Zac Brown Band gives back with follow-up album

The Zac Brown Band is less than an hour from its concert on Friday night in Fresno, Calif. The sound check is complete. All that remains is for the house lights -- and a throng of "Zamily" members -- to welcome the Academy of Country Music-nominated Entertainer of the Year to the stage.

And yet there remain more media commitments on the schedule. Such is life on the road when touring to promote You Get What You Give, the follow-up album to 2008's double-platinum The Foundation.

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Zac Brown	Lead vocals, guitar
Coy Bowles	Guitar, organ
Clay Cook	Guitar, organ, mandolin, pedal steel, vocals
Jimmy De Martini	Violin, vocals
John Driskell Hopkins	Bass, vocals
Chris Fryar	Drums

"I was born for it, brother," says Brown, the Grizzly Adams-esque guitarist and lead singer. "We bled on this record, man. There is a lot of blood, sweat, tears in there -- from writing each song, countless hours going into each song, countless hours arranging with the band, countless hours recording it all and making sure we captured it the right way. You can't put more time and love into each one of these songs than we did on this record."

The ZBB, which was nominated for a 2010 Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and Best Country Album, revved up the NASCAR season by performing a pre-race concert and the national anthem prior to the Budweiser Shootout -- as well as a post-race gig -- at Daytona in February. It was the band's second NASCAR-centric appearance, on the heels of a concert at Talladega in 2009.

Country music and NASCAR go back a long way, as does the sport and Brown. "I got my first Earnhardt [die-cast] car in '89," he says, but it wasn't until college at the University of West Georgia that Brown embraced his inner need for speed. "I lived with a roommate back in college who was a huge fan and he kinda got me into it, collecting the die-cast cars.

"I've been watching racing for 10 years, I guess, but it goes back even further," says Brown. "Even when Kyle Petty was racing the Peak antifreeze car, my dad ran a hardware company that carried the Peak antifreeze and they got us down to the track and that was my first race.

"I've gotten to be buddies with some of the folks, gotten to hang out with [Dale] Junior several times. ... Everybody's just made us feel like home when we're there in their world -- getting to go into some of the semis, where the machine shops are, and go up on top and watch the races."

Brown said that the latest album's title is a personal mantra. "You get what you give," he says. "The more you give to something, the more reward is going to come from it -- and that works for charity, generosity with other people. The more open-hearted that you are, the more love you show people the more you're going to receive in return.

"This album is the same way. We put a lot of ourselves into it as a band. There's a lot of music on there and you have to listen to it a few times to really catch everything. It's not just a one-time listen-through kinda deal; there's a lot of layers of stuff going on -- but it's very accessible; there's something for everybody on there.

"You can tell we've matured a lot as musicians on this record and we've jelled together as a band and I'm real proud of it."