Even now, 40-years later, listening to Bob Seger’s “Fire Down Below,” I experience it the same as when I heard it in 1976: that it was in a class of its own; the in your face vocals and the band’s down-home, gritty delivery still knock my socks off.
One feels a similar sensation listening to Chris Stapleton’s newest, “Parachute,” a blah title that doesn’t do justice to lyrics like these:
You only need a roof when it’s raining
You only need a fire when it’s cold
You only need a drink when the whiskey
Is the only thing that you have left to hold
Or
…falling feels like flying till you hit the ground
Like Bob Seger, Stapleton’s vocals are raw and powerful — he could handle a good ol’ rock production just as easily as he does Country.
Currently Country music’s poster boy for authenticity, Stapleton talks, looks and sings the part, and it works, ‘cause his album “Traveller” won both a Grammy and a Country Music Association (CMA) award for “Album of the Year.”
“Parachute” is currently Top 30 on the Country charts.