Journey to the Center of the Zac Brown Band
Among the albums that will be released next Friday there will also be “Love & fear”eighth studio test of the Zac Brown Band. Country rock group from Atlanta, little known here in Italy, but which in the United States enjoys respect, prestige and records at the top of the sales charts.
To provide a measure of their quality, in 2013 Dave Grohl He got to collaborate with them and was blown away: “They’re incredible. They’re so good they could be recorded live; we didn’t need any fucking computers, we recorded live, four parts harmony around a microphone. This rocks. I didn’t know what they could do before. People say, ‘Oh, it’s country music.’ ‘No, they’re like the Allman Brothers.’ ‘No, they’re a jam band.’
Theirs is a story almost a quarter of a century long. The first nucleus of the group is the now 47 year old Zac Brown put it together in 2002. The band’s diet can be summarized as bread, jams and concerts. Evening after evening, everywhere, in the southern United States. Year after year Zac involves an ever-increasing number of musicians until reaching the current lineup which is made up of Zac Brown (lead vocals, guitar), Jimmy De Martini (violin, voice), John Driskell Hopkins (bass, guitar, banjo, ukulele, double bass), Coy Bowles (guitar, keyboards), Chris Fryar (drums), Clay Cook (guitar, keyboards, mandolin, steel guitar, vocals), Matt Mangano (Bass), Daniel de los Reyes (percussion) e Caroline Jones (guitar, keyboards, harmonica, vocals).
As for the discography, their first step is titled “Home grown”self-produced debut from 2005. But it was in 2008 that the Zac Brown Band change register and take off. As happens with any explosion worthy of the name, the right trigger is needed, in Zac’s case, after years of apprenticeship, the band happens to be signed by a major label, Atlantic Records, which provides multiplied visibility and adequate distribution to the album “The foundation”released in November 2008. The band had a song they believed in a lot, a song good enough to climb the charts until it reached the top, “Fried chicken” (previously included in “Home grown”). In short, the planets found their line. Zac and his friends found themselves catapulted into the Top Ten of the US sales charts and in 2009 they won the Grammy Awards as Best Emerging Group.
In 2010 the Zac Brown Band confirmed that it was not a flash in the pan, the country rock of the new album, “You Get What You Give”rose to the top of the rankings from first place “A thousand suns” (read the review here) of the Linkin Park. The group also maintained the good habit of debuting at the top of the chart in 2012 with the following one “Uncaged” which Brown called “Your basic country-southern rock-bluegrass-reggae-jam record.” For the first time the group reached first position outside the United States, conquering neighboring Canada and also obtaining good results in Australia.
The race for first place Zac Brown Band does not stop even in 2015 with “Jekyll + Hyde” (read the review here). Three featuring appear on the album – Chris Cornell, Jewel And Sara Bareilles – perhaps to try to cross the boundaries of the country music they are always associated with and bring their music to an ever-increasing audience. In 2017 it’s the turn of “Welcome home”a record that abandons the country pop of the previous album to return to the sounds dear to country.
Another round of carousel and Zac Brown for “The owl”in 2019, relies on producers such as Poo Bear, Shawn Mendes, Max Martin, Benny Blanco, Ryan Tedder And Skrillexdefinitely more similar to EDM than to country. This rather eccentric musical twist does not work in the group’s favor as it displaces its followers. The effects reverberate on the next “The comeback”released in 2021: it happens that for the first time since their debut, one of their albums does not reach the Top Ten of the rankings, stopping at position number 27.
In 2015 I closed my review of “Jekyll + Hyde” with these words: “I’m not sure they can steal the soul of the general public on this side of the Atlantic. Regardless, they are extremely established stars.” Ten years later that statement turned out to be correct Zac Brown Band it is daily bread consumed in good quantities on American tables, but here they have never managed to create a following.
