Wild Horses Fest Books Zach Bryan, CAAMP, Sierra Ferrell
In the last year we’ve witnessed Zach Bryan go from having to earn respect at country festivals in opening slots, to headlining some of the biggest festivals around. This summer Zach Bryan will be returning to the massive Under The Big Sky Fest outside of Whitefish, Montana in July to headline with Hank Williams Jr. and CAAMP. But if you can’t make it to that, you’ll have another opportunity to see the Zach Bryan/CAAMP pairing.
The Wild Horses Festival will be happening again this year on December 30th at San Diego’s Petco Park Stadium, and they’ve booked Zach Bryan to be the headliner, along with CAAMP, Sierra Ferrell, and San Diego natives The Silent Comedy. It might be the perfect holiday excursion for Zach Bryan fans, and will be the first official stadium show for Zach Bryan on the West Coast—baseball stadium that is.
Promoted by Outriders Presents that also puts on Under The Big Sky Fest, Wild Horses started in 2022 with events in San Diego and Santa Barbara with artists like Ryan Bingham, Whitey Morgan, and Jamestown Revival performing. These events have been vital to independent country’s Western and West Coast expansion.
Pre-sale for Wild Horses starts today (Wednesday 6/7), and you can get access by texting “WILD” to (888) 305-2637. General sale starts Friday, June 9th. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit outriderspresent.com/event/wild-horses/.
June 7, 2023 @ 7:41 pm
Trigg, I was at Railbird. Have a ton of thoughts and questions for ya. Lemme put some words together
June 7, 2023 @ 7:54 pm
I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
June 7, 2023 @ 7:42 pm
Hell yeah buddy!!!
June 7, 2023 @ 7:48 pm
After being forced to endure hearing a lot more of his music, I think his music is wildly overrated. His lyrics are so incongruent and dumb. Its bad high school poetry.
And 95% of his songs use the chord progression (4 – 1 – 5 – 6m ) He “tricks” his listeners into thinking they are hearing something profound by his emotional scream yelling during his songs.
June 7, 2023 @ 7:53 pm
Yeah yeah.
June 7, 2023 @ 8:06 pm
His lyrics are just all over the place. In Godspeed he sings:
“And I wanna make love hard
Under the stars in the back of a beat up ol’ K-10”
then on the chorus:
“I’m movin’ at God speed
Only God and my mama know what I need”
Wut?
Also trigger, my comments on this site are not direct messages to you asking you to respond.
June 8, 2023 @ 6:06 am
some of the phrasing definitely gets repeated, i’ve lost track of the references to high hopes and blue lungs but it doesnt particularly bother me
however, i dont understand the issue with the lyrics mentioned.
he’s listed off things that he thinks he wants or would make him happy and then in the chorus says he’ll go with the flow and accept whatever comes his way, presumably by God.
you said the lyrics were all over the place but then provided an example from probably one of the more straightforward songs.
June 8, 2023 @ 6:21 am
Check out the lyrics to Billy Stay. If you think something like that is god awful lyricism, maybe you should be critiquing yourself.
June 8, 2023 @ 6:53 am
i hate sappy sentimental songs like that as a general rule but Billy Stay is great. always kinda skipped over it until i listened to it from the Red Rocks album.
it’s a banger. a sad banger.
June 8, 2023 @ 5:29 am
Nah bro I view him the same way as you, just in a more positive slant. He’s authentic to young people because the music they’ve been presented up til now has been more artificial then ever. Let’s hope that he’s a gateway drug for them into all the (imo) wayyyy better songwriters that we love. Think of the potential new Guy Clark and John Prine fans. Let’s make music authentic again in all genres
June 8, 2023 @ 11:35 am
My views on Zach Bryan have shifted since he became popular. I have spoken more highly of his music in the past – before I sat thru an hour+ of it each week for gigs with someone who made a third of his set ZB music. I just grew to hate his lyrical style. ZB deserves his mainstream success, don’t get me wrong. People that don’t listen to country like his music, that’s pretty obvious. People aren’t coming to SCM to find Zach Bryan. He’s hard to miss. I’m just glad to be able to speak anonymously about how his music annoys me. (We didn’t line up everyone who hated Garth in 1992 against the wall and exterminate them. Although Trigger would have advocated that for me because of how I kept pointing out how Charley Crocket can barely sing and often not on pitch)
June 8, 2023 @ 2:23 pm
Spot on. And your comment had direct substance and specifics as well…where a lot of the criticisms of the people who don’t get the ZB hype have been focused around “you’re just jealous” type BS. He is squarely overrated.
June 8, 2023 @ 5:49 pm
ZB absolutely deserves his success. The arguments of “he didn’t pay his dues in the Texas bar scene” are just lame. He just struck a chord with people and has been authentic to himself. It’s just that for me the more I pay attention to his lyrics, the more it all seems random with how he words ideas.
Like with:
“I’m condemned, I’m condemned
Oh, my heart is on the mend”
The “heart is on the mend” part seems incongruent with the rest of the lyrics. It sounds like a pop-punk emo band trying to be deep. Unless I am missing something and there is a much deeper meaning to this and his other lyrics that I cannot see.
On the song ‘God Speed’ he doesn’t even use “God Speed” with what the meaning actually is; (a wish to a person starting on a journey). And to go from saying how he wants to fuck this girl hard in an old pickup, to saying only God and his mom knows what he needs…that’s weird. It sounds like he is just throwing words in to fit a rhyme scheme. If this isn’t weird or out of place, someone please explain to me how this makes any lyrical sense.
June 9, 2023 @ 1:27 pm
I read comments like this as a music idiot. I just know what I like and what I think is cool. I hate pop music but I love that Backstreet Boys song I Want It That Way. Your criticism reads like every music expert trying to explain why Dream Theater was superior to Led Zeppelin or something. (I am not sure anyone every argued that, but that is what it reads like when I read about chord progression…..blah….blah…blah…).
Simple lyrics are sometimes the best lyrics.
“Them boys are out and they’re angry and they’re lookin’ for blood
In the back of a blue old pick up truck
You’ve got nowhere to go although you’re all gussied up”
To me, that line is as cool as Kris Kristofferson writing
“Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train
When I’s feelin’ near as faded as my jeans”
June 9, 2023 @ 7:54 pm
@Ed, I never tried to imply that people shouldn’t listen to ZB. People can like what they like. I also don’t think that lyrics need to be cryptic, difficult or whatever adjective opposite of ‘simple’ for them to be good. Being vague and painting good imagery and setting a tone or feeling is a common denominator in good songwriting a just a good song. I defended ZB when he first came out and praised his songwriting at the time, but I had only heard a little of it. And Oklahoma Smokeshow is his best song, imo, even though some lyrics in that song are still weird to me.
These lyrics in that same song confuse me in the context of the whole song:
“She used to play in the yard and she would dream of one day
‘Til the world came around and took her dreaming away
Told her how to dress and act and smile”
It’s obvious that he is expressing sexual interest in the girl of this song, but he phrases those lyrics as an adult watching a child? It’s odd to me. If he was roughly her age how would he have that insight into her past? I am not accusing or implying anything beyond how his choice of lyrics is often ‘weird.’ I think he has trouble with continuity and coherency with his lyrics.
June 8, 2023 @ 3:16 am
I have to admit when I’m wrong (and in this case I’m happy to be wrong) – the Burn, Burn, Burn Tour has been an overwhelming success. It go off to a rocky start, but his anti-Tickmaster, lottery-style system didn’t fail like I predicted.
Bryan sold out back to back nights at S. Philly’s Wells Fargo Center (capacity 22k). 44,000 people in back to back nights (the lottery kept out duplicates) in Philadelphia – Bryan’s new base – attended his concert. That’s astonishing. The scenes across this country and Canada have been astonishing.
I still don’t know how under this system Bryan will ever play cities that Ticketmaster/ Live nation have a venue monopoly (like Pittsburgh). But, I put nothing past him at this point. He may just roll into those cities on a flat bed truck and play to 50k in a field.
I asked someone real close to Bryan “why the hell is Zack Bryan living in Philadelphia?” She responded, “it’s close enough to NYC where he likes to record music and not NYC.”
In a time when artists (especially DIY Appalachian artists like Tim Goodin, 49 Winchester, Tyler Childers) are staying home to record albums to preserve their sound and inspiration and avoiding Nashville, LA, or NYC, Bryan has adopted the opposite (the one instance he isn’t bucking the system, but is part of the order). We’ll see how that affects his music.
June 13, 2023 @ 1:00 pm
I think the reason he chose NYC to record American Heartbreak (as well as any other forthcoming records in the city) is just as he has stated himself, because he didn’t want it to sound like anything else. He homespun the first two albums with a shotgun approach in an airbnb in Florida and a barn in Washington (both nowhere near where he grew up in Oklahoma), so I think his move to track songs in NYC is somewhat in line with his sporadic location choice. In my opinion, he’s looking for a lane of country/folk/rock that doesn’t sound like anything else out there at the moment. Maybe his choice of switching up the recording process helps with that goal. Although NYC is obviously a global hub for recording in general across all genres, his choice as an American Roots artist to record there is definitely unique. Just a thought. I also definitely agree with you that his tour has been astonishing to watch, I haven’t seen anything resonate like this with a younger generation in my lifetime (probably because I’m also in my 20s!)
June 8, 2023 @ 6:09 am
Platinum album now.. Couple platinum songs, gold songs. Treats his fans well. Not your cup of tea, fine. I think a hint of jealousy makes people want to rip him. He has something special that connects with an unbelievable amount of people. Sorry if his songs aren’t meeting some peoples checklists and criteria. Rather have the masses listening to this guy, at least I can understand that.
June 8, 2023 @ 6:59 am
amen.
i don’t get it. you can not like it, but i feel like some people just want to find problems with it. Is he the Best Songwriter? no. is he the Best Guitarist? no. But it’s real. and people connect with real. 🤷🏻♂️
June 8, 2023 @ 7:16 am
Its OK to critique something, do a review, analyze, give your opinion. It’s when people push their opinion to try to prove some point to other people that disagree with them. It doesn’t really lend anything. Especially, with art..
June 8, 2023 @ 7:42 am
agree x10
June 8, 2023 @ 7:53 am
my only complaint about Zach Bryan is that every country cover/bar band is now doing like 3 of his songs in a set. brutal. good for him and his fans though.
June 8, 2023 @ 7:11 am
No question his song writing can sometimes seem as if he’s trying to trick the listener by following a formula that he didn’t spend enough time to convincingly execute. There is definitely a part of me that questions his sincerity. But the majority of me enjoys his music. Once i put those reservations out of mind, I’m singing along with the rest of them. I remember listening to his first album on Spotify when he had less than 1,000 followers on there. There was no question in my mind he was going to blow up. I guess my only hope is that over time his songwriting matures. But for now, I’m a fan.
June 8, 2023 @ 10:18 am
Sierra is amazing.
June 9, 2023 @ 1:39 am
I was sceptical about Zach Bryan at the start and could not see what all the fuss was about. However, now having listened to his albums and his Red Rock concert, he has won me over. His music has a sincerity and simplicity about it and he is entertaining. My guess is he is going to get more successful so no doubt he will attract even more criticism because of his success. Good luck to him, he appears top me to have worked for it and deserve it.
June 9, 2023 @ 9:36 am
I saw him at Railbird, amazing show. So I’d call myself a fan going in, but not a know every word to every song fan. I just like what the guy has accomplished and he has some catchy tunes.
The entire crowd was singing Revival at the end and all of the sudden wind starts gusting through the crowd out of nowhere like a force channeling our energy. It was a wild confluence of events but it cemented the show as one of the best I’ve been to.
He’s a hell of a performer with a great band who loves engaging with the crowd and you can tell he is having fun.
Not to big time to jump on the small stage with his buddy Charles Wesley Godwin for a couple minutes being careful not to steal the show, and then later the side stage to sing humbly as a fan with The Head and the Heart. Both events the day after his set, he clearly stuck around as a friend and a fan.
So to hell with the haters in my opinion.
June 10, 2023 @ 1:07 pm
I take issue with the ticket cost for wild horses after he said he wants to make shows affordable. 2 and 3 hundred dollar tickets is very wild for a 40k seat venue. The seats in the upper rows where you can’t even see we’re $100. Seems a little hypocritical.