10 Things Chris Stapleton Can't Live Without | GQ

hey GQ I'm Chris Stapleton and these are my [Music] essentials all right for this essential first let me go get it this chair was the chair that was in my breakfast area growing up there were there were four of them originally and they were kind of a yellow vinyl when I was a kid my mother kind of recovered this one in the late ' 80s I think and it kind of traveled around with me um kind of went to college with me or VAR living situations with me but it's always been with me it's been my guitar

chair that I kind of sit around and play guitar in every time I go make a record the chair comes with me and right now I get to sit in the chair for a different reason but that's the story of the chair this is a 1964 Jazz Master this was the first nice old guitar I ever got and it was a gift from my wife when I received it it it looked very uh mint I kept it that way for a while and then I started feeling bad it's a tool to me and it's meant to be used and so I I've used it over the years and it

's certainly in the room for everything that I've ever recorded even if it's not played on everything I've ever recorded it's played on a lot of things that I've recorded you can see over the years it it turned very not meant just from use but that's okay this is all Hest where it's been a good tool and has served me well generally I'm not playing an electric guitar in a riding setting uh unless I'm there in a studio with the whole band the guitar that I would choose to sit in a room with is abo

ut to come in [Music] this is a 1950 something Gibson LG2 it has a replaced neck on it and replace tuners and body probably Ed it as a canoe paddle there's like mud in it and so many repaired cracks that you probably can't count them I bought this guitar very early in my songwriting career and most songs that I've written um have been on this guitar these are the foundations of most of the music that I've made in my songwriting and record making career I paid about $380 for this guitar it took a

bout $900 to make it work correctly but it's earned its keep beyond that and I don't know all the stories that made it look like this but it's certainly been with me for a lot of good ones I have a friend of mine who talks about playing guitar in the way that you have to kind of throw your whole body into it when you're in the moment of singing or playing um if you're not putting all of yourself into it then you're not going to get that but I I try to do that at all times but certainly there's m

oments where you know know all right this is not the one we're just working this out that you're not doing that but when it's go time uh whether it's a live show or um recording something yeah you just go there if you didn't get there all the way that wasn't the one you know the jeep that we're going to take a look at is a 1979 Jeep chair key that my wife purchased for me after my dad passed away she caught me looking at it online said hey let's get out of here we flew Phoenix are Arizona and dr

ove it back uh to Nashville it was all original at the time and had uh you know like 77,000 Mi on it and I warned her that we would not make it all the way and we did we did lose an alternator along the way but since it made its way back home she kind of regifted it to me as uh in a way that she kind of hooked it up for some guys at hendri racing to kind of redo the whole thing so it's as modern as it can be mechanically and every nut bolt and screw on it is either refurbished or new so it's a t

hing that I can get inside and once again have lots of great memories it's special to me in way that I could never get rid of it and hopefully never wreck in it in this Jeep I wrote the song traveler my wife was asleep in the passenger seat I was driving and the sun was coming up over the horizon I wrote the song while I was driving we wind up stopping in Gallop New Mexico that night and I had to you know take the guitar inside and figure out how to play it so that that was how that song got wri

tten and ultimately went up being the the title track of uh debut album so the Jeep has significance in in that way if you're a chef or a knife collector you know what this is It's a knife rule this one belong to my dad and where I grew up in Eastern Kentucky knives would be given as a sign of respect they were things that one man would give to another man so my dad when he passed away there were quite a few knives I didn't really collect knives or anything like that previous to that but I had i

nherited some from my grandfather and these are from my dad a lot of them from my dad this one in particular I know was his and I hold and I think of them they're from various times periods of time a lot of Case Knives them are from the 40s up to the 60s 7s you hold on to them you know this one was my grandfather's um he was a knife collector but my dad was not necessarily and I think about them a lot I think when I open these things up and touch them I can feel connected to them in a way that m

aybe I'm not otherwise so it kind of got me when they passed away I kind I kind of turned into I would I would pick up knives and as I was thinking about doing this I was thinking about the sign of respecting and I really started getting in my own head about it thinking about well when I buy a knife am I trying to buy self-respect I don't really know maybe that's what I'm doing I don't know but I but I I do it to feel connected to my father and my mother's father who had the all these knives thi

s is my grandfather's flag he was a soldier in World War II he was buried and this was the flag that was on his coffin and they handed over to the family at the end I have given the honor of getting to keep this with me and always kind of remember the things that he had to do so we get to do the the things that we get to do I keep this in my office this stays in my office and uh if I'm in my office riding it's sitting right there by the wall and it's always in the room he was a man with a 10th g

rade education that wound up engineering for a multinational cult Corporation he was is a testament to hard work and very very um particular in the things that he did so all those things you know inform some of what I do I'm sure this is a hat my hat that I've worn for a long long time I had a different one years ago that was similar my wife gave it away to a fan at a club one night she's like you can get another one right and I was like well no not really they don't don't make that anymore so I

I had to hunt for something similar this one's better you know there was a reason gave that one away I always kind of loved crazy hats and the guys that wore them the company that makes these hats is a company called Charlie one horse and this was made in the late '70s early ' 80s and I found it a New Old Stock and I've worn it nearly out there's not a there's not a band in it anymore this one's on slap legs really so hopefully my career will last longer than this hat will because it's very ver

y fragile at this point but the guys uh and and the ladies and the crew have have dubbed it precious so it has a name it's a hat with a name mainly because it's fragile so that's the Hat keeps the lights out of your eyes once again it's utilitarian but it's also decorative it's been with me on everything that I've done and when people think of what I do I think they think of this hat probably as much as they think of me my great grandmother made this blanket she gave it to my dad when he went aw

ay to college and it sat around in chairs in my house growing up if it was a cold night this was what you pulled out I don't know when it would have been made maybe the 60s but these were all pieces of material that my great-grandmother had saved from mending things it got worn to the point where the edges of it were kind of worn off and my mother actually kind of repaired some of it so it has that kind of touch to it too if I was running out of a burning building it's it's the thing that I woul

d grab in my house you know so if I want a blanket this is the one I want this is a pair of boots made for me customed by the uh lucasi company I was on a radio tour in El Paso before traveler came out or anything like that lucasi makes really really nice boots they take you up to this kind of Willy Wonka room when you do the factory tour and they're like hey we'd like to make you a pair of boots pick out anything you want I think they were surprised when I was like okay I just want this kind of

very plain pair of boots they have much more expensive versions of things I like no I I want something I'm going to wear every day and that's what I did with these for the longest time these were my everyday Boot and I wore these everywhere and did everything in these boots I love things that have genuine wear on them as well and so there's a lot of that I look at these boots and I think about things that we've done a lot of those things happened in these boots they're special to me in that way

I always have a a Filson jacket running around with me somewhere it's this kind of wax cot material it's just kind of allp purpose if it's raining if it's windy or you just need a jacket it works out for that so it's tough you can abuse it toss it around if a budy guy was in a band with it used to say things like you can get your work done in it I don't know it's just a nice utilitarian item and I have a lot of respect for things that work and this is the thing that works my personal style is a

bsolutely completely utilitarian I wanted just to to uh function as a as a garment it was a philson jacket that I wore on the sing of the national anthem for the Super Bowl so it works in that setting as well thank you for taking the time to uh watch My Essentials and I hope maybe you learned something about me that you didn't know or if you didn't thanks for joining us anyway