Country star Chris Stapleton’s bass player still hasn’t quit his day job.

Things were different the last time J.T. Cure played in Lexington with Chris Stapleton.

That was roughly six years ago, long before the Lexington-born, Paintsville- and Staffordsville-reared Stapleton became a top-selling, Grammy-winning torchbearer of traditional country music. Together with Elkhorn City native Cure, the two would roar through town with a combustible quartet called The Jompson Brothers, a combo that approximated the rougher electric extremes of Stapleton’s 2017 album “From A Room, Volume 2.” But the Jompsons didn’t draw the kinds of mammoth crowds Stapleton and Cure play to today — specifically, the kind that will pack every available seat Saturday night at Rupp Arena. Cure, for one, is more than anxious to hear how Stapleton’s rustic, roots-driven music sounds in a bigger room.

“It still feels like we are doing the same thing we’ve always been doing as far playing shows and knocking the stuff out,” Cure said. “But it’s definitely on a grander scale. Sometimes it’s hard to see how far back the crowds go. We’ve passed the point where it seemed we were playing shows where more people were there than lived in Pikeville. It was a strange feeling, for sure.”

The musical alliance between Stapleton and Cure extends back nearly two decades. They met through Jesse Wells, the current fiddler for fellow Kentucky country ambassador Tyler Childers and a longtime instructor at Morehead State University.

“Jesse was one of the first people I met when I went to school at Morehead through the music department,” Cure said. “That was, like, ’98. So Chris came along and Jesse introduced us. We all just started playing music. It was mostly acoustic music back then. It was a little on the bluegrassy side of things, but we would also do Beatles covers and stuff like that. We basically just got together to play for events and make a little money as well as play around the house and have fun with all our college buddies.”

Stapleton and Cure eventually wound up in Nashville, but with distinctly different agendas. Stapleton became a champion songwriter and soon joined the soul-savvy bluegrass troupe The SteelDrivers before avenues opened, over time, for a solo career that gradually gained momentum in the wake of his solo debut, “Traveller.”

Cure became an accountant.

You read right. While remaining Stapleton’s bass guitarist of choice through the singer’s post SteelDrivers tenure with the Jompson Brothers, the chart-topping success of “Traveller” and the two “From A Room,” albums as well as all of the touring each of those projects demanded, Cure maintained a day job as an accountant at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville.

Here’s the crazy part of that saga: Cure still balances both worlds, even as Stapleton has become one of the biggest global names in country music.

“In the early stages after the whole ‘Traveller’ album blew up and we were doing all these bus tours, I was still working full time still at Vanderbilt,” Cure said. “I had a laptop with a remote connection, and wherever we would park the bus that day, I would work on the bus. I’d hop out and have lunch, get back on the computer, go to sound check, get back on the computer and do the show.

“It started to be too much, so I went in and actually tried to quit, but Vanderbilt proposed an arrangement where I worked Mondays, Tuesdays and every other Wednesday. So I pretty much don’t have any days off since we’re playing mostly on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and traveling on Sunday. Then I’m back to work on Monday through Wednesday. So it’s still a lot, but it’s a little bit more manageable.”

There is no escaping the irony that comes from having an artist working in a musical genre largely dictated by commercial potential doubling as an accountant. But what is especially intriguing about the setting is how Stapleton’s current music has relied so much on country and soul tradition as opposed to more overtly bankable country-pop formulas. Cure said such commercial concerns have never entered intro the music he forges with his longtime friend. Both are simply following the paths established by the sounds they grew up with.

“We just make music that we like to hear, music that we would buy ourselves,” Cure said. “And people like it. They like it, in fact, to a magnitude that I couldn’t fathom. But I think success was just a by-product of the approach we took to making all the songs. We weren’t trying to become famous from doing a record. It just happened for Chris. It’s a traditional sound because that’s what we like.

“Then again, we’re old. This is typically a young man’s game. Chris is 40 and I’m, well, getting there. But we grew up listening to the same era of music. I think that comes across a lot in the music we do. That’s the way it is.”

IF YOU GO

Chris Stapleton

Opening: Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives, Brent Cobb

When: 7 p.m. Oct. 27

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

Tickets: Sold Out

Call: 859-233-3535

Online: rupparena.com

This story was originally published October 22, 2018 at 5:13 PM.