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Zac Brown Band has become the ultimate summertime band.
The Atlanta sextet, one of America's most popular country bands that isn't really a country band, possesses a rootsy vibe that sounds as if it's coming from a jam session on the back porch — the back porch of a beach home.
That's why Zac Brown Band has inherited the role — shared with Kenny Chesney — from Jimmy Buffett.
Buffett, of course, was for decades the be-all and end-all when it came to tailgating before a show, with Parrotheads and Parakeets treating the entire day of a Buffett show as an excuse to don funny hats and wacky sunglasses and imbibe strawberry margaritas in the parking lot next to an amphitheater.
But Buffett is now 65 and hasn't made a Beehive State tour stop in years.
"[Buffett] has said that he is passing the tiki torch to us," said Jimmy DeMartini, fiddler for Zac Brown Band.
The problem is, the band should be playing in Utah during the summer, not on Jan. 21. It could be chilly enough in the Maverik Center parking lot on Saturday to freeze the Coronas in your cold, dead hands. To get lubricated before the show, you might have to settle for a cocktail at the nearby Ruby Tuesday.
Members of Zac Brown Band won't be seen chugging bottles of coconut rum next to the restaurant's famed salad bar, despite their hard-partying image. "None of us drink before the show," said DeMartini. "[At least] once we stopped playing $5 cover shows."
It has been a while since the band has played for $5. Zac Brown Band's debut single, "Chicken Fried," was recorded in 2003 but later re-recorded and released to country radio in 2008, where it and other songs on the breakthrough album "The Foundation" sold boatloads of songs depicting an existence full of easygoing country livin' where being barefoot and buzzed is the goal.
"You Get What You Give," in 2010, was the band's second major-label album, on which many of the back roads were swapped for beaches. That includes Brown's trademark song, "Knee Deep," a duet with Buffett extolling the virtues of blue-sky breezes:
Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair
Sunrise there's a fire in the sky
Never been so happy
Never felt so high
And I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise
Wrote a note said be back in a minute
Bought a boat and I sailed off in it
Don't think anybody gonna miss me anyway
Along for the ride on this tour is Sonia Leigh, who like Zac Brown Band has a sound that doesn't fit neatly in the genre of country. The 33-year-old singer-songwriter, an edgier, grittier version of Melissa Etheridge, is signed to Brown's record label, along with fellow opening act Nic Cowan.
Leigh considers Brown a mentor for the way he has championed her work. "Zac's very well-respected," she said. "People are more inclined to check me out, based on his advice."
With her latest album "1978 December" a fierce declaration of identity, she is thankful Brown selects tourmates who are relatively unknown.
As for New Year's resolutions, Leigh's sounds as if it were stripped from a Zac Brown song: "I'm going to live free."
It's harder to live free when you have a parka and ear-warmers, but that's what we'll have to endure to see one of country's most unpredictable bands. We just need the band's booking agent to keep us in mind when summer comes around.
Colder weather, indeed
Zac Brown Band with Sonia Leigh, Nic Cowan
When • Saturday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m.
Where • Maverik Center, 3200 S. Decker Lake Drive, West Valley City
Tickets • $43 to $76.25 at Ticketmaster outlets