…even if you don’t win the big backstage “Eat and Greet” with Zac Brown (we’re giving away another pair of passes next week on OR v WA!) you might still be able to experience his mad chef skills. How? On TV in a cooking show! Zac says there’s something in the works, and he’s been taping some stuff and putting together some segments.  Nothing official yet, but I’m sure it will be an easy sell.

If you’re tailgating at Zac Brown’s Portland show on Sept 16th, keep an eye out for a dude cruising around on a Harley.  It’s probably Zac himself!  He says that his new favorite way to get a feel for what’s happening at his shows is to put on a helmet and cruise around on his hog.  ”Nobody knows who I am,” he says. ”I can ride right through the tailgating with a helmet on, and it’s just like you’re invisible.”  Obviously not as much tailgating happens at the coliseum as it does someplace outside like Sleep Country Amp, but I did see some partiers in the parking lot at Kenny Chesney last weekend.  Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for Zac, and your ears peeled (gross!) for the wolftones this weekend to win tickets to the September show.  They go on sale today, by the way.

I feel like I write this sentence about once a year: “Zac Brown’s wife just had a baby girl.”  This time, it’s his fourth daughter, and her name is Joni Mason Brown. She joins her sisters, who are 4, 2, and 1. See what I mean?  Seriously, everyone is doing really well, and Zac says they plan to keep going til they get a boy. As he comes from a family of 12 kids, he’s not too worried about having a big family. But has anyone asked his wife lately? I hope she’s on board with this plan…

I’ll bet you think I’m making one of those puns I always make…like, “Zac Brown’s going “Urban”!  That’s right, he’s singing with Keith Urban!”  but no, Zac says for his next project he wants to collaborate with a fellow Atlantan, Cee Lo Green, who is one half of the urban-format /R&B sensation “Gnarls Barkley.”  Zac says he wants to spread his wings a bit and do a project that somehow spans both types of music.  Should be interesting!

Check this out:  Zac Brown has three daughters:  Justice, age 3; Lucy, age 2; and Georgia Sloan, 11 months.  And now his wife Shelley is expecting a fourth baby, and IT’S A GIRL.  So pretty soon the Browns will have 4 girls under the age of 4.  Yikes.  If Zac knows what’s good for him, he’ll be doing a lot of touring in the next few years.  Actually, he should also plan an extensive tour for about 2024, when they’re all teenagers.  Congrats, Zac!

So here’s something nice that’s gotten all screwed up:  Jimmy Buffett has organized a big, free benefit for the Gulf Coast in Alabama on July 1st.  Guests include Kenny Chesney and Zac Brown Band.  Free benefit, you ask?  How could that benefit anyone?  The idea is to bring people and attention to an area that needs business right now, and also to bring a night of entertainment to people who have had a rough few months due to the oil spill.  So here’s the problem:  Of course scalpers scooped up many of those free tickets, and immediately turned around and put them up on eBay for upwards of  $600 each.  This made fans so mad that they contacted the governor of Alabama, who then contacted eBay.  In an unusual move, eBay has agreed to block the sale of tickets to this show on their site, because they agree that it’s lame for scalpers to benefit from something that’s meant to help the Gulf region.

Zac Brown is turning out to be one of those acts that devotes a lot of time and attention to the troops.  The band has just returned from a USO tour to the Persian Gulf, and right now they have a major goal:  To send a million letters to soldiers.  How on earth?  They’ve teamed up with Dodge to create “Letters for Lyrics.”  All you have to do is write a letter to an anonymous soldier, bring it to a Ram dealer, and hand it over.  They’ll give you a free copy of Zac’s CD “Breaking Southern Ground.”  Nice!

Zac Brown Band has a fun tradition they call “eat & greet,” where fans do more backstage than stand in line and take pictures with the band…they actually get to enjoy a barbecue feast created by Zac himself.  Well now that the “Chicken Fried” boys have gotten national attention in the form of a Grammy award, they’ve caught the attention of the animal activist group PETA.  Zac got a letter from the group, asking him to lose the meat part of the equation: 

“We’re writing today to ask you to extend your love of freedom to animals by agreeing to partner with us on a veggie “eat and greet” for your fans. In your song “Chicken Fried,” you praise the simple pleasures of life-a cool drink, a home filled with love, enjoying the sunshine-all pleasures that are denied to the millions of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food on factory farms every year. “

Based on Zac’s Twitter response, I’m guessing he’s not going to play along:

“Dear PETA – Plants are living creatures too… Bacon had a mother but so did Pickle. It takes life to support life – welcome to the planet….Chicken is the new tofu.”

Did you hear that producer Quincy Jones is remaking the big charity group song “We Are the World” from 1985?  They recorded it just after the Grammys in order to get the most stars in one place.  Some of the big names involved include the Jonas Brothers, Barbra Streisand and Kanye West, to name a few.  Representing country music in the crowd were Sugarland, Zac Brown,and Julianne Hough.  Miley Cyrus was also there, and I have decided that whenever Miley does something good I will consider her a country star (she’s had a few songs on our charts) and when she does something stupid (like dancing on a pole) I’ll consider her a pop star.  The revamped version of the song will air during NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics.

Would you believe….Mindy McCready?  No?   Taylor Swift?  That’s more like it.  the girl has received EIGHT Grammy nods, second only to Beyonce, who as Kanye West would like to remind us, made the “best video of all time.”  So with Beyonce and Taylor competing once again in the top categories, and Kanye also nominated for 6 awards, what’s going to happen if Taylor beats Beyonce again, or vice versa?  Will he be strapped to his seat?  Or maybe wearing a shock collar?

Other country artists who did well are Keith Urban, who got 4 noms, and George Strait, Lee Ann Womack, and Jamey Johnson.  Zac Brown Band did pretty well, with 3 noms and one in the general category of Best New Artist.  The show airs on CBS onthe 31st of January.   Click here for a full list of the country nominations.