AUGUST 24, 2009

Zac Brown Is Heatin' Things Up

Zac Brown believes the way to fans' hearts is through their stomachs, and he's getting ready to prove it. Since that years before he became one of the hottest acts in country music, Zac was handling another kind of heat - at the stove...

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AUGUST 22, 2009

Billboard "Toes" Review

Zac Brown Band's third single follows a similar arc of chart success as the group's previous hits, "Chicken Fried" and "Whatever It Is," just as it offers a well-worn imagery. On "Chicken Fried," the band conjured up comfort food and "a pair of jeans that fit just right"; on "Whatever It Is," it spoke of long legs and "lips like sweet red wine." On "Toes," Brown sings about his search for satisfaction, whether on the beaches of Mexico or an inland Georgia lake: "I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand/Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand/Life is good today." The scenes being painted aren't necessarily original, but they fit like old sneakers - and add up to one feel-good summer song. -KT

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AUGUST 22, 2009

Country Comforts With Zac Brown

By JON BREAM, Star Tribune

Nashville's unlikeliest new star is a stocking-capped, reggae-loving guitar picker who celebrates fried chicken, blue jeans and Mason jars.

With his bushy beard and stocking cap, Zac Brown looks like he stepped out of rock's jam-band circuit. Although the Georgia farmer has scored two Top 10 country hits in the past year, his Zac Brown Band is versatile enough to play the Bonnaroo neo-hippie fest one day and the Country Music Association's Fan Fair the next.

Bonnaroo "was my favorite show that we've done in a long time," said Brown, 30, who will headline Monday at Mystic Lake Casino. "I love the challenge of being in front of people that haven't heard us before. Good music is good music, period."

Whether he's opening for B.B. King, ZZ Top or Keith Urban, Brown is right at home. That's because he's about entertaining whomever shows up, not about playing the Nashville game -- although he's pretty good at that, too. Last week, the Zac Brown Band won the fan-voted breakthrough prize at the CMT Music Awards, for "Chicken Fried," their homemade first hit.

The song celebrates life's simple pleasures -- cold beer, comfy jeans and fried chicken. Brown thinks the song is "a good pacifier" in tough times.

Piercings instead of polo shirts

Last month Brown opened for Urban at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. He was running late for an interview because he'd lingered too long at Willie's American Guitars, a shop in St. Paul.

"I'm obsessed with cooking, knives and guitars," said Brown, who owned a gourmet soul-food restaurant, Zac's Place, for a couple of years with his father.

A serious acoustic picker, Brown has splurged on 15 vintage guitars since "Chicken Fried" went No. 1. At Willie's, he wound up buying a dobro for a band member, but he had his eye on three other vintage guitars, including one for $13,000.

"He was very unassuming, a nice, down-to-earth, courteous guy -- and a good judge of guitars," said Willie's owner, Nate Westgor. "He's still in touch with one of our guys."

A brawny guy in blue jeans, black T-shirt and shiny brown leather vest, Brown comes across as thoughtful, humble and ambitious.

Click the image to read the article on StarTribune.com.

Tom Wallace, Dml - Star Tribune

The Zac Brown Band who opened for Keith Urban at the Xcel Center Thursday night will be back in the area June 29th to as the main act at The Mystic. Shown: Zac Brown.

MARCH 31, 2009

Rolling Stone:  Zac Brown Enters the S.S.

We had the Zac Brown Band swing by the Smoking Section to play us a tune or two, but we were all having so much fun, the guys decided to give us an extended performance -- five songs!

The Zac Brown Band, hailing from Atlanta, is Zac Brown on guitar and vocals, Jimmy De Martini on violin and vocals, John Hopkins on bass and vocals, Coy Bowles on guitar, multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook and Chris Fryar on drums.

And these Georgia boys know how to put on a show, given that play about 200 gigs a year. They've been nominated by the Academy of Country Music as Top New Artist (you can vote for them here). Country radio has them in constant rotation.

"We're a live performing band," Brown tells us. "We never expected radio success to take off the way it has, but it's really helped us fill rooms in places we'd never been. We're selling out places we've never played. That's the type of opportunity we want as a live band."

Check out their single, "Chicken Fried," above, and click the jump for "Highway 20 Ride," a super-speedy cover of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," the feel-good beach tune "Toes" and "Whatever It Is."

Watch the Zac Brown Band perform on the Smoking Section.

MARCH 27, 2009

POLLSTAR FEATURES ZAC BROWN BAND

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, can the same rule apply to a fan’s heart?

It worked for the Zac Brown Band.

ZBB scored a recipe for success in 2008 with its hit single “Chicken Fried,” an ode to pecan pie, patriotism and all things Southern. But while acclaim may have seemed to come quickly, this story’s not about some flash in the pan.

Georgia-born and raised, guitarist/singer Zac Brown spent years behind the stove cooking soul-infused specialties at a restaurant he owned with his father, all the while hitting the stage for club gigs night after night.

Like any good chef, Brown searched for the perfect ingredients to give his group the right Southern flavor – he claims as many as 40 players have been through the band over the years – eventually settling on a lineup that includes Jimmy De Martini (fiddle, vocals), John Driskell Hopkins (bass guitar, vocals), Coy Bowles (guitar, organ), Chris Fryar (drums) and Clay Cook (guitar, organ, mandolin, steel guitar, vocals).

“I’m a lifetime musician,” Brown told Pollstar. “I dedicate my life to the music and everybody in my band does. We have a lot of respect for other musicians that I grew up listening to – the people like Willie Nelson and Ray Charles and Dolly Parton and James Taylor.”

The band became a staple in clubs around the South with its unremitting touring schedule and raucous renditions of some of those respected musicians’ hits, eventually catching the attention of Creative Artists Agency’s John Huie. When a friend kept hounding him to see the show, Huie said he finally agreed to hear Brown play one night at the Dixie Tavern in Marietta, Ga.

“I thought I’d go see a song and turn around and leave, and I ended up staying the whole set,” he told Pollstar. “I was absolutely blown away. I walk in this club on a Thursday night, and the place was packed. There was 400 kids in there and they were singing the lyrics to every song.”

Huie got on board getting the word out about Zac Brown in Nashville but, despite the band’s awesome stage presence, its sound just wasn’t easily categorized for radio.

“When I took his demo around to country guys, they’d say, ‘He’s too rock ’n’ roll,’” Huie said. “And I’d give it to rock guys and they’d say, ‘He’s too country.’ Everybody wants to format and make it fit a certain thing, and Zac says, ‘I am who I am, and this is the music I make.’”

Because the group was already building up a considerable fan base in the Atlanta area playing Zac’s music, Huie decided to keep the focus on touring, branching out to other cities in the region that were accessible by van.

ZBB also branched out by boat, signing up for stints on the annual Rock Boat cruises, which Brown credits as a way the band caught the attention of fans around the U.S.

“People from all over would come on these boats,” he said. “I’d stay up all night playing acoustic even when the band wasn’t playing. … It’s a great community of people and they’ve gotten behind us and helped us out a lot.”

The Rock Boat shows helped put Brown on the radar of ROAR’s Bernard Cahill and William Ward, who signed to manage the band after seeing the way audiences reacted at ZBB shows.

“I grew up in college seeing Dave Matthews coming up in clubs and touring bands that were building these fan bases and you saw a lot of similarities in the way the fans respond to [Brown’s] music,” Ward told Pollstar.

Besides the music, Cahill and Ward said they saw a multidimensional artist in Brown – a workhorse who’d spent years touring, yet put just as much effort into his other life pursuits.

“He’s an incredible artist, incredible songwriter and incredible performer,” Cahill told Pollstar, “But we also recognized that Zac had other skills and abilities. In particular, he owned a restaurant. He’s an amazing chef and it’s not just a hobby for him. It’s a passion; it’s part of who he is.”

In fact, Brown recently blended those passions during an appearance on Paula Deen’s Food Network television program, where he cooked a meal and performed for the Southern celebu-chef.

There’s plenty more where that came from. Zac Brown Band just scored an Academy of Country Music award win for top new vocal group and the band hits the road this summer for festivals and support slots around North America.

But don’t expect all that fame to go to Brown’s head. After all, he’s got friends to feed.

“Zac will pull up the tour bus and instead of taking a nap or chilling out, he goes and cooks food for the entire band and crew,” Cahill said. “When was the last time you heard that?”

--Dana Parker-McClain

Read the article at PollStar.com

AUGUST 22, 2008

ZBB Takes NYC

Mercury Lounge
217 E. Houston St., New York, NY 10002
nr. Ludlow St. See Map | Subway Directions
212-260-4700

Tickets: Buy tickets online

Good-time Georgians who've been compared to audience pleasers from Robert Earl Keen to Jimmy Buffett, Zac Brown Band are a fail-safe bet for a rousing show, with sing-along. A litmus test: Try listening to their single "Chicken Fried" without tapping your foot. — Katie Charles

AUGUST 18, 2008

ZBB Featured in People Magazine

Zac Brown played in bars for years before assembling his band, which includes bassist John Hopkins, fiddler Jimmy De Martini, guitarist Coy Bowles and drummer Chris Fryar.

Check out "Chicken Fried," a song celebrating those simple pleasures of American life like cold beer, jeans that "fit just right" — and, of course, fried chicken

THEIR INSPIRATION: Brown, 30, says the band "wrote a list of all the things we love. No matter what your background or religion or social class, the things that are in that song are on a human level.

Meet Zac Brown: Southern Rock’s Easygoing Outlaw

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