Zac Brown Wants to ‘Step Things Up’ With His Band’s Sphere Run & New LP: ‘This is the Venue & the Album That’s Going to Help Us Get There’

If the immersive, state-of-the-art entertainment venue Sphere didn’t already exist, Zac Brown would have had to invent it.

“I’ve been wanting to do a spectacle for a couple years,” he tells Billboard. “I’ve been planning to figure out how to do something where the production and the fan experience is just on [another] level. And then in my planning for doing that, I heard about the Sphere and toured the building while it was under construction. I was like, ‘This is the place…’ The Sphere is the greatest canvas that’s ever been created for imagination.”

A little more than two years after Sphere opened in September 2023 with U2, Brown and his Zac Brown Band mates will get their time there with Love & Fear, a four-show limited engagement that coincides with the Dec. 5 release of the band’s similarly titled, seventh full-length album. The Sphere dates are Dec. 5-6 and Dec. 12-13. When asked if he anticipates more concerts being added, Brown simply says, “Yes.”

Last week, the band scrubbed their socials and hinted that a new chapter was coming, posting on Instagram, “There’s no way to sum up what the last chapter has meant to us…The next chapter? It’s the biggest one yet.”  Then on Monday (July 14), the band posted the dramatic cover of the Love & Fear album, which features what looks like a battle between a mythical angel and devil, with the message, “Two sides of the same truth.”

Brown calls the Sphere appearance and the new album “2.0 for our band. There’s some bands, they keep going for a while and then they kind of get tired, they stop,” he says. “But my passion and my creativity is as good now as it’s ever been, and I just want to keep pushing the envelope of what our band is capable of and bringing our fans along for the ride… This is our chance to show that we’re not slowing down. We’ve actually got our foot on the gas.”

The Grammy-winning band, who has landed five albums on top of Billboard’s Country Albums chart, began working on the album two-and-half years ago and then creating the visuals for the Sphere run began 14 months ago. “Every single detail of [the] show is going to be extremely memorable,” Brown says. He promises the performance will (in a good way) “make people’s eyes bleed and make them feel every range of the human emotion that we’re capable of.”

The album, which the band is self-releasing, and the show tell the story of Brown’s life. “You know, I’ve never really told the story of my life to anyone that doesn’t know me really well,” the Georgia native says, “and so this is a chance to get to do all of those things.”

The album’s first track, “I Ain’t Worried About It,” is already out, while a new track, “Let It Run” (feat. Snoop Dogg), will come out Friday (July 18). The album also features Dolly Parton and Marcus King.

Brown goes so far as to call Love & Fear “one of our masterpieces, and the amount of work we put into that is incredible, from having a 40-piece orchestra [to] having a 20-piece choir.” He says that same detail has gone into the enveloping experience the band has created for Sphere. (Since Sphere acoustics can’t handle a live orchestra, the symphony’s parts for the Sphere show were recorded on the Sphere stage and will be incorporated into the visuals).

Brown, who has seen Phish, Eagles and Anyma at the venue, says the process of planning the show has been all-consuming. “Our challenge for ourselves is to raise the bar. You’re only limited to your imagination and your budget,” he says. “It’s this massive creative mountain, but I absolutely love it, and I’m obsessed with it. You’re kind of building the plane as you’re flying it.”

The show will take attendees on a journey, featuring around six songs from the new album with many of the multi-platinum group’s hits reimagined in a way that builds a cohesive story, Brown says.

He says he has no hesitation about revealing so much of himself in the album and show. “I think that’s what makes our humanity,” he says. “As an artist, you’re naked on a fence anyway and people can either say, ‘That’s amazing,’ or they can throw rotten vegetables at you. But that’s a risk that you have to be willing to take. I’m unapologetically musically going to do the things that I feel like I’m led to do. It’s just an expression of my life and my influences and the things that happened. If you don’t know who you are, the music industry will chew you up and spit you out the other side. You’ve got to fight hard for who you are.”

The band limited its touring to develop the album and show and to encourage fans to come to Sphere—ZBB only has a handful of Australian dates in October between now and the Vegas run.

“I’m pulling every favor from every friend that I have on the planet for this album and the Sphere,” he says. “Because of the contract with the Sphere, you can’t really go out and tour, so all the money we’d be making touring, we’re just kind of betting on ourselves and investing all the money it takes to create it all. I want to step things up, and this is a time for us to do it, and this is the venue we’re going to do it in. This is the album that’s going to help us to get there.”

After the Sphere run, Brown, plans to take the Love & Fear show on the road. Though certain elements will only work in the Vegas attraction, the themes will be adapted and carried over to more conventional venues. 

“We’re having to build all of our staging and all of our lighting and everything that’s going into the Sphere, so we will be able to bring those pieces out on the road,” Brown says. “But the level of detail and amount of time and energy that’s gone into creating the video content [for Sphere], it just won’t be on as grand of a canvas [on the road.]  I mean, the Sphere is like a modern marvel.”

Tickets to Love & Fear go on sale to the general public on July 25 at 10 a.m. PT at ZacBrownBand.com. Travel VIP packages, which include a concert ticket and two-night stay at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas are available now at ZacBrownBand.com. All other VIP packages will be on sale July 21 at 10 a.m. PT.