Country rockers Zac Brown Band recently released their impressive new LP Jekyll + Hyde, the group’s first album for John Varvatos Records, Republic Records and Big Machine.
The act was previously signed to Atlantic Records. No strangers to success, Jekyll + Hyde is also the band’s third straight studio effort to reach No. 1, in the US, following the chart-topping bows of Uncaged (in 2012) and You Get What You Give (2010).
Zac Brown Band is: singer/guitarist Zac Brown, violinist/singer Jimmy De Martini, multi-instrumentalist/singer John Driskell Hopkins, guitarist/organist Coy Bowles, multi-instrumentalist/singer Clay Cook, drummer Chris Fryar, percussionist Daniel de los Reyes and bassist Matt Mangano. To celebrate the killer new record, Zac gave us a track by track run down of the album, but strap yourself in, it’s a long one!
Beautiful Drug
“That’s our version of like a club song, you know? That’s still our band and our sound of what we do but could still be put in a night club and turned on and let the room bounce. It’s about a guy being kind of infatuated with a woman and she’s his drug, and it was a lot of fun to play.
I played some banjo on that song and did some programming on it, and it’s pretty down the middle love song, like a high-tempo infatuation song, put it that way, but just the energy that’s in there was fun to do, it was fun to create, and I’m not gonna say who but we’re gonna have a pretty sick remix of this one as well.”
Loving You Easy
“To me it’s just like a tip of the hat to old like Philly soul or old type of Motown music. To me it’s like a modern day oldie. It’s also just respect to our ladies just being in the house and in the home where they’re just natural, you know? It’s not about getting all fixed up and getting a dress on and makeup and everything.
It’s just about the beauty of a woman like in her natural state. It’s a great, great feeling that a guy has when he sees his lady at home happy and content, and that’s really just trying to capture the spirit of what that is, and it’s short just like an old song, too, you know? A lot of the Beatles’ hits were like two minutes long.”
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Remedy
“’Remedy’ is stating my spirituality and the way that I look at things. Through every journey that I’ve been through, through church, through my personal experiences, through what I’ve seen of the world, ‘Remedy’ is a reminder to me that God is love and when you get too far away from the love that God’s not there as much, and that song means a lot to me personally.
‘Remedy’ is a reaching out of the hand to each other to try to remind each other of that, try to help share love with other people and that’s what’s gonna make a difference. I believe in what I said in ‘Remedy’ and I believe that other people need to center themselves around love and that’ll make a difference, and that’s what ‘Remedy’ is to me.”
Homegrown
“’Homegrown’ turned out awesome, man. That song has a lot to say. It’s a reminder to myself sometimes that all the stuff that you have is not as important as the relationships with the people that you have and sometimes you get lost taking care of stuff when you should be spending time. I want to spend time with my kids instead of running around dealing with stuff.
Those lines mean a lot to me. It’s got an energy to it and emotion and it’s got a message and it’s got a connection. I feel like it’s as country of a song as I’ve got in my right now and I’m really glad that it’s gotten out and related to everybody.”
Mango Tree
“’Mango Tree’ was just fun. Sara Bareilles killed it. I love the way she sang it, her voice, and she took time out. She’s doing a musical, and so took time out from that to go over to the studio and I was Facetiming her while she was recording at the studio.
I think she was the perfect person to have on there. (Songwriters) Niko (Moon) and Anna (Harwood) had started or written that song and it was kind of a ukulele-type, like a Jack Johnson-ish type tune, and it was cool like that. It was cool being islandy but I was walking at the beach when we were arranging the record and I was like, ‘Man, what if “Mango Tree” was like big band,’ like juxtaposition of that with the islandy thing, and it was fun to see a song now that could be like a big wedding song that could be done in coat and tails. I just feel like our music can apply to a lot more situations. The music on this album can apply to a lot of different things now and ‘Mango Tree’ is one of the ones.”
Heavy is The Head
“Honestly, ‘Heavy Is The Head’ surprised me the most because I knew that we were gonna make something really cool and rockin’ but it ended up just really working and rockin’ hard, you know? It was fun. You know, one of my favorite people is a guy named Don Dunleavy. He’s a great guitar player and a guitar builder.
(He) built some of my instruments, so we got him in to shed and I put on a loop like for 20 minutes and let him just shred on the guitar and then listened back through all the pieces and kind of put together what I felt like was the right pieces to make it rock, and then along with that and some of the licks that I had and Coy (Bowles) had everybody just like . . . We made a real rock song. It surprised me how much that rocked after we got it in there, and then we got Cornell to sing on it and it really rocked more, so that’s one of the ones that definitely surprised me.”
Bittersweet
“’Bittersweet’ was started about Wyatt’s (Durrette) mom who found out she had cancer. We wanted to write a song that could be vague enough to not just be about a son losing his mother but just about somebody losing someone and what that means, and the first part of it, it’s written from the person talking to the person they’re losing.
Being able to tell someone that you know, while they’re still alive, being able to tell them, ‘I realize the amazing way that you love me, and as much as it hurts to know that you’re gonna be gone, it’s an amazing thing to have known love like that.’ That song is emotional for me, and it’s another song, hopefully, that helps people grieve if they’re gonna lose somebody, and also remind them that while they’re there you gotta tell ‘em that you love ‘em cause if you’re too proud to do that you will regret it. I’m proud of how that one turned out. It’s a powerful song.”
Castaway
“’Castaway’ is our new boat song on this album. The kind of reggae-type stuff is kind of polarizing. Some people either love it or hate it, but to me, Bob Marley’s my favorite artist of all time, and if you can capture that kind of feeling that’s in some of those songs.
It was a lot of fun to put the pieces of this song together, and John Hopkins, my bass player, came up with some amazing vocal parts for the kind of break down where we’re singing the a cappella part, and it just came together really well. It’s fun to play and we’re gonna have a really cool version of this to do live, so ‘Castaway’ is summertime bottled up into four minutes.”
Tomorrow Never Comes
“’Tomorrow Never Comes’ turned out so good to me. There’s a freedom in it. There’s a movement. It was my first attempt to program a song to add electronic music and beats to a song. Somebody told me one time if anybody offers you the chance to go do something you should do it, even if it takes you out of your comfort zone, and that’s the living like tomorrow never comes.
If somebody’s willing to teach you something learn it. Do it. Don’t just sit around. That’s the feeling that ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’ . . . and it’s gonna be fun because when we play that song live we’re gonna play to some of the live tracks as well so electronic sounds will be there, the same way there were there in U2 songs, they were there in Coldplay songs, and when we play ‘Tomorrow Never Comes’ live and we rock stadiums this year with that song it’s gonna be awesome.”
One Day
“Man, I love how ‘One Day’ turned out on the record. The feeling that you get right when it comes on is just like, ‘Ahh!’ It feels like a cool breeze on a spring afternoon, and that’s a song for Shelly, for my lady, and the way that song came together just from the band working on it, we spent hours and hours getting the harmonies the way we wanted it and everything, but then going into the studio and making it a little more modern, a little more kind of fresh, which was super fun.
I love when that one comes on. The feeling I get from it is strong. I think we did a good job of putting a love song that’s got some tempo on it. It could be a classic tune . . . you hope.”
Dress Blues
“Jason Isbell wrote ‘Dress Blues.’ That dude might write the saddest songs in the world, but so eloquently written and accessible where everybody can still understand it, but vivid, and it happened to a friend of his and he wrote it about him, and I heard that song and I wanted more people to hear that song. I wanted the soldiers and their families (to hear it).
I think if anything that song’s gonna help people grieve cause however you’ve socked it away, if you really listen to that . . . I mean, he did an exceptional job, and then putting the arrangement of ‘Taps’ in the middle of it was really important to me. So every record we cover one song and this was the cover off of this record.”
Young And Wild
“’Young And Wild’ is a reminiscent song about being a teenager, basically, being a teenager coming up into being a young adult, and all the things that you do and go through during that time, like you think about like the first time that you ever fell in love with somebody and you had your first girlfriend or boyfriend and when you broke up with them you felt like you were going to die, and looking back on it now and just kind of smiling and remembering how great it was that you got to do those things, like remembering what it was like back in the day when you were a kid. It’s good stuff, good times.”
Junkyard
“’Junkyard’ for me has always been a story of redemption, a story, for me now, it’s about celebrating everything hard or bad that’s ever happened to you and persevering through that time and getting to the point of understanding to where you’re at peace with all of the terrible things that have ever happened to you because that’s what defined your character and that’s what gave you perspective and made you realize how great that your life really is.
(It’s a) very, very personal song to me. I wrote it when I was 17, and every line has a symbolism, every line in it has something to do with something that was happening back then.”
I’ll Be Your Man
“I’ll Be Your Man’ is heavy for me because the minute I knew I was gonna have a daughter I’ve been preparing myself to have to let her go, and that’s heavy, and now when I listen to that song, if I really listen to it it’ll get me . . . again.
But there’s no greater honor than being able to be a father to a daughter and to know that love, to have unconditional love and to be able to be their man until they get older . . . I mean, just essentially always be their man, and that’s the goal. It’s so they know that no man can ever be their daddy if their daddy loved ‘em right. I hope that on that one that that’s gonna help strengthen those bonds between the dads and the daughters out there, and hope that mine can listen to it and know that I love ‘em and be reminded of that even if I’m not around.”
Jekyll + Hyde is available now at JB HIFI, SANITY AND GET MUSIC.
