Coming to a streaming platform near you.
Following the beef with fellow artist John Moreland, Zach Bryan is following through with his promise to fans to re-release their duet “Memphis; The Blues” without Moreland, and shared on his Instagram stories yesterday who would be on the new version.
It was originally including on Zach’s 2024 The Great American Bar Scene album, though it has since been removed from streaming services. You can still find a few random YouTube videos of it here and there, but pretty soon we’ll have a new version featuring Zach’s friend, band member, and extremely talented artist himself, J.R. Carroll.
According to Zach, it will be out “so, so, so soon”:
If you somehow missed the aforementioned beef between Zach and Moreland, it occurred in May after Zach sold his publishing catalog for a whopping $350 million and signed with Warner Records for at least two more albums.
After the deal was announced, John took a shot at him on social media, seemingly out of nowhere. Because they had previously worked together, not all that long ago, and both hail from what is usually considered a pretty tight-knit Oklahoma music scene, it was surprising to see the post from Moreland criticizing Zac. Moreland called him an “off-brand version of me,” among other things:
“$350 M is a lot of money to pay for the f***** off-brand version of me. Y‘all have a great day”
Because it was a little weird to see Moreland take such a public shot at Zach, it led some to wonder at first whether it was just two friends joking around, busting each others’ balls a little bit, or whether it was truly a shot at Zach. But then Zach made it clear that it wasn’t just a friendly jab when he took to his own Instagram to address the comments from Moreland, confirming that he was blindsided and announcing that he would be removing the collab with Moreland from his album:
“yooo just saw this from an artist I’ve always respected and supported. Not trying to be dramatic but refuse to have anyone with a problem with me on my records. Replacing Memphis the Blues. If it goes down for a bit just know this is the reason!
No hard feelings! Confused as s**t, Tulsans look out for Tulsans!”
He then followed it up with one last comment:
“Last thing I say on it! Not partial to arguing with butt hurt grown men”
Of course we’ve heard a lot of stories about Zach in the past, especially from his ex-girlfriend, so the natural question was raised: What exactly did Zach do for Moreland to call him out like that? And Moreland gave some background on why he wasn’t a Zach Bryan fan in a video on Instagram, explaining that he hadn’t met Zach when he was asked to be on the album:
“Just a really big artist from where I’m from asking me to be on a record, cool.”
Moreland says that he didn’t have the greatest impression of Zach after their first meeting, but says at that point it was “no big deal.”
Afterwards though, he hung out with him a few more times, and…well, I’ll let Moreland explain it from here:
“At this point I’ve hung out with him five, six times. I don’t like this motherf*****. Am I supposed to be upset? If I was asked to be on the album today I wouldn’t do it.
I don’t want to be on an album with a dude who is a d***head to my wife and my friends right in front of me every time I see him. I don’t want to be on an album with a dude who I’ve heard tell borderline racist jokes more than once. I don’t want to be on an album with a dude who brings a 19-year old girl in the bar, and then when they tell him she can’t be in there, looks at me like I’m supposed to have his f***** back. I don’t like that person.
That’s who thinks I’m an a**hole? Fine. As far as I’m concerned, getting kicked off a Zach Bryan album is way f****** cooler than being on a Zach Bryan album.”
At the time all of this was happening, Zach clarified that he would be re-releasing the song once Moreland was removed, and now fans shouldn’t have to wait too much longer to hear this updated version with Carroll. Since Moreland co-wrote the song with Zach, he’ll still most likely get 50% of the publishing royalties from the song.
Of course, it’s a huge opportunity for any artist to team up with an artist as big as Zach in terms of the exposure to a massive audience, though it’s clear Moreland wasn’t worried about burning bridges and we’ll likely never hear anything from the two of them as duet partners again. The song was Moreland’s highest-streamed song on Spotify, and he’s an extremely talented, very underrated artist, so regardless of how this all went down, I’m sure he’ll continue making great music and building his fan base.
It sucks it all went down this way, J.R. seems like the natural choice to re-record the song, and he shared on his own stories that he is “so nervous,” and asked fans not to be mean when they hear this version:
“Cat’s out of the bag. I am so nervous please don’t be mean to me I tried my best.”
While there is no official release date yet, it sounds like it’s all ready to go, so it shouldn’t be much longer at all. In the meantime, check out some of JR’s solo work… he’s LEGIT:
