Indianapolis — late May, Zach Bryan release “American Heartbreak” His major-label debut, a 34-track country-folk effort, taut, shaggy and elegant. It ranked him number five on Billboard’s albums chart. This was an amazing record for a singer who had been in the Navy for less than a year and had put music aside.
A few weeks later, he took his eyes off the road and crashed while riding his motorcycle with his girlfriend. The left side of his forehead was badly scraped, his right arm was deeply cut, and his skin was dotted with road rashes. (His girlfriend, Deb Pyfer, was mostly unscathed.)
They had just spent a quiet afternoon in a nearby stream. Emotional whiplash jolted 26-year-old Brian into his new reality.
“The most beautiful moment of the last five years, the worst moment of the last five years, and it all happened in about 24 hours.” In Indianapolis, after performing in front of about 6,000 people at the TCU Amphitheater in White River State Park. afternoon.
“I’m like a Kerouac man,” he continued. “I think life should be reckless and crazy. It all ends in pain. Everything depends on the outcome, so why not do it? Do anything.”
But the accident and the new responsibilities it highlighted chastised him. “I’ve ridden motorcycles at 120 mph and 130 mph in my life. Now I’m on a scooter that goes 10 mph. Are you okay?'”
A few days after the crash, he returned to the stage. Shortly thereafter, as Brian always does, he began writing through suffering, producing an EP. “Summertime Blues”. “Look,” Brian said, narrowing his eyes. “Thank you for the pain.”
Brian is Over the past few years, making hay out of pain, first garnering attention for the muscle-bound songs he released on Twitter and YouTube while still in the Navy, he’s now become one of the year’s most explosive breakout stars. I was. “American Heartbreak” has remained in the top 20 of the Billboard 200 since its release, demonstrating similar staying power to recent albums by Kendrick Lamar, Future and Post Malone.
It’s a breezy, unpretentious album with songs that develop stunningly beautiful phrases while following the shortest path from emotion to words. “When I put my head between the collar and the chin/I’m not sure, it’s got no weight at all,” he rustles over “Something in the Orange.”This has become his most famous hit since his early days “Godspeed” When “I’m heading south.” upon “From the Sun to Me” He vividly captures the feeling of being unworthy of someone’s love.
I can’t remember what you wore the first night we met
Besides the subtle clouds around you from my last cigarette
And you came from a good place with a happy family
The only bad thing you ever did was see the good in me
Brian is medium-sized, stocky, and unusually calm. He generally dresses comfortably—his t-shirts from Carhartt, a pair of beloved Birkenstock Bostons. But on stage, as if determined to lift and nail an unusually heavy barbell, he sings one of dozens of songs about wounds and what it takes to lick them. Squeeze it tight.
He grew up as a navy kid — his father was a chief executive and the family was stationed in Japan. When Brian was in eighth grade, his family moved to Woologger, Oklahoma. one stop light A town about 30 miles northeast of Tulsa. His parents, Dwayne and Annette, divorced when he was 12 years old.
Brian was popular at school, wrestler and student council president. Although he had rebellious tendencies, he also had clear ideas about the man he wanted to be. “He goes and hides under his bed and starts crying and is like, ‘I want to join the Navy.’ That’s all I want to do.” And I can’t!
Brian enlisted when he was 17. The day he left for boot camp, he hadn’t spoken to his father for weeks. “He called my wife some names and put me on my ass,” Dwayne recalled, referring to his now-strong second wife Anna. “He’s tougher than nails.”
He lived with his father, who had full custody of him, but was close to his mother, who also served in the Navy.
However, Annette was plagued with alcohol and strained family relationships. She passed away in 2016, after which Brian’s songwriting deepened. “I think the death of her mother really solidified the darkness in her life,” he said. “It opened up in you something like, ‘Hey, be a man now.
“People say I’m oppressive,” he continued. “And I’m like, no, the person I want to tell you all this about is dead. And my feelings for you don’t deserve my complicity.”
Bryan’s years in the Navy have left him with emotional resilience and composure in the face of attack. Mr Peifer said: Like, you have to react to this!
Bryan’s sister, Mackenzie Taylor, said she “learned how to wear a mask from our mom,” adding, “He’s an Oklahoma guy and shouldn’t have feelings.”
In the military, Bryan was an Air Ordnance Officer stationed in Washington and Florida, and toured in Bahrain and Djibouti. He built, repaired, and loaded weapons and recorded songs in his downtime. He is a fan of the Oklahoma country band Turnpike, notably the songwriting of its frontman Evan Felker, as well as Radiohead, Bon he is Yver, Gregory he is Alan Isakov, and various ” I was also a fan of weird indie music.
Started posting in 2015. clip Publishing his music online, by 2019 he was getting attention from progressive country music websites. In Florida, some Navy mates helped him record his first album. “Dian” —his mother’s middle name—he self-released in August of that year. “Elisabeth” Continued in 2020. By 2021, still in the Navy, he made his first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
“I just didn’t put the guitar down and kept going, thinking something was going to happen,” he said. It wasn’t because I wanted to be rich, I was literally sitting there thinking about my mother and something was like telling me not to stop doing this.
Bryan was honorably discharged from the Navy last August and had a devoted fan base waiting for him as soon as he set out on the road.
J.R. Carroll, Bryan’s keyboardist and another friend from Oklahoma, said, “He’s too fundamentalistic to sell tickets to Meet and Greet.” I would have had people just wanting to see him after the show. I did.”
Brian is working on a bigger scale and starting to set boundaries for himself. “People don’t understand the pressure that putting their emotions on others puts on you,” Brian said.
“American Heartbreak” Thirty-four songs, an unlikely number, but definitely not an indigestible number. In the four months since its release, Bryan continues to unleash his music with unconventional clips that make him seem more like a rapper than a singer.
“I can’t stop writing EPs that I give away to labels,” he said. “I have this weird fear that if I don’t put this music out there, nobody in 20 years will be able to hear it. If I have a kid who needs this in 40 years and he’s 16, he is sitting in his room “Quiet and heavy dream”What if it was his favorite song? ”
Bryan maintains a raw skepticism about the destructive power of money and celebrities, considering he now regularly sells out shows by the thousands. It’s clearly outdated, a throwback to the 1990s or the authenticity-obsessed era of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
“Songwriting is such a big part of this,” he said. “If you miss it, what the hell are you doing? You’re just acting. You’re an actor.”
Still, he’s embraced the occasional surreal moment. He recorded “American Heartbreak” at Electric Lady Studios. Coincidentally, I was at New York’s restaurant Carbone on a January night when Kanye West went with Julia Fox. Prior to a concert in Indianapolis, Ohio State Football took the opportunity to work out at his team’s facility.
“People feel entitled to be famous and rich,” he said with genuine surprise.
Besides, the music business is fickle. Brian talked about his own songs and their success. “Because what if it’s a trend? What if all this is embarrassing and you’re trying to be a genius that isn’t a genius?”
In terms of current genre slots, Bryan probably comes closest to country, but it doesn’t feel like home to him. said. “I want to be in the space of Springsteen, Kings of Leon, Ed Sheeran’s earliest days,” he said.
However, some of the more partisan elements of the country’s audience may surface in his show. In Indianapolis, some of the crowd broke out in vulgar chants about President Biden before Bryan took the stage.
“I told people that when they heard that, they would stop immediately,” Brian said. “Come on my show and don’t start it. But they do it anyway.” (He calls himself a “total libertarian.”)
Moments like that contribute to a creeping sense that his success was too great to be fully controlled and directed. It became clear when I threw the beer in. The audience was full of people he knew, or knew him to some extent, or knew him to some extent.
“When you look into all these eyes, you’re like, you don’t know me anymore. During a cigarette break, he said, “He loves Oklahoma, but living there isn’t a viable option right now.”
And he’s already a little withdrawn, aiming to make his suddenly grown-up life a little more closed. rice field. “I’m not going to do that.”
Last month, “he took a week and a half off,” says Peifer. “It took me four days to come back, record some songs, and then do the cabinets. And it was all of the exact same importance.”
And he’s chipping away at the final nine credits required for his bachelor’s degree, squeezing coursework between concerts. he is studying psychology He tormented himself, like the most beautiful woman of all time. ”
On Twitter, he recently said he’s not going to tour properly again: next year he’ll be doing about 30 shows, less than half the number he had this year. to spend time with loved ones.
“How are you going to write music that is personal and heartfelt if you can’t see the person you love?” Carroll asks, adding that the band’s goal is simply to “make it beautiful.”
It means taking space, saying no, and knowing when you’ve had enough. Brian emphasized a dilemma that sounds like self-deprecation, but is actually a kind of stoic pragmatism. “Music will die,” he said with a characteristically straight face. “Either you keep going and fail, or you stop while you are going.”