Zac Brown talks White House UFC Freedom 250 Fan Fest performance
Zac Brown discusses his upcoming performance at the UFC Freedom 250 event being held on the South Lawn of the White House in June.
The Zac Brown Band are perennial road warriors.
For 20 years – excepting the pandemic shutdown of 2020 – Brown and his ace bandmates have hit stages worldwide with their enticing mishmash of country, pop, rock (“Knee Deep,” “Free,” “Island Song”) and adeptly chosen and performed cover songs (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Enter Sandman”).
“We grind every single year, trying to be better, trying to connect with people,” Brown, 47, said in a recent interview.
In December and January, ZBB swapped sheds for Las Vegas’ Sphere with an eight-show residency that interwove captivating visuals with thoughtful lyrical storytelling.
The shows also served as the unveiling platform for songs from “Love & Fear,” ZBB’s eighth studio album released in December.
Now, with a new production that borrows some elements of the Sphere spectacle, Georgia-reared ZBB will traverse the country for five months, starting July 17 in Grand Rapids, Michigan and hitting cities including Philadelphia, St. Louis, Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis and one of the band’s favorite venues, Fenway Park in Boston.
There is also a new member joining the musical team – multi-instrumentalist and Nashville staple Chris Gelbuda, who cowrote several songs on “Love & Fear” with Brown. He’ll join fiddler Jimmy De Martini, guitarist/pianist Coy Bowles, multi-instrumentalist John Driskell Hopkins, drummer Chris Fryar, guitarist/keyboardist Clay Cook, percussionist Daniel de los Reyes, bassist Matt Mangano and guitarist/singer Caroline Jones.
Brown chatted with USA TODAY a month before his May wedding to fashion accessory mogul Kendra Scott in Greece (“I found my person,” he said). Health, touring and philanthropy were on the discussion agenda, including insight into Camp Southern Ground, his 400-acre site outside of Atlanta whose programs support kids with neurodevelopmental differences, military families and post-9/11 veterans.
Question: You had a massive production at your Sphere shows, but for the Love & Fear Tour you’re playing arenas, amphitheaters and stadiums. How difficult is that transition going to be?
Brown: We pay a lot of money to create all the content that’s on our video screens when we play a tour, so now we have to downscale it all. We’re really intentional with which parts and pieces that we pull out of (the Sphere production) because we’ve done so much work to the story and the creative (elements) that goes into it. So now, you don’t have to fly to Las Vegas to see it, we’re going to bring it to your city. We’ve got some new stuff as well because we always want to have a different show whenever we come out. And we gain the intimacy of being close to the fans. I wanted to show our dedication to them and give them something unique.
Being on the road for five months requires the same kind of stamina as being an athlete. What do you do to stay in such good shape and make sure you’re road ready?
I’ve got an incredible trainer that I work with. He focuses a lot on my flexibility, my range of motion, taking care of my soft tissue. There’s a lot of foam rolling, a lot of isometric work.
How about your diet?
I’ve got a great nutritionist that helps me dial in what I eat and now you can get a genetic test to find out what your body processes well and then you design your diet on that. If you’re disciplined enough to do that, you gain a lot of quality of life. For me, when you turn 40, your warranty runs out. So you can either eat pizza and beer and lay around and suffer in the way that you feel, or you can suffer a little bit like, I don’t want to go to the gym, but I’m doing to go anyway because I will feel good.
That’s a motivational way to look at it.
I do regenerative medicine as well. I do stem cells. I do a peptide regimen. I do blood work every month and I’m always reading and looking and seeing what’s going on with my body and how to optimize it. Nothing tastes as good as feeling great. As a lifestyle, I see a lot of people suffering and they’re just walking around because they’re stuck in habits. You don’t have to invest the kind of money that I do in it, but you can make small changes that add a lot to your life. I have to take care of myself so I can take care of everybody else and give back.
Like with Camp Southern Ground?
I’m blessed to be able to give back and that’s where real joy comes from. I’d encourage people that are really unhappy to go and find a way to give back to somebody. Make it not about yourself. Find something to put yourself into because that’s where real joy comes from, comes from helping people. We served 850 veterans for sleepaway camp last year and almost 700 kids from last summer’s camp. We’re building and adding on and the music allows us to do it. The fans allow us to do it by supporting our music and coming to shows and listening to and streaming our music online. We want to give back as much as we can and feel as much as we can.