If you spent any time in a bar with college football paraphernalia on the walls in the early 2000s, you surely heard Zac Brown Band’s “Chicken Fried.” (You know: “Cold beer on a Friday night/A pair of jeans that fit just right.”) But back then, the frontman's jeans were not fitting just right. They were, in fact, starting to get a little snug: Tour life meant a steady stream of pizza and beer and late nights.
But over the years Zac Brown has tweaked his lifestyle in favor of living and eating clean, and making time to exercise everyday, no matter where in the world he is. This week, his three-time Grammy-award winning band is back with a new album, The Comeback. He says it’s by far the best he’s ever made, and that he’s also perhaps at his personal best in regard to his health and wellbeing too. GQ caught up with Brown to learn about how he’s changed his approach to food and fitness over his nearly two decades of tour bus life.
GQ: What time does your day usually start?
Zac Brown: I get my kids every other week, so when I'm with them, I wake up early and get them fed and off to school. The weeks I don't have them are a more normal schedule, you're working a second shift going on the road and staying up a little bit later. I've got a gym set up here at home. I try to exercise. I’ve got a cold plunge. I try to get in the infrared sauna. I do a lot of self-care these days to try to feel as good as I can possibly feel. I live in the country and I'm able to just go outside and be outdoors a good bit.
For breakfast, I make these bowls and puree up some frozen bananas and blueberries, maybe mango. I'll blend that up with some oatmeal and then I'll mix in chia seeds, hemp seeds, maybe some honey cacao nibs, bee pollen, spirulina, and some protein, things like that.
Diet is such an important part of feeling good, and as busy as I am, food is fuel. I’ve changed my diet and realized the effect that it has on your body and the amount of inflammation that you carry around. With the demands of singing for as long as I do, and as loud as I do, I have to eat really clean when I’m on the road. I don't eat gluten. I don't eat dairy. And not because I'm allergic—just because it helps. Tour wise, I've just been eating basically paleo.
And what about lunch and dinner?
Lunch is usually a bar. It's kind of an afterthought when I'm at the service of the band or at the service of my kids. It's some kind of protein and rice when I’m on the road. Some kind of lean protein, some plant matter. At dinner I'm also trying to eat clean. I do love Thai food. I love Indian. If I can cook for people, I'll go all out and make some crazy stuff. But if I'm just feeding myself and getting through my day, I eat a lot of protein bars and shakes and stuff like that.
I use Ka'chava a lot. Have you heard of it? It's like a full meal replacement, but it's got everything in it. It tastes really good too, it's not like grainy or weird.
What's shifted in terms of what you eat and how you approach nutrition since early in your career?
Back in the day I would just drink beer and eat pizza or whatever, and I’d just feel tired. You carry around all that inflammation. Being younger, you could kind of get away with a lot of stuff. But now I'm more aware of the things that make me feel good and the things that serve me and allow me to be better for my family and for my music and those things—diet as a huge part of that.
My life's work has been building this place called Camp Southern Ground. We work with kids of all different backgrounds and abilities, we work with veterans, and with thought leaders that we've brought in to collaborate. And so we’ve brought in nutritionists who’ve taught us that an anti-inflammatory diet helps people have the most mental clarity. I learned a lot from that.
Society focuses on reactive medicine, which is when you're sick you go get a prescription. But gut health and the way you treat your body, what you eat, what you consume and also just stress levels and the way we handle all of that is also so important. It's cliche, but it’s about diet and exercise. You gotta figure out a way to exercise that doesn't feel like torture or work. And If you're proactive with your medicine, you're going to be able to make it a lot longer. I love to adventure. I love to free dive. I love to hike and go all over the place. And I want to be able bodied when I'm an older man. I don't want to be out of a big fat pot belly and a red face and a big nose. I want to be one of those old dudes that's running up and down the mountain.
I'm assuming that going on tour doesn't feel the same now because you have the resources to keep you feeling good?
For sure. I don't skimp on catering. We've got an amazing catering company that travels with us when we're on the road, so they can make me whatever. I try to do a big celery juice every day—I drink it when it’s fresh, while the enzymes are still there. I think that kills a lot of stuff in your body. They still make comfort food, but they can make us healthy stuff too. We got vegan options for people. You know, it's pretty rock and roll for people to be vegan. We have a good amount of crew that does that.
There's also a full tractor trailer that's just a gym. It's got its own power. It's got its own air conditioning. I've got the Assault Bike, which murders you—that thing is so brutal. We got a heavy bag, a speed bag, we’ve got a place for stretching in the front. We've got a full cable machine and we've got a full set of free weights, dumbbells, kettlebells, bands—we've got everything. I started bringing the gym out about five years ago, and that's an investment in that proactive medicine: the healthier that my crew and my band can be the longer that we can do this.
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Also: It's been like 11 years now since no one's allowed to drink or smoke before the show. No one on the road is allowed to partake in anything until all the work is done. I think it saved some of my guys' lives because they don't have the choice.
What's a typical workout look like these days?
I've got an overactive brain so I had to figure out some way that I can do cardio. So I set up my Arc Trainer right in front of my PlayStation and I play Madden. I'll play Madden for an hour. I don't use the arms. I just hold the controller. It slips by really fast—mentally, I'm going to play football, I don't even think about working out.
Bruce Springsteen came out to see our show in Australia and I was like, man, is there anything that you can tell me, you know, career-wise? He said that you have to sweat every day for an hour. It doesn't matter what you do, but you need to sweat every single day. So after he told me that I've been doing it and I feel my quality of life is better.
Have these changes influenced your music?
It's a big deal in that I’m on the other side of a lot of storms, like going through a divorce and through all these other changes. I'm in such a great head space now, and I've had the time to really create the best album that we've ever made. And I think you can feel that in the music itself and you could definitely see it in the shows.
I really fell in love with playing my guitar again, having time off and then crafting all these songs and writing all these songs was a big deal for me. I've never had as much time—and I don't know if I ever will again—to just write and focus on writing and producing an album. This is the pinnacle of my work as a musician.
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By Chris Cohen