The stars aligned for Mike Campbell and Chris Stapleton by 2020. It was the beginning of a streak of collaborations between Stapleton and the Heartbeaker’s band, the Dirty Knobs, over the next four years.
“There was some lucky timing with Chris Stapleton,” said Campbell, who first collaborated on Stapleton’s 2020 album Starting Over. “He had called me up and wanted to come out to LA to write with me. I had never really done that. It was different from the way I had written with Tom [Petty], where, rarely, if ever, we sat down eyeball to eyeball and tried to pull something out of thin air, because it’s kind of intimate. But I agreed to give it a shot, and I enjoyed it.”
The two originally met three years earlier when Stapleton opened for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at Wrigley Field in Chicago during the band’s 40th-anniversary tour. Both immediately hit it off, connecting over music and even a similar songwriting etiquette.
“Chris and I think alike,” says Campbell. “We threw ideas back and forth, and it felt comfortable.”
Throughout the years, Stapleton and Campbell continued performing together, co-wrote three songs from 2020 through 2024, and collaborated on several more. In 2026, Campbell and the Dirty Knobs also joined Stapleton’s All-American Road Show tour.
“He’s probably my favorite guitar player of all time,” said Stapleton in 2020. “To sit around with him and write some songs has been cool.”
Videos by American Songwriter
“Watch You Burn” (2020)
Written by Mike Campbell and Chris Stapleton
On his fourth album, Starting Over, produced by Dave Cobb, Stapleton hand-picked a small group of co-writers, including John Fogerty, Guy Clark, Mike Henderson, and Susanna Clarke. Campbell was also on board and co-wrote two tracks with Stapleton, including “Watch You Burn.”
The slower burner was a response to the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017, which left 60 concertgoers killed and hundreds injured.
Only a coward would pick up a gun
And shoot up a crowd trying to have fun
Now the Vegas lights, they won’t lose their glow
And the band will play and go on with the show
And you’re gonna get your turn
Yes, you’re gonna get your turn
Son, you’re gonna get your turn
Devil, gonna watch you burn
I wasn’t there, I didn’t see
But I had friends in your company
If I could snap my fingers, if I could flip a switch
I’d make that last bullet first, you son of a bitch
“It’s a self-therapy session sometimes,” said Stapleton of the song. “Sometimes that’s all [a song’s] for. Mike [Campbell] listened and really got it to a place where he made me feel like it was not a song that was meant to be in my pocket.”
Starting Over later earned Stapleton a CMA and ACM award for Album of the Year and a Grammy for Best Country Album.
“Arkansas,” Chris Stapleton (2020)
Written by Mike Campbell and Chris Stapleton
Starting Over also features Heartbreaker Benmont Tench playing on several tracks, along with Campbell on guitar for “Watch You Burn,” and the second track he co-wrote with Stapleton, “Arkansas.” Based on a road trip Stapleton took through the Ozarks on route to Nashville in a new car, the uptempo rocker calls out several landmarks—the Ozark Mountains, Little Rock, the White River, Fayetteville—he hit along the way.
“It wasn’t that long ago that I had a birthday, and I happen to like fast cars,” said Stapleton. “So my wife bought me a fast car, but the fast car was in Oklahoma City, so me and J.T. (bassist J.T. Cure) back there on the bass got dropped off in Oklahoma City and we drove like a bat out of hell through the Ozark Mountains all the way to Nashville, Tennessee, and that’s what this song is all about.”
Took a 911 ’bout a 107 down a back road
Where the white river runs
And the Southern sun makes the kudzu grow
And what I found in the Ozark mountains I ain’t ever seen
It sure does feel like you’re sittin’ on top of the world to me
Gotta get down, gotta get down to Arkansas
Havin’ so much fun that it’s probably a little bit against the law
All the boys and the girls down there
Sure do know how to have a ball
If you wanna get down, gotta get down to Arkansas
Well, we burned through the one light towns like a scalded dog
When we lit out of Fayetteville, they were callin’ the hogs
We made a pit stop in Little Rock for some barbecue
And when we hit West Memphis there were blue lights in our rear view
“F–k That Guy,” The Dirty Knobs (2020)
Written by Mike Campbell and Chris Stapleton
On the Dirty Knobs debut album, Wreckless Abandon, Stapleton sings on tracks “Pistol Packin’ Mama” and “Irish Girl.” He and Campbell also co-penned the slow and bluesy cruiser “F–k That Guy.”
Well, look at that clown
Dressed up like Charles Dickens
Sneaking around like Slim Pickens
If he was a woman he’d think he was God’s gift to men
Got to stick his head in a garbage can
F–k that guy
Yeah, f– k that guy
It ought to be a crime
He ain’t a friend of mine
F–k that guy
Look at that heartless fool
Lurking around the high school
Somebody better call the cops
He ought to be arrested
Ain’t nobody around here gonna get molested
F–k that guy
Yeah, f– k that guy
It ought to be a crime
He ain’t a friend of mine
F–k that guy
Stapleton collaborated with Campbell again on the Dirty Knobs’ 2024 album, Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, singing on the track “Don’t Wait Up.” Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits also reunited Campbell with Tench, who plays on “Don’t Wait Up,” and drummer Steve Ferrone, along with special guests Graham Nash and Lucinda Williams.
Photo: Chris Phelps
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