Zac Brown Band brings 'rowdy' show to Nashville's New Year's Eve 'Big Bash'

Alongside country music superstars Kelsea Ballerini, Brooks & Dunn and Little Big Town, the Atlanta-borne Zac Brown Band will play in front of an expected 200,000 people at Nashville's Bicentennial Park during live portions of New Year's Eve Live: Nashville's Big Bash.

Emanating from Music City, Saturday, Dec. 31 (8:00-10:00 p.m., ET/PT; 10:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m., ET/PT,) the show will broadcast on CBS, plus streaming live and on-demand on Paramount+.

The accomplishment of headlining a preeminent event on Nashville's ever-growing and nationally-impacting social calendar is not lost on band members Coy Bowles and Matt Mangano.

Bowles describes the band's New Year's Eve set as important because his love of music is as significant to his life as his love of his family and friends.

"Humans gathering together to celebrate the power of music is exciting," he says. "We're firing on all cylinders and probably having the best time [onstage] we've ever had."

To wit, this year finds band leader Zac Brown two decades into his career and expanding his scope as a producer and songwriter able to captivate live crowds with not just the chorus of the band's 2008 hit "Chicken Fried." Instead, his interactive style has expanded to combine the best elements of James Taylor-style folk with Jimmy Buffett's seemingly inimitable breezy rock, plus styles familiar with rock's early 2000s connection with country's outlaw roots.

"I've been working hard for a long time. However, I feel rejuvenated right now and like a raiding barbarian ready to win over more new fans. The culture of entertainment I've created over the 5,500 live shows I've played in my life has developed an undeniable chemistry that has remained the same -- but definitely feels like it has improved," noted Brown to The Tennessean in June 2022.

Alongside their New Year's Eve gig, helping Dolly Parton be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and playing at Nissan Stadium during June 2022's CMA Fest, the band has also achieved other notable highlights. Alongside sets at the Hollywood Bowl and Chicago's Wrigley Field, one month after CMA Fest, the band was honored for having the most consecutive sold-out concerts in the 110-year history of Boston's Fenway Park. This was marked by being inducted -- alongside the likes of Paul McCartney and Billy Joel -- into the Fenway Music Hall of Fame.

Just one year ago, the band's single "Same Boat" -- from their seventh studio album "The Comeback" hit the top of country's radio charts. That success spawned a deluxe edition of the recording featuring Ingrid Andress, Buffett, Cody Johnson, Jamey Johnson, Marcus King, Blake Shelton and James Taylor.

Mangano believes that the album's strong resonance with live crowds allowed for markets where the band usually does not perform as well to achieve sold-out status finally. Moreover, Bowles notes that the "feeling in the gut of his stomach" was similar to what he felt a decade ago when duets with Alan Jackson ("As She's Walking Away") and Buffett ("Knee Deep") spurred their mainstream, rock-driven pop-country superstar-making moment.

["The Comeback"] has been a big thing that has connected with our fans and created more miraculous dreams coming true. To be this far along in our career and still being able to make our best music is killer," adds Bowles.

However, the COVID era for the Zac Brown Band proved to be more demanding of a time than it was for most acts. Notably, band multi-instrumentalist and founding member John Driskell Hopkins noticed that he slurred his speech and could not play notes quickly. Unfortunately, this issue soon degenerated into an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis.

The paralyzing degenerative disease eventually prohibits daily life functions.

In September, the band played a show at the Ryman Auditorium benefiting Hop On A Cure, Hopkins' charity for ALS research. The group's take on Hopkins' condition highlights their camaraderie.

For Mangano, the band has lived with and through Hopkins' diagnosis while simultaneously experiencing the benefits of heightened stardom. Thus, though a negative in many respects, Hopkins' resiliency in still "rocking and rolling" alongside his bandmates is viewed as a positive that offers hope for the band's immediate future -- with Hopkins still involved.

"We can't allow ourselves to think about [Hopkins' ALS diagnosis] as a super-defeating negative because we love him so much. So our mind frame around it has been focused on making the most of the fact that he's still out there with us.," says Bowles.

As far as that future is concerned, it will involve the inclusion of the band's only female member, Caroline Jones. The veteran guitarist and vocalist has provided touring support for the group for the past five years and is considered a "funny, intelligent, skillful and super-talented natural fit" for the act, says Mangano.

"A bunch of forty-something-year-old dudes is getting refreshed by adding a thirty-something-year-old woman who provides a different energy. And, even deeper, for our daughters, it's an awesome inspiration for them to see that their musical aspirations could end up with them on the kinds of stages we play."

The band's members offer direct answers regarding what fans can expect to see live at Bicentennial Park.

"We create an incredible interactive experience that is unlike most band's live shows," says Mangano. "The Zac Brown Band doesn't go through the motions onstage. The crowd is rowdy, like they're at a dive bar. They're seeing a bunch of excited people, pumped up to play not just the hits but giving them everything we have."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's New Year's Eve 'Big Bash': Zac Brown Band aims for 'rowdy'