Zac Brown Band with Sasha & Poo Bear and Amos Lee
The Owl Tour
Rupp Arena
Lexington, Kentucky
March 6, 2020
What a way to start the month of March, with toes in the water and …wait wait wait this is Kentucky after all, just wait a few minutes and the weather can and will change! Case in point, the warm temperatures the last couple days were just a tease, snow on show day with temperatures in the 30’s, gotta love Kentucky weather! But that little bit of cold and snow didn’t stop fans of the Zac Brown Band from coming out by the thousands to support their favorite band. ZBB didn’t show up alone; nope they brought singer/songwriters Sasha Sirota, Poo Bear and Amos Lee. This was a going to be an entertaining and interesting night of music!
Now to be honest I wasn’t familiar with Sasha and Poo Bear before the show. That lack of knowledge put me in the minority here in Rupp Arena tonight because this crowd was well aware of these two and the songs they have written and produced. After doing a little research preparing for this review I found that the artist they have worked with and written songs for is a who’s who of well-known artists. That list includes tonight’s headliners, ZBB, Zac Brown’s solo record, Just Bieber, Drake, Yelawolf, Mariah Carey, Usher, the list goes on and on! Don’t miss Sasha and Poo Bear!
Amos Lee took the Rupp Arena stage next and like Sasha and Poo Bear before him, he’s a singer/songwriter and performer. A performer that has had a #1 album on the Billboard 200, his music has been featured in numerous movies and television shows, he once performed at a voter registration rally for former President Obama. He’s toured the world with noted artists like Bob Dylan, Norah Jones, Paul Simon, Merle Haggard and of course tonight’s headliner the Zac Brown Band! Be sure to check out his music, you will not be sorry!
The Zac Brown Band hit the stage running, falling, skating and jumping. Okay, okay maybe it wasn’t the members of the band but rather the unfortunate folks in the video showing on the big screens behind the band and on either side of the stage, the video played as ZBB performed tonight’s leadoff song The Woods. If that wasn’t enough to get this very enthusiastic crowd going the next song was sure to.
When the first notes of Toes reverberated through Rupp Arena these fans went nuts, dancing and singing! Follow those two up with As She’s Walking Away and you have the foundation for what is going to be a great night of music in Lexington Kentucky! Building on that foundation with some killer, I do mean killer covers sprinkled in the set list like Dancing In The Dark, Sex on Fire, Whipping Post. A cover in fact is what brought me to the Zac Brown Band (the 2009 CMA’s Devil Went Down To Georgia) the covers may be what bring people in but they stay for the ZBB originals!
Those original tunes, I mean the second song tonight Toes was a #1 hit. Most bands save their most popular songs for later in the set, not the Zac Brown Band. This set was full of Billboard charting songs, from the beginning to the end. Songs like Chicken Fried, Keep Me In Mind, Homegrown and Beautiful Drug just to pick a few out. I really could list the entire set list, but I won’t do that, let’s just say the Zac Brown Band is a hit making machine and leave it at that! They back up those hits with a stellar live show performed by some seriously talented musicians. Every fan that I could see in Rupp Arena was eating up everything the band was giving them, and loving every minute of it!
It was a great Friday night in Kentucky, the last “normal” Friday night for a lot of us that were there. The Coronavirus had made its way to the Bluegrass state. Music venues big and small were about to be shut down for the foreseeable future.
I’d like to apologize to everyone involved for the length of time that it’s taken me to finish this review. I’d started it the weekend after the show about the same time the world around us all started to change and I lost my focus for anything other than news about the virus. So I hope these images and the show review will provide a little bit of a distraction during these crazy times.
Wash Your Hands!!
All photos by Tom Biggs at TRB Photography LLC
©2020. Please DO NOT copy or use without permission.
