Chris Stapleton Co-Hosts 1/20-21

The co-host this wknd is Chris Stapleton, who’s in the Top 5 with “White Horse.” Chris told Lon the song was written 12 years ago. Lon asked what caused him to record it now? “Because my wife finally agreed to it. She never liked the song.  She finally relented.”

Lon asked Chris about celebrating Christmas with 5 kids: “It’s nice, but stressful. We have Elf On The Shelf for each kid.  They get in trouble a lot.  They weren’t nearly as mischievous as they were in the past.  They’ve done some pretty naughty things in the past.” 

On the subject of Christmas, Chris brought up his neighbor Thomas Rhett: “Around the holidays, he goes pretty big on the Christmas lights, and so do we.  We live around the corner, so every year I get a text, ‘Hey you put your lights out yet?’ We always go big.”

Chris is friends with John of Brothers Osborne: “He & his wife also have twins, and we talk with them about that. When you have twins, they have a weird bond.  We call it ‘twinning.’ They’re not identical, but they like to sleep in the same room, and they’re attached to each other in a lot of ways.”

Chris has been doing some stadium shows with George Strait. “He doesn’t play many shows, and we have so much fun.  One thing we’ve been doing is we play ‘Pancho & Lefty’ together. To 17-year-old me, it’s like what kind of weird world are we living in?  That was pretty cool.  So I plan on doing them as long as he does them.”

Lon also asked Chris about doing the opening theme for Monday Night Football. “It was their idea to do the Phil Collins song. They asked if I could do it with a rapper and a famous drummer.  I said if it could be Snoop, that would be good for me.  I’ve always thought Cindy Blackman is a cool drummer.  That was my ideal situation for that. It hopefully turned out to be useful for the show, and people seem to like it.”  

Chris performed White Horse on the CMA Awards.  Lon asked if Chris has watched the show: “I don’t watch things I’ve done.  I wasn’t going to watch the National Anthem I did at the Super Bowl.  I got done with it and I felt I could retire from doing the National Anthem. But that was a masterful job with what the TV folks did with the shots.”

Chris also has great stories this week about Tim McGraw, Dolly Parton, Miranda Lambert, Carly Pearc, and Dan + Shay.

NEXT WEEK: Chris Janson

Tags: featured

Category: CO-HOST