When COVID-19 breached Spain, where Kashus Culpepper was stationed at the time for the United States Navy, it felt like the world started to spin a little slower on its axis. The Alabama native, a whole continent away from home, was forced to find family among people who had previously been strangers and to find some way to occupy the time outside of service duties.
With a rudimentary background in church music and a taste that spanned generations, he picked up a guitar, fired up a few Marty Schwartz videos, and started punching at chords and melodies for his first audience, bunkmates in the barracks of Rota. That audience grew, and grew, until a few viral videos nudged him onto the algorithm of West Virginia folk country sensation Charles Wesley Godwin. Once pandemic restrictions began to ease, Godwin courted Culpepper to open for him, even though Culpepper had no studio releases to his name. The realization of his new reality, much like its culmination, wasn’t felt until it had already set in.
“[Charles] was doing four or five thousand people a night,” Culpepper recalls of his rookie tour stint. “I had never sung in front of that many people in my life. I remember when they were beaming the lights on as I started talking to the crowd, and seeing the number of people in one room was absolutely crazy. Since then, each night, each tour I go on, especially my headlining, it’s still crazy.”
It’s been zero to sixty for the singer since those first few nights, and the crowds for his solo tours are now rivaling his peers and previous mentors. As the singles began to precipitate, so did sold-out headlining shows and several exposure moments in front of acts like Charley Crockett and NEEDTOBREATHE. His audience, like his taste, is eclectic. Beckoning in both Bill Withers fanboys nearing retirement and kids who grew up on overpolished popstars, desperate for that leathery, road-worn rasp that feels like it captures decades in between labored breaths. Naturally, his almost instantly well-rounded demeanor made him a member of Opry NextStage in anticipation of his freshman LP titled “Act I.”
But it feels like the acclaim, maybe mirroring Culpepper’s own musicianship, has been in a constant state of catch-up, ironic for a guy who feels a few generations removed from some of his peers. But while half of these accolades would make a counterpart’s head spin, the singer seems privy to the fact that this is all happening faster than it should, or maybe that the success is coming quicker than most in his shoes could handle. Talking to him in early January, with the album fully wrapped and rollout mode in full swing, he seems as still as someone who’s done this song-and-dance a few times over. In a way, he has.
“I think the traveling aspect of the military got me prepared for the music industry,” Culpepper said. “Being an artist, meeting new people and becoming friends with them right from the jump. Especially if you write a lot, in Nashville or wherever, you’re always meeting people. In the military, you’re always meeting people and have to accept them as they are; you become friends really quickly with people.”
Quick connections are a lucrative business in Nashville, he tells me. He explained that being surrounded by artists and writers every day has jump-started his creative juices, which were previously dormant or at least less active. It’s prompted, he said, by how he’ll now walk into a bar and end up talking to an artist, a painter, an actress, and someone trying to write a novel in one lap around the building. “My brain is always going now,” he adds.
That’s not an empty answer, by any stretch of the imagination. In his short stint in town, and just shortly following his partnership with the wildly successful Big Loud Records, Culpepper hit the ground running with co-writes and collaborations from an all-star list of local legends. Everyone wanted to work with him, from cult favorites like Anderson East and Brent Cobb to modern Nashville founding father Rhett Akins; his first solo outing is chock-full of some of the town’s finest songwriters and collaborators. “I think I just wanted people that could help me create, just, good songs,” he states. “And all of them are able to do that. They don’t really care about the genre. Every time I’m in a room with those people, it’s just ‘let’s write the best song we can today.’”
And he was eager to get into rooms with them, too. Culpepper tells me he tried to find a mentor in anyone he could when he first got to town, citing Crockett and fellow soulster and genre-warper Leon Bridges as some of his first confidants. He found a similar story to his in Dylan Gossett, who, like Culpepper, was thrust into the limelight without having fully prepared himself for that new normal. While the contacts in his phone grew more eclectic, the questions he asked remained stagnant. When I asked him what kinds of inquiries he was making of his new crew regarding the music business, his answer was brief but broad.
“How to stay sane, man!” Culpepper said, laughing. “That’s the big question: how to stay sane through all of it. Because you’ll drop something, and in your head, you’re like, ‘man, this is the best song I’ve ever done.’ But everybody might not be on the same page.
“No matter who I talk to, they’re just like ‘Bro, just keep doing you, and things are going to be great.’ From an artistic standpoint, that’s what I’ve been doing, just staying me.”
What “me” means to Culpepper, or his inner circle, is a delightfully fun puzzle to figure out. For anyone who’s given more than one of his tracks a spin, diversity is kind of what Culpepper is known for. He tells me it’s intentional when I asked about the difference in his only two collaborations on the record being flighty, transportative alto of Sierra Ferrell on “Broken Wing Bird,” where Kashus told me he wanted a duet with a partner that felt like they “weren’t from this time,” and Marcus King’s sweat and soot laced guitar solos on “Southern Man,” the records bid at a real Alabama barn-burner. “I feel like if people go through the record, they’re gonna find other songs that are just like that,” he explained. “I think people are gonna realize that’s just me, that’s just how I hear music.”
“Act I,” as most freshman records are, is an encapsulation of the ethos that Culpepper is trying to cultivate. But unlike most debut efforts, it can lend itself to a dozen different subcultures and genres from one track to the next. “Woman” will exude the warm, sexy confidence of a Dusty Springfield hit before easing into a more modern, soft-pop register on a morning-after melody in “Mean to Me.” There’s a cinematic quality to the record that extends screenplay header title, flitting between true soul and country to a more Allman-esque blend of the two, or maybe even seeing Culpepper divert entirely into sleeker, modern takes of what those styles used to mean. The singer cites a syllabus of familiar faces, varied enough to make sense of what’s to come from his translation of past ideas: Chris Stapleton, Ray LaMontagne, Norah Jones, and Wilson Pickett were all at the top of his mind.
The agency that Culpepper has regarding his creative process and output, which he said he kept emphasizing was a big priority for him, occupies a lot of his forward thinking, beyond the purely immediate next thing. He talks about his decision to go with Big Loud Records, the label home of Morgan Wallen, Stephen Wilson Jr., and The 502’s, as a means to that end. Dip into the blues? Knock yourself out. Try a little bit of southern soul, but with some glowy pop keys peppered into the mix? Go crazy. He said the group was ecstatic about his first feature-length project being proposed as “country Americana.” Still, they’ve never made him feel limited, encouraging him to keep pushing what he’s already made work. “Who knows for the future,” he said regarding what sectors and subgenres he tackles next. “My music leans into so many places, sonically, so it’s cool that [Big Loud], no matter where I go, they’re gonna be backing me, and I felt that from the very beginning.”
Currently, Kashus is in a mode he hasn’t seen much of since his career took off six years ago: anticipation. With his debut LP wrapped and ready for release in late January, it feels like he’s just now getting to play catch-up with himself after the euphoric few months he and producer Brian Elmquist spent together in the studio. Again, the moment didn’t fully cement itself until it was a good hundred yards behind him.
“I swear, I wasn’t feeling any nerves until the night I was in Toronto opening up for Darius Rucker,” Culpepper said. “And I was with his crew, and they asked me, ‘Are you ready for your album announcement?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah!’ Then, it hit socials. And I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I love this album, but now I’m hoping everybody else loves it too. That’s been the most nerve-wracking thing for me.
“I just hope people see this and know just how much I love music,” he stressed. “And how much I love so many kinds of music. I’m just a real dude, and I just want to show you how much I love this music, no matter what the sound is.”
