Zac Brown Band Enjoy the ‘Journey and Adventure’ With Daily Motorcycle Rides Through the Country

With the amount of traveling that the Zac Brown Band does on a weekly basis, you would think the red-hot band would easily get burned out on the career path they have chosen. But night after night, the band delivers a solid performance of back-to-back hits, following their uniquely designed Eat and Greet events where a select group of fans get to enjoy a southern-cooked meal and say hello to the band.

To break things up some, the boys have started to bring along some toys when they hit the road, to keep them refreshed throughout the day. "In the past year or so we've started [bringing our] motorcycles with us," ZBB's bassist John Driskell Hopkins tells Taste of Country. "So Coy [Bowles], Zac and I will get on our bikes and ride. Just recently we rode Aspen to Red Rocks, and two weeks later we rode Portland to the Gorge. So you get dropped off at your last gig, and you spend the night in the town where you played the gig, you get up the next day, and you ride!"

"The difference in the understanding of where you are is just unbelievable," he continues. "When you ride out of Aspen and it says, 'Thank you for coming to Aspen,' and then you're in the the Rocky Mountains and you go through all these steep, curvy passes before you get to the interstate to get over to Morrison ... you're about to drive into the venue, and you pass all the tailgating. The experience just during the day -- not to mention showtime and warm up and eat and greets and all those other things we've got planned -- just the morning has already been a journey and adventure that we didn't used to have. We aren't just standing at the loading docks; we're actually seeing the country on two wheels."

But Zac Brown Band's creative minds are always at work no matter where they are or what they're doing. During these rides, the guys have been documenting certain parts to have on hand so they can use the footage in a bigger project someday.

"We've gotten some video camera's on the bikes. Sometimes we catch really good stuff and sometimes you'll have bad videos ... and we don't always remember to take video," laughs Hopkins. "But we are trying to compile as much video as we can to document our journeys, and with that, you need the sign that says 'Welcome to Colorado' ... things we haven't been able to nail down logistically."

"We're trying to get a good representation of where we're going and what we're doing so we can document it and maybe put that out, letting people know what is going on and kind of connect with the biking crowd out there," the ZBB member continues. "There are a lot of bikers who are fans of our band too, and we've done a couple rides with Harley Davidson and had some good success with that, so we're enjoying all the riding we can do."

This week, the band has tour stops in Pennsylvania and Virginia, before they head to South Carolina for their Southern Ground Food and Music Festival. Click here for information on the event and/or to purchase tickets to the three-day lineup, set for October 21-23.