Man, when this one came across the feed my heart leapt for joy.
Awhile back, we posted about Joe Rogan taking in Zach Bryan’s performance at Two Step Inn and immediately started speculating that a podcast may be in the works.
Well, it took a little bit, but just yesterday an episode of the largest podcast on planet earth was posted and the guest was none other than Mr. Zach Bryan.
It’s three hours of great conversation, running the gambit on topics as JRE episodes tend to do, including a great piece where Zach told of his journey from career Navy man to absolute superstar in just a few short years.
“I started putting videos on Twitter back in 2017, and then I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it, ‘cuz I was in the Navy…
It was nice to go home and feel the way I did and write and put music on Twitter. I don’t know, it was kind of my validation in the world…
I never in my life envisioned being a musician, ever. Period. No. And I was thinkin’ about it yesterday, how crazy my reality is now.
Like coming back to Oklahoma and being around people, and people coming to get me in diners and being like ‘Take a picture with me.’ I’m like, ‘What is going on, man?'”
While there were plenty of other great moments that I’m sure we’ll discuss over the next few days, one that grabbed my attention is when Zach started opening up on vulnerability in songwriting, and why the writing itself is so important to him.
“I just wanted to be a writer. I think writing is the most beautiful thing in the world because I used to read Steinbeck books and stuff when I was a kid and I just thought it was so crazy that someone could take words and put them on a page and it would make you feel something.
Not to be deep either, I mean that. You could be reading a book and feel something like visceral and real from a page on a book…
So I started writing poems and stuff when I was a kid and those turned into songs because writing poems is lame, right? Not really, now that I’m 27 I know that it’s not but when I was a kid I thought that and I was like ‘What way can you write poems and it’s not weird?’ That’s why I started playing guitar.”
They went on to laugh at people who take poems and the art of writing too seriously, which was funny, especially considering Zach is mostly known as a songwriter and you’d kind of expect him to take the side of the artsy folks who get into the ethereal of it all, but he proves he really is just a grounded dude with talent doing his thing.
Zach then continued to speak on being open and honest in his writing.
“It’s almost embarrassing to write vulnerable stuff, but it’s not at all at the same time. It’s like you have one life, you know?
People act like you should be ashamed of it… It’s strange. It’s really weird to talk to people about it… At the same time so many people are drawn to them, like I have so many happy songs and people always love my darker ones.”
Beautifully said.
Emotions are a very strange thing, but when expressed like Zach can lay them out, it came become one of those experiences he talked about while reading Steinbeck, where you truly feel something stir inside of you because of the words another person wrote.
I couldn’t recommend the episode more and am truly happy that Zach is experiencing all of this success in his life while still staying true to himself and doing it his way.
