Two years ago, American country singer Zach Bryan played The Helix Theatre in Dublin - this weekend, he will play three sold-out gigs in the Phoenix Park.
That's a leap from a relatively intimate 1,200 capacity venue to a very, very large urban park in front of 180,000 fans in just two years.
It’s safe to say that the rise of the 28-year-old Oklahoma native and former US Navy serviceman (and one-time high school wrestler) has been astonishing.
For his very loyal legions of Irish fans, this new kid in town isn’t so new. However, those of us who aren’t quite up to speed with our maverick country singers could be forgiven for asking just who the Sam Hill is this dude - and how has he become so very big so very quickly?
Of course, we’ve been here before with Garth Brooks. Bryan’s fellow Okie won Irish hearts and minds over thirty years ago, long before any other territory outside of the US, and now the same thing is happening all over again.
However, to use a phrase that’s been dragged through the dirt in recent months, there’s a new sheriff in town.
Well, maybe not `sheriff’ because Bryan has far more in common with country music’s outlaw breed, the likes of Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, than the silver star wholesomeness of Brooks.
Ireland’s love affair with country music is etched in the dirt. After all, we helped invent it. And even though he seems to have risen without trace, it’s very easy to see why Bryan is captivating Irish fans.
His songs are rough-edged, blunt and savagely honest, often existing in a twilight world of broken down honky-tonk joints as he broods on heartache and the various addictions that have ravaged rural America.
In a world that’s been repeatedly punched in the face, it seems we need something real and Bryan is it. Here is a man who’s up for a good night out but who’s all too aware of the walk of shame the next day. As his song East of Sorrow goes, "6am and f***ed up again".
There’s no denying the ache and the catch in his voice and many of his songs do not travel the well-gutted backroads of country music. His track Overtime, for example, is more Bruce than Bruce himself. On I Remember Everything, his Grammy award winning duet with Kacey Musgraves, Bryan asks, "Do I remind you of your daddy in his '88 Ford?", a line that could have been handed down from the Mount by the Boss himself.
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You could also call it the Yellowstone effect. Kevin Costner’s epic Montana drama about family values, hard-won territory, and tough love and law is one the most popular series on RTÉ television and the RTÉ Player, with 4.5m streams last year.
So, it’s no surprise that Bryan’s music has been featured on the show or that the man himself turned up in an episode back in 2022.
He was born in Okinawa, Japan, where his parents, Dewayne and Annette, were stationed while serving in the U.S. Navy, but he was raised with his sister, Mackenzie, in the town of Oologah (pop: 1,193) in Oklahoma.
It wasn’t quite a fairytale childhood. His mother battled alcohol abuse and his parents divorced when he was 12 years old. His mother sadly died in 2016.
The teenage Bryan started writing songs at the age of 14. As he told local newspaper The Oklahoman a few years ago, "We started making these dumb songs up, me and my buddies sitting around, and I just never really expected to be a musician, ever. But I always wanted to write songs. That’s what I wanted to do: I wanted to be a songwriter."
But first, he followed the family tradition and joined the US Navy when he was 17 - his parents, grandfather, uncles, and great-grandfather had all served.
Speaking in 2021 about his time at sea, he said, "It’s all I lived, slept, and ate for eight years, it’s all I knew since I was basically a snot-nosed child. It made a man out of me, truly."
However, Bryan was also working on his music and posting songs online. In 2019, he recorded his first album, DeAnn - his mother’s middle name - followed by his second album, Elisabeth, in 2020, and he made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville the following year when he was still a serviceman. Soon after, he received an honourable discharge from the Navy so that he could pursue a career in music.
Just over four years later, Bryan is the new sound of country music. He’s already released three major label albums: 2022’s American Heartbreak, a 2023 self-titled album, and 2024’s The Great American Bar Scene, all of which have refused to quit the Irish charts.
But with increasing fame comes increasing interest in his private life. His 2020 marriage to Rose Madden, whom he met during his time in the Navy, ended after a year, and he has since been in a number of relationships that seem to have followed the course of many of his songs - hopes and dreams colliding with grim reality.
He also speaks his mind. In 2023, he criticised country artist Travis Tritt for supporting a boycott of a beer company after it featured a transgender influencer in an ad campaign, and Bryan has also rounded on concert ticket companies over their pricing policies.
After the polished Nashville stars of recent years, Irish audiences are gravitating towards Bryan’s independent, anti-mainstream ethos. Their new favourite singer also resists being pigeonholeed as a country artist, telling the New York Times in 2022, "I think people understand that I’m not that. I want to be in that Springsteen, Kings of Leon, Ed Sheeran at-the-very-beginning space."
As you can hear in his breakthrough song, the high and lonesome Something in the Orange, he knows the power of simplicity and authenticity.
Sure, Garth Brooks is a consummate country pop showman, but Zach Bryan seems to walk it like he talks it. You get the impression he has really lived his songs. Saddle up - there’s a new outlaw sheriff coming to town.
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Additional reporting by Evelyn O’Rourke.
