Watch Zac Brown Band’s Soaring Segue From ‘Free’ to Van Morrison
Zac Brown Band will kick off the ninth season of acclaimed public television series, Live From the Artists Den, on Friday, January 30th, with a performance from legendary Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York. The Grammy-winning group delivers a hit-filled set that includes fan favorites “Jump Right In,” “Colder Weather” and “Day for the Dead” from their 2013 release, The Grohl Sessions Volume 1. Watch above as ZBB soar on their inspirational “Free,” transitioning into an intoxicating cover of Van Morrison’s classic, “Into the Mystic.” (The band frequently merge the two songs in concert and also included the combo on their 2010 album, Pass the Jar.)
Live From the Artists Den books superstar acts to emerging artists, filming in both non-traditional settings and iconic venues across the country. The original home of the U.S. Open, Forest Hills Stadium was also the site of history-making concerts by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Previous episodes have spotlighted such venues as Graceland, a Masonic temple, a former Archdiocese cathedral, a 1930s silent movie theater, the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Other artists appearing on this season of Artists Den include Alabama Shakes, Cage the Elephant and Damien Rice. (See the show schedule here.) Past episodes have featured Adele, Mumford & Sons, Tim McGraw, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, Ringo Starr and Sheryl Crow, among others.
With the release of their latest single, “Homegrown,” Zac Brown and company have set a course for new adventures throughout 2015 and beyond. Their upcoming LP, due in the spring, will be the first project released by the lead singer’s own Southern Ground Artists in partnership with three other labels: Big Machine Label Group, Republic Records and John Varvatos Records. The latter is helmed by (and named for) the fashion designer who has dressed everyone from Iggy Pop and Robert Plant to Slash and Alice Cooper.
“We’ve got an amazing team, an amazing amount of horsepower,” Brown tells Rolling Stone Country. “It would have taken that for me to work with a major label group, and now I feel like I’m getting three of them in exchange for the licensing for this album. As we’ve been touring internationally and touring here [in the U.S.], we’re growing but not being jet-powered like I feel like we’re going to be able to do with the new team…. We’ve never had any corporate support from Nashville; we’ve always been looked at as outsiders. So being a part of a team there is going to help us.”
For more information, including air dates and times of upcoming episodes, visit the Live From the Artists Den website.