Ask any country fan: it has been a huge year for Zac Brown Band.
Its breakout album The Foundation was one of Billboard’s Top 20 albums of 2009, spawning numerous radio hits, including “Chicken Fried,” “Free,” “Toes,” “Highway 20 Ride” and “Whatever It Is.” And lately the sextet from Atlanta that formed roughly a decade ago is taking “best new artist” accolades everywhere it goes with giant smiles on their faces. The band won top new duo or group at the Academy of Country Music Awards last year, best new artist at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, and is nominated for five CMA Awards, airing Nov. 10 — including entertainer of the year and new artist of the year.
“As far as awards and all of that stuff is concerned, that’s all pretty new to us,” ZBB fiddle player Jimmy De Martini says during a recent phone interview. “We’ve been a band for a long while, and touring and playing music and shows for a long time, but being nominated for best new artist again … we’re like, ‘All right, cool.’”
For best entertainer, ZBB faces Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Keith Urban and Brad Paisley. “I don’t know if we’ll get (that one),” De Martini admits. “Those are some good acts. We might have a chance at best new artist, but I don’t know. It’s fun going to those things and meeting other people in the genre. When you go to awards shows, it’s a concert and you get in for free. At the Grammys and Country Music Awards, you get to see all the best acts.”
De Martini, along with the group’s namesake, vocalist and guitarist Zac Brown, plus bassist John Driskell Hopkins, guitarist/organist Coy Bowles, guitarist Clay Cook and drummer Chris Fryar, perform Sunday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, with pedal steel whiz Robert Randolph and his Family Band opening. Naturally, ZBB will bring along some new material for this gig, as its latest album, You Get What You Give, just dropped Tuesday.
“If people liked The Foundation, they’ll like this one too,” De Martini believes.
“We used a lot of the same formula,” he adds. “We have some good country-sounding songs that will sit well on country radio and we have some good jam songs that are a lot of fun to play as a musician. I think it covers all genres. We all grew up listening to different kinds of music, so there are a lot of different influences in there.”
The first single — “As She’s Walking Away,” featuring country legend Alan Jackson — has already fared well on the charts, while the video, which airs frequently on CMT, is at the top of the channel’s most-requested list. The album also includes another surefire crowd-pleaser: a track with Jimmy Buffet, titled “Knee Deep.”
“We did both of those songs before we even contacted those guys,” De Martini explains. “’As She’s Walking Away’ has a part in it about a guy who is giving advice, who has been around, and we basically wrote that for Alan Jackson — and we were like, ‘Great, now we have to ask him.’ Luckily he did it, and the same thing happened with Jimmy Buffet. It was amazing to work with them.”
Since its big break early last year ZBB has gotten to work with artists like Kid Rock, Dave Matthews Band and Kenny Chesney. “We’ve worked with almost all of our favorites,” De Martini says. “I know Zac has been talking about working with James Taylor, so he’s searching him down to be his next victim.
“Dave Matthews was a big one for us. We had wanted to do that for years and years; anytime someone asked us who we wanted to open for, we’d say them. That and Kenny Chesney. We’ve done some shows with him in the past and that is like a party every night.”
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Given the success of the new album’s first single (watch the clip above), De Martini says the band is feeling confident about the response it’s been getting from fans on the road as it has unveiled fresh tunes.
“We’ve been testing them live and also learning how to play them live. We write a song and play it acoustic and sing along, but when it comes to playing it live, sometimes we’re like, ‘Well, wanna try that song tonight?’ We’ll barely make it through it but when you get a good crowd response, like with ‘As She’s Walking Way,’ we were like, ‘Maybe this should be our first single.’”
De Martini says so far the real crowd favorite seems to be “Colder Weather”: “It’s more of a ballad, but it gets really big towards the end. It’s about the life that we live now — leaving loved ones to be gone on the road, and (how) some people have trouble holding on to relationships and some people miss being home. It kind of goes through what a musician and traveling person goes through. It’s one of my favorites.”
Once the tour ends, De Martini says everyone is looking forward to time off with their families, especially during the holidays. Both he and Brown are expecting babies later this year — even more reason to celebrate closer to home, plus more time to reflect on this wild, award-winning year. It’s been a great one, but De Martini says ZBB hasn’t at all forgotten where it came from.
“When people ask, ‘When do you feel like you’ve made it?’ — it was once we got our tour bus,” he says. “Before that we were in an airport shuttle bus, touring around the Southeast, and we had two air conditioning window units in the back and we had welded a generator to the bus. Man, we traveled in that for years until we got the tour bus, probably two years ago.”
The turning point? When “we could actually have our own bunk. That’s when I felt like: ‘We’ve made it!’”
Zac Brown Band, with Robert Randolph & the Family Band opening, plays Sept. 26 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, in Irvine. Tickets are $36.50-$54.85.
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No stopping Zac Brown Band as the breakout country jam band pulls into Irvine this Sunday is a post from: Soundcheck