Chris Stapleton On ‘Traveller’ Kickstarting His Career: “It Was A Different Ball Game”

Chris Stapleton burst onto the country music scene in a big way with his 2015 Traveller album. Now for those that don't know, he was very involved in the music industry before that moment where he caught lightning in a bottle. Stapleton was a well-respected songwriter in Nashville, and he was already a part of a great band called The SteelDrivers. He also had a rock project called the Jompson Brothers so check that out if you're so inclined. But in 2015, Stapleton finally had his coming out party, and it was all thanks to his album Traveller and some very good timing. The country music star sat down with Lance Armstrong (yes, that Lance Armstrong) on The Forward Podcast earlier this week, and the world-famous-cyclist-turned-podcaster asked Stapleton about his debut album, which is now viewed almost a decade later as one of the best country albums that's ever been put out. Stapleton admitted that it was a game changer, and that he had low expectations for it before it was released: "After 'Traveller,' it was a different ball game. That record came out May the 5th of 2015. My goal was to sell 20,000 records on that record. This was a big risk for the record company to take." Just to let you know, as of 2020, Traveller was pushing 5 million units sold... so just a little over that goal that Stapleton set for his project. Part of why the "Tennessee Whiskey" singer didn't have a lot of hope for his album was due to the tumultuous turnover that the record label had leading up to Traveller's debut: "I cut a whole other record before that record with a different label head. The day I finished the first record that I did, the guy that was running the label came in, sat down and listened to the whole record and said, 'Man I love it. I gotta tell you I'm not going to be here next week.'" Chris went on to talk about how that usually means a clean slate for whoever else comes in to run the label, and sure enough, there was radio silence for nine months. When Stapleton finally did hear back, he tried to put out his song "What Are You Listening To," but it just didn't work - despite his best efforts to promote it. As he tells the story, he was a little frustrated with how everything was going, and finally just went out on a limb and asked if the label would trust him to put together an entire album: "Here's what I'd like to do, and here's what I understand about how I function. Can I just make a record, and then put it out, and then go tour on it, and we'll see what happens? That's what 'Traveller' is. They didn't even agree to the whole record at that point... We sold the 20,000 or 25,000 that I had hoped to up to the CMA's in November. And then I had made friends with Justin Timberlake through a mutual friend, and they had asked me to come play because I had some nominations on this record. My wife said, 'If there's ever a time to call in a favor, just call him and see if he'd be willing to come do this.'" And as they say, the rest is history - and obviously brought Chris Stapleton into the spotlight as one of the premiere country music artists of the modern age. The famous CMA performance that Stapleton shared with Timberlake acted as a catapult, and now Stapleton is among the biggest names in the industry. It's also started the decline of the Bro Country era, but that's a whole different conversation. You can hear more about how Traveller helped him break through in the interview below: https://youtu.be/sqDTsQhWiIk?si=BO5Ayz1rgYqUZG-D&t=1534