Zac Brown Band performed 23 songs last Saturday evening in Charleston, South Carolina, closing out the first day of the group's annual Southern Ground Music & Food Festival with a guest-filled headlining set. As usual, the band reached outside of their own catalog for help, tossing songs by Avicii and Nathaniel Rateliff into a performance stacked with the headliner's own hits.
Among the musicians making cameos onstage were Spearhead frontman Michael Franti and bluegrass icon Sam Bush, both of whom had performed earlier in the day with their own groups. With Bush on mandolin and Franti subbing for Brown as lead vocalist, the expanded band tackled Bob Marley & the Wailers' "No Woman, No Cry." It was a loose performance, filled with extended solos and an improvised rap from Franti, whose off-the-cuff lyrics — "I like ZZ Top, I like Jay Z, I like AC/DC and ZBB" — helped set the tone for the festival's genre-jumping roster.
