Zac Brown Hangs With a Rocker

It seemed like an unlikely collaboration: Roots country star Zac Brown and grunge rocker Dave Grohl.  The two jammed on the CMA Awards.  But according to Zac, that performance came about mainly by coincidence.  Zac told Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton: “I met Dave during the Grammy Awards last year, and I told him I’d love to get to work with him at some point, and weird synergy things started happening.  We set a date to record together, and when I found out his dates, they were the same time as the CMA Awards.  So I told him, ‘If you want to play with us on the CMAs, we’ll just take a break from the studio that day, go play the awards show, and then go back in the studio.”  The two performed “Day For The Dead,” which was included on “The Grohl Sessions Volume 1,” released last month on iTunes.

Zac continued, “In one of the interviews I did, the lady said, ‘That was a rather aggressive song you did,’ but other people bring rappers to the show.  Dave Grohl is a rock icon, and that’s why it was aggressive, because we were feeding off Dave’s energy.  And it was so much fun for us.”

Lon asked Zac about Dave’s visit to Nashville. “He loved it.  He’s coming back.  I know he’s going to be doing some filming in Nashville.  We’re going to get to work with him again.  But he dug it.  He’d never watched any country awards shows before, so being there front row, he got a good view.”  Lon asked who spoke with Dave at the CMA Awards? “George Strait came up to Dave and said, ‘I love what you do.’  I don’t think Dave understood the weight of that until afterwards.  I said, ‘Dude, that’s George Strait.  George Strait just said he loved what you do.’  So I think he felt warm and welcome in that world.”

Zac Brown and Dave Grohl are both fans of historic recording studios.  Dave made a movie last year about the Sound City studio in California.  Zac recently bought the former Monument Studio in Nashville, where Kris Kristofferson and Roy Orbison made their early hits.

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Category: Audio