Chris Stapleton’s Deep Connection to His “Wooden Security Blanket” Is Something Every Musician Can Relate To

There are two types of guitar players. There are the guitar players who use it as a prop, and then there are the guitar players who see it as an extra appendage. Those are the guitar players who reside in the pages of the history books, and who people try to mimic time and time again. In contemporary country music, those types of guitar players include Billy Strings, Sturgill Simpson, Zach Top, Marcus King, and Chris Stapleton.

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Chris Stapleton is a musician through and through; if you took away his money, fame, and awards, he would very well still be picking away, audience or not. That being so, the guitar has seemingly been an extra arm for him, an oasis, and a creative vehicle that can heal and articulate better than words ever could.

Strapped to The Hip—Chris Stapleton and The Guitar

Like any profession that requires some type of equipment, if you want to be great you have to know that equipment inside and out. Chris Stapleton knows the guitar inside and out, and that is attributed to the fact that he consistently played for 12 hours a day at a certain point in his life. He attested to that fact and many others while sitting down with Howard Stern on the Howard Stern Show.

Regarding his intimate affinity for the instrument, Stapleton stated, “Listen, it’s definitely my friend, and it’s definitely something that I pick up if I was feeling troubled or if I was feeling down. “I don’t know that I would find myself in it, but I would find comfort in it.”

“Holding one is comforting to me. It’s a wooden security blanket of sorts,” added Stapleton. Picking up the guitar when he was around 12 years old, Stapleton divulged that he didn’t put his nose to the grindstone until he was 18 years old. Furthermore, and funny enough, Stapleton had never played an electric guitar on stage until he made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2013.

All that being said, Chris Stapleton is an incredibly informal guitar player. When talking with Stern, he stated that he doesn’t know how to read music, he doesn’t know the names of some of the chords he plays, and up until he was an adult, he did not even know what strings he was playing. So, if Stapleton’s guitar metamorphosis teaches you anything, it teaches you that all you need is a whole lot of ambition and admiration for your instrument. Because at the end of the day, where there is a will, there is a way.

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