The United States of Chris Stapleton

In an age rife with division, he's maybe the only thing Americans all agree on. How did a songwriter who never cared much for being famous transcend country music to become one of today's most popular stars?

- By Brett Martin. Photographs by Stacy Kranitz

The most famous Jeep in Nashville is headed north. It's a '79 Cherokee and an immaculate restoration from gas cap to roof rack: shiny as a hard-shell coffee candy on the outside, all creamy-caramel contours within, the kind of thing that would catch the eye of a certain kind of car geek-of which there seems to be no shortage on I-65 heading toward the Kentucky state line-no matter who the driver. So, for those who pull up alongside to take a look, it might be purely a bonus to find Chris Stapleton, one of the most famous men in country music, behind the wheel. The crank-operated windows are open, and so is the road. Wind whips around the tufts of long hair that peek out of Stapleton's baseball cap as he leans back in the driver's seat.

"This is what I call an active driver," he says affectionately of the Jeep, which remains charmingly claptrap despite a state-of-the-art 392 Hemi under the hood. "Modern cars have kind of made us numb to the sensation of how fast we're going. Or, you know, how dangerous the entire act of flying down the road at 60 miles per hour really is." Those dangers are soon to be made even more apparent: We're headed to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Stapleton's plan being to spend a rare off-day on the racetrack there with a Z06 supercar.