Chris Stapleton shows off chops and versatility at Fenway

Chris Stapleton, with Zach Top and Allen Stone, at Fenway Park, Friday, Aug. 14, 2026

If you view concert tours as pure marketing, then there was little reason for Chris Stapleton to be at Fenway Park for one night, let alone two.

His last album came out in 2023, and Friday’s setlist of familiar cuts peppered with a handful of covers didn’t suggest that he’s road-testing material for a new one.

But if you view music as a living, breathing thing, and Stapleton is exactly the type of artist who would, then it makes perfect sense. The country star was playing live simply because that’s where music happens at its most elemental level.

And if his first of two nights at Fenway (he returns on Saturday) was any indication, Stapleton might just be one of the most purely, intrinsically musical acts of the current Nashville establishment.

That would certainly explain why Stapleton easily drew focus despite not really having much stage personality.

There was almost zero showmanship to his performance: He didn’t talk much by his own admission, and he sang to his vocalist wife Morgane on songs like “Broken Halos” and the gentle open hand of “Starting Over” as much as, if not more than, to the audience.

Instead, he just played music with an ease and soft command. It all poured out of him without any special effort beyond simply getting out of the way.

It certainly helped that Stapleton had extraordinary tools to work with. The most obvious was his whopper of a voice, with its lived-in ache that could handle the defeat of “Nobody To Blame” and the angry hurt of “Cold” when he wasn’t rearing back to open it up organically into a burnished tenor shriek.

He was also a hotshot guitarist, itself enough to distinguish him from most of his country-singer brethren all on its own. From his lyrical solo on “What Am I Gonna Do” to the simple hard-clanging twang of the chords of “Arkansas” (with some rhythm chanks recalling the sultry studio soul of the late 1970s tossed in on multiple occasions), Stapleton showed off both his chops and his versatility.

His band did wonders to back up that versatility. “Bad As I Used To Be” rode a blues-rock groove as J.T. Cure supplied a burbling disco bassline, they whipped up the funky soul of Al Green’s “I’m A Ram” with ease and Stapleton’s solo-electric “I Was Wrong” became a scorching band workout midway through, with Lee Pardini’s organ burning particularly hot.

Songs like those and the simmering mid-period Eagles of “Think I’m In Love With You” suggested that the singer could have thrived just as easily in decades gone by (and in genres besides country), and despite its galloping drumbeat, the lead lines that Stapleton played in “Parachute” could have come from a 100-year-old cowboy song.

All of it served material that bespoke empathy and humility. Supported solely by the singer’s own acoustic guitar, “What Are You Listening To?” was about trying to hold on to a connection that’s already slipped away, and “You Should Probably Leave” was a song about being helpless to avoid succumbing, sung by a married couple staring each other down. But he also turned small moments of joy into big things in “Joy Of My Life” and the openhearted serenity of “Millionaire.”

Fittingly enough, Stapleton’s final two songs seemed to sum up both his approach and his reach. He made the narrator of “Traveller” relaxed and comfortable in his own skin, even if he couldn’t stay in one stay in one place, as country a theme as they come.

Then came “Outlaw State Of Mind,” with a low chewy twang and tiptoe thump that promised trouble, right up until the whole song erupted into Technicolor: fuzz bass, a harmonica that sounded like a rusted-out train, an organ that wheezed and moaned and Morgane working her tambourine like she was Stevie Nicks invoking one Welsh witch or another, all while the video screens went nuts with psychedelic effects like smears and fast zooms.

And then Stapleton, the calm center of it all, warped his guitar into feedback, hit a single sharp chord and waved goodnight, ready to do it again on Saturday.

With a clean shift from the preshow music of Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” into his own “Voodoo” and an island-soul funky cover of James Taylor’s “Fire And Rain,” Allen Stone aimed to be a limber good-time artist, and he possessed the enthusiasm if not quite the high-energy personality to keep his performance from ultimately dissipating in the open air.

Zach Top’s walkup song — Van Halen’s “Jump” — was less representative of his act, which recalled country music from just before distorted electric guitars took over the genre in the 2000s. His tight and clear voice offered a frisky ache, and he brought a welcome swing to his appealing material that helped mitigate a repetitiveness that started sneaking in towards the end.

Setlist for Chris Stapleton at Fenway Park — August 14, 2026

Bad As I Used To Be
Arkansas
Nobody To Blame
What Am I Gonna Do
Parachute
Millionaire (Kevin Welch cover)
Think I’m In Love With You
I’m A Ram (Al Green cover) (with Allen Stone)
Maggie’s Song
Free Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd cover)
Always On My Mind (Gwen McCrae cover)
What Are You Listening To?
Nashville, TN
I Was Wrong
Cold
I Ain’t Living Long Like This (Gary Stewart cover) (with Zach Top)
White Horse
You Should Probably Leave
Joy Of My Life (John Fogerty cover)
Starting Over
Fire Away
Broken Halos
Tennessee Whiskey (David Allan Coe cover)

ENCORE

Traveller
Outlaw State Of Mind

Marc Hirsh can be reached at [email protected] or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.

Marc Hirsh is a music critic who covers a wide variety of genres, including pop, rock, hip-hop, country and jazz.