The massively condensed career bio for the Zac Brown Band goes something like this: Talented Georgia musician with instinctive head for business and mad kitchen skills ditches college, makes music, opens a restaurant, works with a wide range of musicians before settling on an alchemic lineup, conquers Atlanta, signs a recording deal with a concert promoter which then dismantles its fledgling label division-all not necessarily in that order. Aided by a highly competent promotion team, infectious debut single shoots up the country charts, musician and band sign to a major label, which, incidentally, didn't have a Nashville office at the time. Hit after hit follows.

Exclusive Billboard Video Q&A With Zac Brown


Hank didn't do it this way, nor have many others. Brown, 32, acknowledges that his band's mix of styles-country, roots, reggae, Southern rock and soft rock, among others-and its route to the top of the country charts have been anything but routine. "But it's been good the whole way," he says. "We wouldn't be ready if we hadn't gone that way."

Now, after eight years on the road, 1,000-plus shows, three studio albums, three live records, a few different labels, sales of 2.2 million (according to Nielsen SoundScan) of the breakthrough 2008 album "The Foundation," multiple Country Music Assn. (CMA) and Academy of Country Music award nominations and one highly coveted 2010 best new artist Grammy, the Zac Brown Band will release on Sept. 21 what's sure to be the biggest record of its career, "You Get What You Give."

"We want the people to hear what we spent all this time working on," Brown says. "We bled writing these songs, we bled in the studio, and now we're out bleeding getting them right live."

Billboard Bits: Zac Brown Band Helps U.S. Troops

The Zac Brown Band-Brown (guitar, lead vocals), Coy Bowles (guitar, Hammond organ), Clay Cook (guitar, Hammond organ, piano, pedal steel, vocals), Jimmy De Martini (violin, vocals), Chris Fryar (drums) and John Hopkins (bass, vocals)-is managed by Los Angeles-based ROAR, whose principal partners are Will Ward, Bernie Cahill, Jay Froberg and Greg Suess. When ROAR first caught wind of Brown a few years ago, the band already had a manager, but as it was looking to make changes, ROAR got the nod. Artist development firm Bigger Picture was an early partner.

"Zac had created a buzz with what he had going down in Atlanta, and he was getting attention from New York and L.A., but his record wasn't getting a huge response in Nashville," Ward recalls. "One prominent executive at a record label in Nashville said to me, 'When I saw that beanie cap he wore, I knew that guy would never fit in the country music world.' I think Zac was sort of flattered by those comments, because he had always seen himself as a real original."

While Nashville labels weren't biting, Live Nation, in the midst of signing massive multirights deals with acts like Madonna and U2, briefly ramped up a label infrastructure and stepped into the artist development waters with the Zac Brown Band in 2008. The foray was short-lived; even as "Chicken Fried," the first single from "The Foundation," began gaining traction at radio, Live Nation folded its label division with the exit of then-chairman Michael Cohl.

With Bigger Picture, led by partner and veteran promotion exec Michael Powers, still onboard, the band briefly became a free agent, and "The Foundation" returned to its Southern Ground (formerly Home Grown) homestead before the band signed with Atlantic Records. Atlantic chairman Craig Kallman says his first exposure to the group came when A&R rep Gregg Nadel handed him the finished recording that became "The Foundation." "I was like, 'Is this for real? How is this unsigned?' I was so impressed by the quality and craftsmanship of the songwriting."

Kallman says Atlantic was immediately interested. "We then went down a path of trying to sign it and competing with, of all people, Live Nation. We got outbid, unfortunately, by a very significant offer, and we made a very significant offer."

Atlantic stayed in touch with Brown, waiting in the wings when the opportunity arose. "We were able to figure out a way to transition that from the Live Nation implosion into a partnership with Zac, Bigger Picture and Atlantic Records," Kallman says.

CHICKEN FRIED STAKE

Ward says his team didn't initially see the Zac Brown Band as a radio-driven act. "We looked at it as a touring act in the way that the Dave Matthews Band had built its fan base, getting out there and putting on a show that creates this viral buzz so that every time you come back into a market you're growing and growing," he says.

As with most aspects of the group's development, the promotion of "Chicken Fried" to radio was anything but smooth. Though Brown penned the song, BNA country band the Lost Trailers was first to take it to radio and had already begun promoting the song before Brown reclaimed it. "Michael Powers and his guys had a real uphill battle," Ward says. "You have to understand, these guys were no longer on Live Nation and were working on their own independently to push this record along, without the muscle of a label behind them."

Powers, a former Universal Music Group radio promotion exec well-known to programmers, says that taking the Zac Brown Band's version of "Chicken Fried" to radio was indeed challenging. "We came out there on the heels of a band [the Lost Trailers] that had already done the promo and had some friends at radio," he says. "Of course, Zac was not your traditional country star-he came from South Georgia, not the streets of Nashville, and challenged the system [by] working a song that somebody else had already released."

In the end, radio listeners voted for the Zac Brown Band version of the song. "Once we got through all those battles, the snowball started rolling downhill, and country radio quickly made the transition from, 'This guy looks and sounds a little bit different,' to, 'Wow, people are really responding to that sound.' " Powers says. "That paved the road, and down the line they had a lot more confidence in swinging at a Zac Brown single."

Next: Zac Brown Breaks Out in Atlanta