Zac Brown Says He’s Going Into Debt To Make His Las Vegas Sphere Shows Happen

Going all out.

Earlier this month, the Zac Brown Band announced their long-anticipated residency at the Las Vegas Sphere with four nights at the venue in December, and followed it up this week by adding two more dates in January.

In announcing the residency, Zac called it “a dream come true” and promised a unique experience for fans:

“Bringing our new album ‘Love & Fear’ to Sphere Las Vegas is a dream come true. It’s my masterpiece so far. This show is the story of my life that I have never shared, a journey through my imagination, music, and stories that have defined who I am. All of this brought to life in the incredible immersive environment of Sphere.

It will be a unique experience where you can really feel every note, every word, right there with us. We can’t wait to share it with the fans. – Zac Brown”

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It’s been in the making for quite a while, with Zac first mentioning that they would be headlining the Sphere last year during an appearance on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast, calling the venue “the greatest canvas that has ever been created” and revealing that it takes over a year for a show like that to come together:

“That’s the greatest canvas that has ever been created, so far. And to get to be one of the first bands to go in there and do it…this is our masterpiece, man…

It’s going to be the biggest spectacle we have ever done. I am very excited because this puts us in another league. And the goal is for our band to just keep going, man, and be like The Rolling Stones or the Grateful Dead…yeah, Jimmy Buffett. Be in that legacy act thing. This is our first thing that I am putting a year-plus work into for making one show.”

And in an interview on New Heights with Travis and Jason Kelce, he revealed just how insane the preparation for the show has been:

“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.”

The state-of-the-art, $2.3 billion venue features the world’s largest LED screen, 167,000 individual speakers that can be dialed in to each section, and fully immersive visual capabilities that deliver over 171 million pixels across a 160,000 square foot screen wrapping up, over and around the audience, plus 4D technologies including haptic seats. And Zac gave an indication of just how much work goes into producing a video for a screen that big:

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.”

Of course putting on a show there comes with a pretty hefty price tag. And during a recent interview with US Weekly, he revealed that he’s going into debt to make it happen – but he thinks it’s worth it:

“Just going into debt to make it happen. It’s a big moment in time and it’s like, for us, I want to be among the names of the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones and the bands that take that lifelong career impact fan journey to be able to do that. This is our statement to try to step into that.”

He also says he’s put a lot of thought into the narrative that he wants to share during the shows:

“We have all the audio finished. We’re putting the video pieces together, stitching it together. I’m finishing the story. I’m telling a lot of personal things about my life that I’ve never shared before. Everything that’s hard that we go through as human beings always ends up making us better in some way.”

But ultimately, Zac says he wants it to be unlike anything fans have ever experienced:

“I hope they feel wonder. Unpredictability is something we use in our live shows a lot. I love pulling out covers that no one would ever expect us to play, that’s super fun. This is the same thing visually, sonically — everything we’re doing.”

I mean, for a show that’s costing more than you’re making, you might as well go all out.The post Zac Brown Says He’s Going Into Debt To Make His Las Vegas Sphere Shows Happen first appeared on Whiskey Riff.