Despite his having written half-a-dozen number one songs for other artists – including fellow American country singers Kenny Chesney, George Strait and Darius Rucker – and his pretty much cleaning up at last year’s Academy of Country Music Awards (with gongs for both album and song of the year), the name of Chris Stapleton is still relatively unknown in the United Kingdom.
Yet if ‘Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning’ – taken from his second solo album, From A Room: Volume 1, which is due to drop this week – is anything to go by this may just be the record that puts him firmly on the British musical map.
Written by Gary P. Nunn and Donna Sioux Farar and made famous by one of country music’s original outlaws Willie Nelson, ‘Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning’ affirms Chris Stapleton’s place as a more contemporary Nashville outsider. His interpretation of the song – the only cover to feature on the new record – has Stapleton wringing every single grain of wracked emotion from this traditional tale of desolation and heartbreak.
From A Room: Volume 1, which takes its name from Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where it was recorded during the winter of 2016-17, is released on 5th May 2017 with From A Room: Volume 2 to follow later on this year.
