Concert review: Zac Brown’s country gets rockin’
BURGETTSTOWN — The Zac Brown Band further blurred the line between rock and country Sunday.
Sure, Pittsburgh’s country radio stations flew their flags at First Niagara Pavilion for Brown and his band’s annual visit, though the Georgia group’s covers of Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Van Morrison and the Marshall Tucker Band spoke volumes.
Even on originals, such as the gently jangly “Keep Me in Mind” with its Allman Brothers-ish guitar finish, and the straight-up hard-rocker “Heavy Is the Head” in the encore suggested a country band ready for rebranding.
Though they played countrified tunes, too, such as “Knee Deep,” “Beautiful Drug” and the show-closer “Chicken Fried,” which wasn’t all “cold beer on a Friday night” and “a pair of jeans that fit just right,” as Brown made use of the Memorial Day theme, dedicating the song to military personnel who made the ultimate sacrifice, and bringing on stage a few uniformed members of the armed forces for the verse about “may freedom forever fly” and “salute the ones who died.”
A crowd of more than 15,000 responded with a “U-S-A, U-S-A” chant.
It was a good crowd — fun-loving but not too sloppy.
They were forgiving, too, laughing off the lone miscue of the night, as Brown twice flubbed the timing when Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell’s voice normally comes crashing in for “Heavy Is the Head,” a new ZBB single released straight to rock radio.
“I wrote this song,” Brown said with a reassuring smile, shrugging off the mistake with “that’s what happens sometimes when you play live music.”
A ZBB show is a loose affair to begin with, evidenced in Burgettstown by confetti cannons and a frontman firing a T-shirt gun, then later handing out roses.
The guns and roses didn’t detract from the band’s excellent musicianship. Fiddle player Jimmy De Martini especially shined, including on the back-to-back whammy of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and Charlie Daniels’ “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” that finished with some guitar shredding from Brown.
Guitarist-keyboardist Clay Cook handled lead vocals on a lengthy and epic cover of Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See” that turned into a crowd singalong.
Fans sang even louder on ZBB original “Toes” and savored the breezy “Castaway.”
There were many similarities to the band’s July 2014 concert on that same stage, such as the 10-minute intermission counted down by video screens, and the band seamlessly flowing from “Free” into Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”
The three-tiered stage was bigger and visually bolder this year, with images of Sugar Skulls filling the video screen for the jam-band-ish “Day for the Dead” given some uptown funk by percussionist Daniel de los Reyes and a small horn section.
As for a fashion report, well, no ski cap or top hat for the band’s namesake this year — Brown went with a floppy black hat we’ll call “1930s bootlegger chic.”
Beatles-wise, I’d have liked to have seen the ZBB dig deeper than “Let It Be,” which featured Brown on piano.
Though “Bohemian Rhapsody” was a delight, mimicking Queen’s iconic music video, with individual close-ups of Brown and the heads of three harmonizing band members. Some combination of Brown, Coy Bowles and Clay Cook replicated the mighty guitar work of Queen’s Brian May. Brown’s a fine singer, though he didn’t measure up to Freddie Mercury (and really, who could?).
Overall, last year’s show seemed a little more amazing — probably because it was a fresher experience, and the opening act was the vaunted Sturgill Simpson, though Nashville indie-rock band Elliot Root handled its 30-minute warmup set well Sunday.
But any night with the Zac Brown Band is an evening well spent, and you can picture them following the path of the Dave Matthews Band and becoming an annual fixture of the outdoor summer concert season.