Zach Bryan is Having a Moment.
I want to love a girl who
doesn’t worry about the pictures when we kiss
wake up one day and I’ll be so hit and miss…..
I’m movin’ at Godspeed
Where only God and my momma
know what I need
Zach Bryan—“Godspeed”
In 2019 then 23-year old Zach Bryan, a petty officer second class in the U.S. Navy, self-released a raw, low-fi, messy record-of-catharsis (following his mother’s death in 2016) of songs he scrawled out and honed in his barracks (as he sings in Condemned, one of the album’s gems, “The boys they always tell me that my words get 'em by." They can tell how much I mean it by the bloodshot in my eye”) called DeAnn. He recorded it in in Airbnb in Florida.
Here’s Zach, with a song for his mom, at the Grand Ole Opry:
My editor, John King, spins this album on an all-in-one turntable in his office. I hear he closes the door when this song comes on. DeAnn made the country music world wonder—who is Zach Bryan?
Now, after three years of playing back porches, barns, band shells and bonfires on YouTube and Twitter, and leaving his Navy day-job last year to write and tour full time, it is becoming increasingly clear that this country-Americana superstar-on-the-verge isn’t waking up to a miss, as 2022’s American Heartbreak, a 34-song, two-hour plus opus, threatens to blow his career as wide open as the west-Texas plains.
Talking about the Next Big Thing pretty much always sounds hyberbolic. But the songwriting, the instrumentation, the old-soul zeitgeist...Zach Bryan is that thing.
The now 26-year-old Bryan hails from Oologah, Oklahoma–although as a Navy brat, he wasn’t born there. His late mother, his father and his grandfather all served in the Navy, and he was born in 1996 on the island of Okinawa, Japan where his family was deployed. Bryan himself served in the Navy for eight years, until he was honorably discharged last year. So that’s over now, as he embarks on his second career, making some of the best new music you are going to hear anywhere, from anyone. Period. Check out the enthusiasm here:
Texas live performance
It’s a small crowd at an outdoor University of Texas band shell in the Lone Star State—but that’s a lot of unbridled electricity. With a shake-my-head, front-to-back sing along. Who is this kid? Something is happening at that show, and it ain’t just the suds bellowing, or a Texas Longhorns victory celebration.
Bryan claims Johnny Cash, Jason Isbell, Tyler Childers and Robert Earl Keen as influences—personally, I hear quite a bit of Jerry Jeff Walker in what he brings to the stage, as well as Ryan Adams. American Heartbreak brings shades of Ray LaMontagne; Bryan, or his narrators, seem at times to be living out the framework of LaMontagne’s Jolene, albeit with some attitude, and the confidence of youth.
But it’s Evan Felker, one of Amercia’s greatest songwriters, and the Turnpike Troubadors who have had the greatest influence. Do yourself a favor and dive into the Troubadors catalog—Diamonds and Gasoline, or Goodbye Normal Street are good places to start.
The Turnpike Troubadours
Telling is the encore Zach plays on that Texas stage—the Troubadours’ The Birdhunters. It’s a clear nod of great respect, standing on the shoulders of giants.
Turnpike was off the grid for a few years while Evan struggled with addiction. From towns on either side of Tulsa just an hour and half apart, Bryan has acknowledged the influence; heck, he has a song called Felker—a heartfelt plea during the worst of Felker’s days a few years back:
Turnpike played a bar show recently where it was reported that grown men cried. Bryan also clearly stirs that kind of emotion. This kid isn’t Nashville (it’s Warner Records out of California, not Nashville). He’s no product. You can’t fake what he’s doing, and as Todd Snider would say, “who would?” It’s organic. He’s growing it from the ground up. You can imagine him, for years keeping his guitar low, scribbling songs on the Navy base with his six-string ‘neath the 60-watt glow.
After Bryan self-released DeAnn, Elizabeth and the EP Quiet Heavy Dreams followed in 2020, while he was still on active duty. Now that he’s been able to go full time, 2022 has brought us Heartbreak, and another EP Summertime Blues. Heartbreak hit May 20 and debuted at No.5 on the US Billboard 200 which made it the biggest first week for a country album in 2022 to date.
Not since Jack Logan’s 1994 album Bulk, with 42 southern songs recorded after REM’s Pete Buck discovered Logan and said “make it so,” have we seen this kind of…bulk.
Bulk Album Cover
It’s a lot to tackle, but let it play. You could head west across central Iowa, start this album in Omaha, and play it across I-70 in Nebraska until you see the foothills from Denver.
Heartbreak is many things…
It is, by turns, a red-meat country record, a journey of self-discovery and introspection, and did I mention the old-soul piece? It is difficult at times to believe that this kid is only 26…and yet sometimes, Bryan’s songs say “I’m only 26!” loudly and clearly.
In Mine Again, it seems Bryan is singing to an old friend—until we realize he’s singing to himself, “fondest friend...where the hell you been?” He’s headed back home, talking “strong sober and clear,” to be who he knows he can be.
In Oklahoma City, he is singing to an old friend who “put wheels down and disappeared” out west to “write some songs and grow a little more bitter,” and ended up on the “wrong side of pity.” There’s a porch light on if this guy stumbles back to town—but sometimes Zach prays for him, and sometimes…he don’t.
An exegesis of Heartbreak’s lyrics would reveal the lonely optimism of all-night debauchery and drives (with a “foot out the window and my flask halfway full”), and tapped-out sunrises (the sun “crests” no fewer than three times on the record), lost nights, and the youthful intensity of romance. There is more than one beautiful woman who touches the narrator on his neck, between the collar and the jaw.
American Heartbreak album cover
There are drive-ins, girls, whiskey, bar rooms and backroads, Levi-jean queens, and cowboys. A return to the States from where there was “sand in his boots and sand in his eyes, everywhere sand can hide,” to the Whiskey River, taking him home from Uncle Sam’s Navy. Jet trails cut across the Winthrop County sky in Corinthains, along with a search for what’s next, if the rodeo rider in the song doesn’t die on this particular Sunday—if he’s going down, he’s going down true.
But there is one song that jumps through the Bose speaker and screams “this is just the beginning” for Bryan.
Billy Stay, which Zach sings as a 90-some-year-old woman to her fading, dying husband, is a song a guy this young has no business writing.
If love was enough then you'd stay forever
But I guess sometimes that the end is better
'Cause love turns to loss as the time goes by
You don't know your own name but you know mine
Billy, stay awhile
Lately you’ve been slipping in and out
As Billy fades away, the “years gone by fast,” she asks him to tell her about “that girl” and how he loved her. The song speaks to a life experience Bryan hasn’t yet had—personally—but it rings so very true, and reveals a poetic depth, weight and sensibility that portend great promise.
As Zach Bryan’s first big 34-song statement comes to a close, with the spoken-word poem This Road I Know (Track #34) he lets us know; “I don’t know where I am, but I know exactly where I am.” It seems he’s right where he’s supposed to be. His moment starts now. Where Zach Bryan goes from here will be something fun to watch, and no doubt wonderful to hear.
Zach Bryan is playing a sold-out show at Surly Brewing in Minneapolis on October 2, 2022. Check the website for any last minute updates or giveaways. Kinger made sure he had his tickets awhile ago. https://surlybrewing.com/events/zach-bryan-festival-field/
