CHRIS STAPLETON'S TOUR SET WAS BUILT TO HOUSE MANY FUNCTIONS ON THE ROAD.

Artist: Chris Stapleton

Chris Stapleton has three nominations going into this year’s CMA Awards. He’s up for Male Vocalist, Album of the Year for From A Room: Volume 1 AND Entertainer of the Year.

Earlier this year, Chris launched his All-American Road Show, along with rotating special guests including Brothers Osborne, Lucie Silvas, Brent Cobb, Margo Price, Marty Stuart and more. The tour features a very cool set and lighting grid, which has more than one function by design.

“It all functions from a sonic place. I built, people look at it and it looks like a Thunderdome and don’t know what it is. It’s a giant diffuser is what it is, so it’s meant to tune a stage every night to a certain, we cut out all the bad bass and all the bad high and so, garbage in and garbage out. A-it helps us hear better on stage and we don’t have to wear any in-ears (monitors), but also it hopefully gives more consistencies sonically in the show,” says Chris. “Now, after we built it, we put some lights on it and it happens to look like the Death Star or something, but that’s how we wanted to approach music. We still stand in basically the same configuration we would stand in a 300-person club; we’re just in a bigger room and we made our own little room on stage that hopefully makes us feel a little more cozy, and hopefully the result is that it seems to be to try to create some of that feeling in a much larger room, you know? Some of the intimacy of playing a smaller place in a larger room would be my hope and dream for how that works.”

The Kentucky native has climbed inside the Top 30 with his latest song, “Broken Halos,” which is from his most recent album, From A Room: Volume 1. Chris’ new album, From A Room: Volume 2, is set for release December 1st.

Chris continues his All-American Road Show this week with stops in Charleston, West Virginia on Thursday (November 2nd), Columbus, Ohio on Friday (November 3rd) and Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday (November 4th).

Catch Chris at the 51st Annual CMA Awards, which will air live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena November 8th at 8pm ET on ABC.

Chris Stapleton (tour set) OC: …how that works. 1:05
“Well, the set’s actually — I haven’t talked a whole lot about it – but it all functions from a sonic place. I built, people look at it and it looks like a Thunderdome and don’t know what it is. It’s a giant diffuser is what it is, so it’s meant to tune a stage every night to a certain, we cut out all the bad bass and all the bad high and so, garbage in and garbage out. A-it helps us hear better on stage and we don’t have to wear any in-ears (monitors), but also it hopefully gives more consistencies sonically in the show. Now, after we built it, we put some lights on it and it happens to look like the Death Star or something, but that’s how we wanted to approach music. We still stand in basically the same configuration we would stand in a 300-person club; we’re just in a bigger room and we made our own little room on stage that hopefully makes us feel a little more cozy, and hopefully the result is that it seems to be to try to create some of that feeling in a much larger room, you know? Some of the intimacy of playing a smaller place in a larger room would be my hope and dream for how that works.”

Chris Stapleton (tour set) 2 OC: …some of that. :18
“Dreaming up things on napkins over years, I would always draw things like ‘What can I do to make this better and easier to play on and in and hopefully have the result of something that sounds better up front?’ This is a march in that direction and hopefully it achieves some of that.”