Zac Brown Details The Insanity Of The Las Vegas Sphere With The Kelce Brothers: “They Measure The Video In Acres”

Zac Brown made an appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast “New Heights”  to discuss his freshly announced Las Vegas Sphere residency and his new album.

Three-time Grammy Award winner and two-time CMA Award winner, Zac Brown, will be the second country music act to headline this venue, right behind Kenny Chesney who had his residency in May through June.

On the podcast, Zac touches on the announcement of his new album Love & Fear, which is set to release in December on night one of his four-day sphere residency. When asked about the venue, Zac admits that he’s attended five shows since it opened in September 2023, and has analyzed how artists have utilized the venue space, as well as pick out how he believes they could have done better.

Zac says that for about a year and a half he contemplated ways he could create a spectacle during his shows, similar to what other bands have done in the past, like The Eagles and Pink Floyd. Those shows incorporated more than just simple visual effects on a screen, but an entirely immersive production experience.

Once his agent took him to visit The Sphere in Vegas, while it was still being built, he knew that it was the perfect location to execute his vision.

“My agent, Rob White, was like—you need to see this place in Vegas that they are building. And so, I went to see it while it was being constructed, and I was like, this is the home for the spectacle.”

For the last fourteen months, Zac and his team have been working to create this giant production. He walks through the steps they have taken to bring the show and album to life: making content, filming a forty piece orchestra and a twenty piece choir, as well as attempting to capture a story within the album that can be tied into the show.

Zac compares the process to creating a movie, which measures up to all the tedious things that must be done when creating a show of this nature. I can’t blame him— I mean, he’s even had to do stunt work.

“I’ve been a stunt man; I’ve been jerked around on stunt wires and drug across the ground and thrown up in the air. It’s gonna be wild man.”

Even with the hard work involved, Zac and his team are excited for this opportunity. According to Zac, this is the greatest venue to execute a creative vison of this magnitude.

“This is like the greatest canvas for creativity that’s ever been made.”

The Sphere is huge, I’m sure you have seen pictures of it online displaying advertisements or art. The work that goes into even producing a video of that size can take months. Video engineers for The Sphere literally have to use an insanely large byte size to even get a video that large to function.

“They have to measure the video in acres. There’s four acres of video. It takes a month to render 30 seconds of 16K video on one computer. The computers will get faster over time and everything will catch up, but right now it’s like a marvel. Like a billion dollar video/audio system… it’s crazy.”

Travis points out how excited Zac seems about this major project, and Zac affirms this, speaking on how much it means to him. He even refers to it as his “baby.” He talks about how people who only know his band’s music from the radio are probably unaware of how his live shows are. If you’ve ever seen Zac Brown Band live, you know exactly what he’s talking about… it’s more than just a few dudes singing “Chicken Fried,” it’s VERY impressive. They truly put on a SHOW.

He notes that over the years, his production quality has gotten better, with more lighting, effects, and inflatables— all things aimed to surprise the audience and leave them on their toes. This show, however, Zac believes to be their first masterpiece.

“We love the curve balls, we love throwing things in that nobody would ever expect. This is our first masterpiece, this is our first time to really lay out nuts out there. It’s all self funded, so we had to pay for making everything completely ourselves.”

Because they signed a contract with the venue, they aren’t able to do a tour, but Zac thinks it’s worth it in the long run— staying out of large markets with his spring tour, targeting mainly smaller venues.

Zac On ‘Love & Fear’

Zac also talked about his new album and the two major stars that will be featured on it: Snoop Dog and Dolly Parton. Snoop will be featured on the song “Let It Run,” which is confirmed to have a music video. According to Zac, it will be filmed later this week on July 20th.

Zac says he let Dolly pick which song she wanted after sending her multiple demos. Zac recounts Dolly’s reaction to the songs. Apparently when she found the one, she said:

“Don’t you give that song to anyone else honey, we got us a big hit here”.

Classic Dolly.

Zac adds that Dolly “absolutely murdered it” with her vocals on the track:

“It was just like chill bumps down to my toenails. She just absolutely murdered it.”

I would expect no less from the Dolly Parton. Zac confesses that he’s incredibly proud of this album, and that he produced it himself independently, getting as many favors as he could get from any friends in the industry. He’s very excited to release it, and fans are even more excited to hear it… I know I am.

I know country music fans will be at the edge of their seats waiting to see what goes down during his Vegas residency.

The post Zac Brown Details The Insanity Of The Las Vegas Sphere With The Kelce Brothers: “They Measure The Video In Acres” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.