Zac Brown Band’s Jimmy De Martini On Their First Grammy Nod In Four Years
Zac Brown Band landed another Grammy nomination recently – it’s first in four years – for “My Old Man.” The nod came in the Best Country Duo/Group Performance category, which puts them in competition with Little Big Town, Lady Antebellum, Brothers Osborne, Midland. What’s it like after all this time? ZBB’s Jimmy De Martini is shedding some light.
The song is special to everyone in the band, but Jimmy says it’s particularly so for Zac Brown himself. “I know it’s a very personal song for him,” Jimmy tells Billboard. “He was inspired his whole life by a song called ‘Leader Of The Band’ by Dan Fogelberg, and he’s always like, ‘I wish I could write a song as a tribute to my father.’ Zac had other people take him in when he was younger – one of the guys that raised him passed recently, and then Zac had a son recently as well, so he was just inspired to write that song. And everybody in the band is a father, too. So it’s special to all of us.”
“My Old Man”
The band has come a long way since forming in 2002, but they’ve yet to let success go to their heads. “When we look out in the crowd every night, there’s 10s of thousands of people or we’re playing baseball stadiums, and you try to remember it every night,” he tells Billboard. “At one point, I try to look at the furthest person in the crowd and just kind of stare out there. Just kind of realize how big it is, how big it’s gotten, and how many people it affects. Because if you go up on stage every night and go through the motions, it can start turning into a job, and that’s never why we started this in the first place. It’s amazing, it’s a dream come true.”
The 2018 Grammy happen January 28th. Read more from Billboard here.
Teddy McDonald is a fun-lovin’ country music fan man living in Nashville, Tennessee.
