Watch Zac Brown Band Raise the Mercury With ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Cover
Zac Brown Band want to know if you can do the fandango.
Last Friday night, the group debuted a cover of Queen‘s “Bohemian Rhapsody” during their performance at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas. Filled with quadruple-stacked harmonies, twinkling piano and plenty of guitar muscle, the cover was the result of an entire year’s worth of practice, with Brown and company wanting to make sure they’d nailed down every inch of Freddie Mercury’s rock-opera power ballad before playing it live.
Backstage, the guys reportedly told country radio DJ Bobby Bones that “Bohemian Rhapsody” was the hardest cover they’d ever tackled. That’s saying something, since Brown and company have spent more than a decade covering songs that require a good bit of rehearsal, including the Charlie Daniels Band’s “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Metallica‘s “Enter Sandman” and Led Zeppelin‘s “Kashmir.” Recently, the group even teamed up with the Doobie Brothers for a souped-up duet of “Black Water,” one of the highlights from the upcoming tribute album Southbound. They unveiled a live version of that song earlier this summer, performing with the Doobies themselves during a sold-out show at Fenway Park.
On October 11-12, Zac Brown Band will head to Charleston for the fourth installment of their own music and food festival, Southern Ground. The band will headline the event on Saturday and Sunday nights, with a host of other bands — including Gov’t Mule, Abigail Washburn, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Blues Traveler and the Old 97’s — filling out the lineup.