Zac Brown Previews New Album

Zac Brown’s new album Jekyll & Hyde will be released on April 28th.  It contains 16 songs, including the current hit, “Homegrown.”  Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton spoke with Zac about making the album:

What will we hear on it? “I think you’ve got the best of what people would expect from our other records, and we’ve even gone deeper down the rabbit hole on some songs to make new music and new avenues.  We always push the boundaries on the styles we put on a record.  On our last record, we had a straight R&B song.  We’ve gone further on this album, where we have a big band song, kind of a Sinatra type song, we have a couple songs that have electronic music on them.  We’ve got a couple rock songs, maybe a little heavier than what we’ve done.  So the title Jekyll & Hyde really covers the breadth of the record.”

Once you came up with Jekyll & Hyde as the title, you must have had some fun.  For example, I love the cover photo with the two different colored eyes: “We wanted the Jekyll & Hyde thing to be subtle , we thought about doing the warped face on one side, and regular face on the other, but it was too on-the-nose.  So we got one of the best rock photographers of all time, Danny Clinch, to shoot the video, and one of his guys came up with the two colored eyes.  I’ve had a lot of compliments on it.”

You worked with Jay Joyce, who has produced Eric Church & Little Big Town.  Why? “I respect the work Jay has done.  He’s a talented producer.  There’s two songs he produced.  He did Homegrown and Bittersweet.  I love how they turned out.  So it was great to work with him.”

Talk about the song “Dress Blues:” “Every record we do, we do one song we didn’t write.  This is that song.  It was written by Jason Isabel, it was on a record he did ten years ago, and it floored me.  I just wanted to show the world this song, do it our way, and I arranged a version of Taps in the middle of the song.  I’ve been to military funerals, and when they played Taps, it just killed me.  This song is about a young soldier who got blown up by an IED, and he’s going home in his dress blues.  Just the way this song is written, how American it is, is incredible,  Jewel sang harmony on that song.  There’s a lot to discover on this album, there’s a lot to absorb, so I hope people who love to dig every drop of a song will dig into it.”

This was the first album you made while you were off the road.  Why did you feel you had to do this?  “Over the last 7 or 8 years, there’s been a violent growth around us, having five kids, the growth of all my businesses, and touring, just figuring out and getting settled in.  So now we had the ability to unplug for a few months.  This time, I feel like this is the most important record we’ve ever made.  I wanted to make a new partnership for this record.  I think we’ve got a lot to prove.  I want to get better every year.  That’s the love for it.  I want it to translate, and I’m willing to do the hard work to get it there.”

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Category: CO-HOST, VIDEO