Zitat des Tages von Zac Brown:
Talent alone gets you nowhere. You really have to have the grit, and you gotta have a love for people.
Other people pull off amazing festivals and events and things like that. I think ours is a little bit different, and that's what makes us distinct.
I don't think a lot of bands and artists work as hard as we do on the creation, on the writing, the arrangements and the recording in our format.
To be a Southern Ground artist, you have to be a lifer. It's not about winning a karaoke contest or a television show to become famous. It's about really paying your dues. It's people I'm fans of and want to help in the business.
People come up to me sometimes and ask for a picture but don't even say hello. They sort of forget that I'm a person.
I was a music fan first way before I started creating it, so I still get giddy when I get to be around people that I respect so much.
Not a lot of the country format I enjoy listening to.
Getting to have a higher purpose other than just being successful is very necessary for me.
I don't like cooking just for myself; I enjoy feeding other people, particularly outdoors.
Every record we do, we do one song we didn't write.
I've been making some more electronic music, which I really enjoy doing.
If you break down most rock songs and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper, it's all about melody. It's all about presentation. And a lot of bands are really great, but you can't understand a word of what they say.
It's an honor to live on a legacy, getting to do what we love to do and try to be the best musicians that we can possibly be.
When I get drafty cold air in my ears, I would get an earache and get sick. I had to make sure I hustled and stayed well for my shows that I played.
I try to get away and take my motorcycle on a ride whenever I can. I'll take my bike out before the show and just cruise.
I always thought it was sad that you couldn't get anything really good to eat at concerts, so we sit down with our fans before every show and eat a gourmet meal that we made for them.
I want to get better every year.
Maybe some people that only listen to electronic music will pick up my record and get turned on to some of the story songs, some of the more country-type stuff.
My brother's 21 years older than me, so I grew up doing more adult things. Like listening to old music.
I try to be really conscious. I don't want to ever look back and regret not raising my kids and not being around.
If we had to pose for every single person at the Eat & Greets, we wouldn't get to speak to anyone that's there, and we definitely wouldn't get to serve them food.
I never get used to going out and seeing 20, 30,000 people that are there to see us play. It's kind of surreal.
We're fabricating a state-of-the-art concessions system for our touring, so we can feed the people and give them everything they need without having to wait on it.
We're really blessed that we've been as well received as we have been.
You can de-select the songs that you don't want to have on the record, but I hope we always put something out that has a lot of songs that the majority of people will love.
When I was growing up, my dad and I would go hunting and camping every weekend. Like everyone in my family, he is an amazing cook, and I've tried to learn a lot from all of them.
I have an outdoor kitchen at home in Georgia, and I try to never eat inside.
I don't want to look back and say, 'Yeah, I was really successful, but I failed at fatherhood because I wasn't there.'
The Southern Ground warehouse is rocking and rolling in Atlanta, with a T-shirt shop and a leather shop; everything we're selling at our shows we're making or publishing ourselves.
We just kept going down the road, we kept trying to make the next record, the right choices to get there.
We ended up New Year's Eve playin' a show. My date had stood me up, and I remember walkin' back to my friends with, like, two minutes before midnight and thinkin', 'I'm not gonna have anybody to kiss on New Year's.' And there she was, standin' right there, and I remember kissin' her, and then that was game over.
I'm gonna tell y'all what we tell the crowd every night when we play back in the States. We tell them to remember people sleeping in a sandstorm so that we can be free.
It's always humbling, knowing where we came from. From being friends with the janitor in the bar and being friends with the waitress - because they were some of the only people that were listening when we finished playing - to this, we are able to appreciate every single person and every single piece of it, because we came from nothing to this.
When you're wearing a motorcycle helmet, people don't know who you are. So I just wander around and, yeah, it's pretty awesome.
We want to support Nashville, support the community there and be a part of it.
Camp Southern Ground is a lot more than a camp. It's more of a campus.