Zac Brown Show At The Sphere

A Journey

My wife and went with some friends to see Zac Brown at the Sphere. If you haven’t been to the Sphere, it’s a pretty crazy place. I wanted to blog about the show for a variety of reasons. Some will be apparent today, some soon, so follow this space if you haven’t already. So subscribe if you haven’t. This blog will always be free, but I appreciate the fact that A LOT OF regular readers have pledged money.

First, there are some people who went to the initial shows and said it was about Satan worship. The show is not about that at all. If you followed the theme of the show from start to finish, you’d realize that. It is not a Satanic ritual.

To be sure, when we bought tickets, I thought about the fun Zac Brown songs like “Toes” and “Chicken Fried”. When we heard he was going to be at The Sphere, we were going.

Brown is hugely popular worldwide. When one of my daughters was working during a collegiate summer in China, a man took off one of her headphones and put it in his ear while she rode the train. He looked at her and said, “Zac Brown Band!!!” and nodded his head.

In my opinion, a lot of the world felt like it lost control, or its own agency, because of Covid. Zac Brown’s show reminds us we have agency. We can control a lot of our own destiny, sometimes simply by saying “Yes”.

The show opened in a very dark, actually scary way. This is where the uninformed think the Satan thing starts. Brown talked about his childhood and the struggles with it. The graphics were dark. Skeletons. Being underground in the root systems of plants. Brown had many dark parts of his childhood, and the graphics exemplify it.

The opening number felt like a heavy metal headbanger number, not a happy-go-lucky Zac Brown song. I remarked to my wife, “Huh? That was heavy.” She agreed.

As the show progressed, Brown took us from the underground to the water, to land. Toes in the sand had a different vibe when arranged in that context. If you don’t know the song, here is the video.

In the middle part of the show, King Neptune made an appearance with his trident, controlling the water. I guess a lot of crazies didn’t understand that symbolism and commented online. For what it is worth, if you are in the Navy and cross the equator for the first time, they have a celebration. King Neptune reigns over it.

The entire show was about confronting your fear, taking risks, and forgiving people who may have done you wrong.

Between songs, you would listen to audio clips that tied into the overall theme of the story Zac was spinning. I loved the Robert Frost poem above, but appreciated the Teddy Roosevelt interlude as well. I noticed Brown had a Teddy Roosevelt tattoo on his left arm.

One time when I was in NYC, I met up with a friend at an event we were attending. He said, “We have to go to Keen’s and sit in the Teddy Roosevelt room.” We were unable to secure a seat in that room, but we had a great dinner at Keen’s. Yes, I had the mutton.

Roosevelt echoes other people from his era, like Rudyard Kipling. If you want some inspiration, read some Kipling! That was an interesting time on Earth. The rise of the Industrial Age happened at the same time.

The Industrial Age leaders get a bad rap. They are called “robber barons” when, in fact, they raised standards of living to heights never before seen for mankind. We are in a new kind of Industrial Age today with technology, and I think we will see even greater leaps and bounds made in the next thirty years than the progress made for mankind in the Industrial Age.

Back to the show.

The middle of the show is pure inspiration. The Sum, The Remedy, Passenger are all songs about facing fear.

We forget about becoming the man in the arena in our lives, and Zac Brown was reminding us. “Don’t be a passenger on your own ride” hits home on many levels.

It doesn’t matter what arena. There are plenty of arenas for people to lead in. Sometimes it is just as simple as your own immediate family. The internet makes it easy to be a spectator. The internet makes it easy to be a second-guesser. The internet makes it easy to do a hot take and walk away. We all can find our arena, and we all can get marred by sweat and blood.

As the show progressed, there were costume changes. At the beginning of the performance, everyone was in black. Brown wore this gold multitangled crown instead of his usual hat. By the end of the show, everyone on the stage was wearing white. One of the musicians had on huge angel wings. Zac Brown had led us across time and space from a dark place, closed and underground, to a place of enlightenment where you tried, failed, succeeded, accepted, and forgave. There is life after failure. There is life after death.

It was an unorthodox show, but it resonates in your soul long after you leave, unlike other shows I have seen. I hope Zac sees this. We are going to follow the sun, chase dreams, take risks, fight in our own arenas, and thank you, Zac, for reminding us to do it.

Addendum:

Caroline Jones is an accomplished musician in the Zac Brown Band. In the above photo, she’s the one with the angel wings. For financial people, it’s Tudor Jones daughter!