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Zac Brown Band played the Hershey Stadium located at Hershey park in Hershey, PA on 07-09-2010.  They were the opening band for Dave Matthews Band this night.

While I am not an avid country music listener (see previous post on Brooks And Dunn), the Zac Brown Band plays from a more versatile pallet band than just country music (including a cover of Rage Against The Machine).  Their first song of the set, Toes, reminded me of a Jimmy Buffet song with its bouncy steel drum rhythm and laid back vocals/lyrics:  “I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand. Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand.  Life is good today.”.

The second song was their rendition of Neon, a John Mayer song, which was co-written by the guitarist, Clay Cook, in the Zac Brown Band.  Clay Cook was one of John Mayer’s co-writers early on in his career.

The radio hits (Toes and Chicken Fried) for the band went over really well for the crowd but the cover of Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name” took them by surprise and bowled them over.  From the first note, I knew what the song was and was sure they would not cover the whole song and much to my surprise, they did.  The did a faithful cover of the iconic and intense song, even complete with the barrage of expletives at the end of the song.  This show was just five days after Phish covered the song (July 4th in Alpharetta, GA) so I was taken back by the sudden popularity to cover the song by bands that are far from the RATM genre.

The setlist for the night was as follows:

Toes
Neon (Isn’t She Lovely intro/outro)
It’s Not OK
Free
Settle Me Down
Who Knows
America the Beautiful »
Chicken Fried
Colder Weather
Killing in the Name