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Zac Brown Band have long been known for their eclectic, boundary-shifting sound, which refuses to be constrained by the rules and confines of any single genre or style.
In a recent interview during the UK's C2C Festival weekend, the band's frontman, Zac Brown, shared some hints as to the nature of the group's next project.
He hinted that the follow-up to 2022's The Comeback (Deluxe) would be arriving in 2024, and that it would stay true to the band's relentless drive to aim even higher with every release.
Zac teased, “We're working on our masterpiece so far for ‘24. We've got a concept for an album and we're bringing in art as well, and we have an incredible artist that we've been working with to help us pull this off.
I think you can always raise the bar of what you're doing if you're focussed on it and if you're dedicated to figuring that out”.
Shortly after the interview, Zac Brown Band lived up to their reputation as incredible entertainers, stellar vocalists and electrifying live instrumentalists, with a show-stopping performance at London's O2 Arena to close out C2C Festival 2023.
Elsewhere in their pre-show discussion, Zac Brown praised Adele as his “favourite female vocalist”, and emphasised that he'd love to one day collaborate with the pop phenom.
The chart-topping band have previously covered Adele's ‘He Won't Go’, with the group sharing their take on the evocative track back in 2015, while preparing for a show at Wembley Arena.
In addition, Zac discussed another artist that he greatly admires, James Taylor, who featured on the recent deluxe edition of Zac Brown Band's The Comeback album.
He revealed that their collaboration, ‘Love and Sunsets’, was initially supposed to include James Taylor's vocals as well as his guitar-playing, but due to some recent struggles with his voice, Taylor decided it best to include only his instrumental.
Zac cited Taylor as one of his musical icons, “James Taylor was my biggest influence...I was in the seventh grade and I had kids making fun of me saying I was listening to ‘rocking chair music’...I had a brother that was 21 years older than me, so I was listening to 70s music, which I think is the greatest era of music”.
The Georgia native went on to stress that James Taylor “was just like a superhero to me when I was a kid”, and that “the greatest milestones for us are getting to be rubbing elbows with our heroes, and James is definitely one of those for us”.
As to the way that ‘Love and Sunsets’ came about, Zac Brown shared that he was initially hoping to lay down some vocals from Taylor, and explained why he ultimately only contributed guitar sections instead, “He wasn't happy with how his voice was, he's been having some issues singing. I wanted him to sing on it. He was like, ‘My voice wasn't really feeling up to par and I didn't feel great about it’, but he came up with a lot of really great guitar parts. We had his son sing on it as well”.
Featured Photo by Kendall Wilson.
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