Zac Brown Dishes on His Southern Ground Summer Camp

Before he was Zac Brown of the Zac Brown Band, the Georgia native was spending his summers teaching kids in summer camp. Now, the singer is using that background and love for children to create his very own camp!

When Brown was growing up, he had a love other than music — he loved being a camp counselor. The singer caught up with Taste of Country Nights host Sam Alex and filled him in on the three summers he spent counseling while in high school and college.

Brown started his counseling days at the young age of 15, but really got into it at 18. “When I turned 18, I spent my first summer working at Camp Glisson up in North Georgia, and the first year I was at Camp Sparrowwood, which is the children with special needs part of the camp," he tells Alex. "So I had two campers every week, and we integrated them into a group of eight kids from the main Village Camp. So that was the group, and we did everything together that week and it’s just amazing — them all learning from each other and learning the spirit that each other had. It’s just an unbelievable thing, so I knew when I was 14 and going to camp, I was like, ‘I want to build one of these one day.’”

His dream is coming true, because right now he's breaking ground on his own camp. Brown says they'll help kids with music, but so much more than that. They'll have "a little bit of everything."

“It’s a sleep away camp. We’ll be able to sleep away 300 kids every week," he says. "They’ll come in and it’ll be a research facility for developmental disorders — autism, asperger's, ADD and dyslexia. It’s a big campus in Fayetteville, Ga. It’s called Camp Southern Ground.”

Sam Alex is the host of Taste of Country Nights radio, a syndicated night show which airs on more than 60 Townsquare Media Group stations nationwide.

See Zac Brown + More Stars' Yearbook Photos