With a traditionalist’s touch, Nashville-via-Illinois songwriter Kendell Marvel crafts poignant country songs, attracting singers who want to explore heavy subjects. In 2008, fellow songwriter Jamey Johnson took Marvel’s desolate “That Lonesome Song” and turned it into a roadhouse rager, and Chris Stapleton won a Grammy in 2018 for his sparse, devastating take on the breakup song “Either Way”. And Marvel seethes against hypocrisy on the lowdown on his own recording of “Put It in the Plate”.