Zac Brown Band keeps it real for fans

In 2004, Zac Brown saw guitarist Clay Cook wailing away at a gig with the Marshall Tucker Band. Brown turned to his bassist, John Hopkins, and said, “Clay is going to be in our band one day.”

Back then Brown’s group, scheduled to headline the Comcast Center on Sunday, was just another struggling act in the Atlanta scene. But Brown was true to his word after breaking big with the triple-platinum disc “The Foundation.”

“Two years to the day of him seeing me with my uncle’s group, the Marshall Tucker Band, we had our first conversation about me coming on board,” Cook said. “We’d been running into each other for years, and I had always been the guy people call when they needed a replacement guitarist or a fill-in bassist. That’s what I became for Zac, but it became permanent.”

Brown wasn’t the first rising star to notice Cook’s skills.
As freshmen at Berklee College of Music, Cook and John Mayer became friends and eventually band mates. In the late ’90s, the two dropped out and tried to make it as a duo in Atlanta but fizzled out.
“We lived together, worked together. He didn’t have a car, so I was his ride,” Cook said. “It was too much and we were too young to realize each other’s talent. But we taught each other how to write songs. We’re back in touch now and are buddies again.”
After Mayer took off for solo stardom, Cook kicked around Atlanta. He didn’t find success on his own but was always in demand. He played guitar with Marshall Tucker, handled bass duties in the first Sugarland lineup, toured with Shawn Mullins and produced other artists.
Brown’s band has finally allowed Cook to play the rock star stages Mayer enjoys — Zac Brown Band’s Saturday show at the 21,600-seat Darien Lake Performing Arts Center in New York will be the group’s largest headlining gig yet.
“I remember when we were struggling to fill these minor league hockey rinks,” Cook said. “Agents wanted to put us in smaller venues so we could have people wishing they could get in and drive up ticket prices. But that’s never been what we’re about. We’d rather have empty seats and make sure everyone who wanted to come got in.”
There’s a certain humility, a homeyness to the Zac Brown Band that is missing from slick rock acts and pre-fab country artists. The guys in the band aren’t pretty or glamorous. But they can play.
Cook attributes the band’s success to this humble, bar band aesthetic.
“The songs are real songs about real stuff,” he said. “And with Zac, you get what you see. There’s a couple of country artists who do a lot of posturing when they play. We go out there and we’re ourselves. It’s genuine.”