Darrell Scott podcast
featuring Mark O'Connor Band with Zac Brown Band
Thank you to great songwriter, singer, instrumentalist Darrell Scott for the feature on his podcast, the history and comments about my playing... Those were very good jams we had with Darrell and Zac Brown Band in front of those humongous crowds they draw! At Fenway Park! He sang incredible on those covers as well as Zac! Zac Brown is a wonderful guy for inviting us as he did to be a huge part of the concerts. Between the hour we did up front, including with Darrell, and another 20, sometimes 30 minutes up with ZBB, that was quite a bit in front of 20,000 people each night. He could have had most anyone open for them that year, pop stars like the band OneRepublic for instance. Well they did right after us!
The real reason why my family band was even out there on this tour, was that Zac produced two songs on our family band in the studio, including "It's In My Blood", a killer song (my son co-wrote) and production. Even though it streamed over a half million on Spotify, it wasn't enough to get it to a major label to promote. For a good 3 or 4 months though, the possibilities of really making it in that world were pretty cool to imagine, and as the group's dad (and husband of Maggie), I was beyond happy for that possibility. And we got to share a lot of that with Darrell out there on the road! But reality sits back in, and you are where you started from in no time! Which is great, but not the rock star feeling of this tour at least! I appreciated his comments about “the bubble” in performing to that many people. Very well described. It felt like you were in an enclosure and you could control the universe simply with a volume knob.
Years ago I had a similar experience when I opened up an arena tour for Travis Tritt/Marty Stuart and they were playing to an average of 10,000 people a night back in those days (half as much as country stars draw now). I learned immediately that yelling through the mic the name of their city (the city the show was in that night) got a huge roar of approval. Yelling out the name of the headliner—another roar of approval, and making a really loud sound with your instrument playing a short lick would get another roar of approval. So, you start your first tune on somewhat of a positive note—in attempting to get thousands of strangers on your side a bit—people simply waiting for the act they laid down some serious money to see, and in many cases, drove over the state line and staying overnight to see! Tricky stuff to navigate. Zac really helped us go over but letting us use ZBB drummer Chris Fryar and percussionist Daniel de los Reyes, so we'd have a better chance at getting some loud grooves out there to the crowd. And Darrell joined us for a lot of our set too, after playing some songs with him. By the end of our run, we were just short of coaxing ZBB’s Clay Cook out there to join in a couple of tunes on our opening set.
But what a ride, what a shot… and the memories will last a lifetime. And I laid down some pretty wild MOC electric violin solos on those Beattle covers, and that’s my sweetheart Maggie playing the classical violin lines in “Eleonor Rigby”. You're the best Darrell. We love you, and love Zac and ZBB. What a feature on these. Just when you thought Fenway was over, it comes roaring back for you through this album!