Daddy Doesn't Pray Anymore

Album: Traveller (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Chris Stapleton wrote this song about his father back in the mid-2000s, but only recorded it after he passed away in 2013. He explained to Taste of Country: "I had gone home for some holiday or something to my parents' house. My dad was a very straight arrow, prayed-at-every-meal kind of guy. For whatever reason, whether he was tired or wasn't feeling well, he didn't say grace at this particular meal, which he had done at every meal [Laughs] that I'd ever eaten with him. And he said it at every meal after that, but this particular meal he didn't, and it struck me that daddy doesn't pray anymore."

    "I kinda turned that idea around in my head, and my then girlfriend, now wife, we were at her apartment, she was getting ready to do something, and I was waiting on her, and she said, 'Well, why don't you just write a song?' [Laughs]. So I wrote that song in about ten minutes, waiting on her to get ready before we went somewhere. I think it was maybe 2005 that I wrote that song. That song's been around that long, but it got weight after my father passed away. It felt like time to record it."

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