and found his way—and then looks to the future.

“You won’t miss me when I’m gone,” he reassures, “You’re custom-built for moving on/ And who knows? Maybe years from now, you’ll be the one I’ll think about/ But I just can’t imagine that, cause I’m not one for looking back.”

As at so many crossroads, there is much to consider and much to leave behind. In Stapleton and producer Dave Cobb’s hands, there’s also much music to savor. Pour yourself a long/strong one, twist up something special and settle into the pure pleasure of just sinking into a recording, surrendering to the songs and drifting through top-flight playing.