Thursday, October 08, 2009
Zac Brown Band is fun, free-wheeling
Concert review
Photo by Brett Winter Lemon
Zac Brown and his six-man band played to a crowd of 4,640 Thursday in Salem.
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Zac Brown Band is not a bunch of pretty boys. And Brown, stocky and bearded, with a toboggan covering his bald spot, wants his fans to know that he knows it.
“We represent ... what you hear, rather than what you see,” he told a nearly sold-out crowd of 4,640 on Thursday night at Salem Civic Center. “We’re proud to be ugly and ready to rock your face off.”
And then Brown and his six-man band of eclectic country music players proved it over more than two hours.
Sure, ZBB played the hits it has accumulated over its year on the country and pop charts. “Whatever It Is” and “Chicken Fried” went over huge with the audience. But what sets this act apart from just about any other country-influenced band you’ll hear is its willingness to step far outside that genre.
And we’re not talking focus group-approved nods to pop music here. A new song, “Who Knows,” started as an Allman-Brothers-Band-meets-Metallica riff, then cruised into a reggae feel before lurching into a wild jam over the course of 10 minutes. “Free,” an ode to love and traveling, featured a gorgeous run at Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.”
Brown, as generous with his sidemen as he was friendly and homespun with his audience, gave center stage to multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook for a cover of The Beatles “Blackbird.” Cook kicked it off with a Stratocaster, fingerpicking a Rufus meets Aquarium Rescue Unit funk feel, his deeply soulful voice sliding in and out of a resonant falsetto.
By the end of the night, the band’s three supporting acts — Sonia Leigh, Nic Cowan and Levi Lowrey — were back up with the band for a rousing finale that featured 13 people onstage, including various supporting sidemen. As this reporter walked from the building to make deadline, the sounds of The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” were pouring from the coliseum.
Brown, Cook, multi-instrumentalist Coy Bowles and other members of the band had joined Leigh, Cowan and Lowrey during their short sets. Brown had traded verses with them, and he had good reason — all three are part of his new record label, Southern Ground Records.
But Brown outshined them all. Through weepers (“Junkyard”) and lusty odes (“Different Kind of Fine”), he showed that his sensibility is unique among country stars.
