Zac Brown Band Is Uncaged

The Zac Brown Band released their third CD this week, titled Uncaged.   When Zac co-hosted Country Countdown USA, he described the CD to Lon Helton: “I feel this is the best album we’ve ever made.   The collection of the songs on here, I just feel like we’re a better band than we were before.  I feel like it reflects it, it’s got a little bit over everything on here.” 

Zac also explained the story behind the album’s title: “Uncaged is a name of a song on the record.  What inspired that song, the first time I thought about that was when I was riding my motorcycle.  A lot of years I’d been touring on my bus and had been cooped on my bus.  But now I’m riding my motorcycle and getting out during the day, no roof above my head and seeing an eagle fly and feeling the wind on my face, and man like I’d been confined.  So it was the spirit of being let out of a cage.”

So is there something that folks won’t expect on the record? “I don’t thinbk so, I think it[‘s dead down the middle of what we do.  I think now we’ve got a sound, so whatever we do, it’s gonna sound like us.  The only thing that we’ve never done before is a straight-up rhythm & blues song on this album, and Trombone Shorty is on there playing with us.  We also have a song called The Day That I Doe featuring Amos Lee.  So those are the guests.”

The first single is a song called “The Wind.”  Zac described it this way:  “It’s called The Wind, it’s a barn burning song, it gets to showcase everyone’s musicianship in the band, I think it’s the most country thing that’s been on the radio in a long time.  It’s got bluegrass and pickin’ and everything in it, some great lyrics in that tune, so I dig it.  It’s a great song for somebody like me that has ADD.”

The album’s cover features a striking painting: “There’s an artist I met in New Mexico who’s name is Brandon Maldanado, and I’m a big fan of what he does, I’ve been drawn to the day of the dead artwork and vibe, so we picked something that we liked a lot for the cover of the record.  There are lots of silly photos of people posing, it’s been done so many ways, we just figured we’d pick something we like a lot, we picked it because we like it, we like art.”

Tags: Zac

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