Tag: Interview

By Riane Konc March 28, 2016 4:30 PM

EXCERPT:

Adds John Driskell Hopkins, “I’ve always maintained that everybody in Zac Brown Band is a band leader. Coy [Bowles] and Clay [Cook] and I all have our own records and had them before we joined the band. Jimmy used to be one of the main driving forces of the Dave Matthews Cover Band, and they were playing 1,200-seat theaters. All the guys in the band have been music directors and very influential in their own careers before joining this band. So, basically, we’ve continued to live the way that we would normally live but also make our main focus Zac Brown Band.”

As Hopkins explains, their continuing outside projects fulfill a basic need to be independently creative.

“It’s a little tricky in terms of the schedule, but we’re a group of guys that have to create,” he says. “And I’ve been a band leader since I was, you know, 20, so it’s something that I don’t know how not to do it. I have to write my own songs. I have to sing them. And I have to be in front of the mic once in a while.”

Read More: Outside Projects Make Zac Brown Band More Creative Together | http://theboot.com/zac-brown-band-solo-projects/?trackback=tsmclip

John Driskell Hopkins is best known as a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist in Zac Brown Band, but when he’s not touring and recording with the group, he sometimes spends his days on movie sets. Hopkins has a General Theatre degree from Florida State University, took a role in 2015’s Careful What You Wish For and is now working on a second independent film, tentatively titled Adolescence.

“I’m a biker and a lead singer in a rock band, so it’s a big stretch for me,” Hopkins jokes with The Boot. “I’m looking forward to it. I’m getting to write some of the music for the movie as well; [I’m] excited for that.”

The artist began acting in high school and, after trying out “a bunch of unhappy majors that I just kept filtering through,” realized that theater was the right path for him.

“Theater was the most encompassing of my pursuits, because it had acting, it had singing,” Hopkins explains. “Sometimes I would play an instrument onstage or even in the pit once in a while.”

Excerpt, Read More: John Driskell Hopkins Takes Role in New Independent Film | http://theboot.com/john-driskell-hopkins-acting/?trackback=tsmclip

By Wade Tatangelo , Herald-Tribune
/ Wednesday, May 28, 2014

John Driskell Hopkins is pictured third from the right, next to Zac Brown, in this photo of the Zac Brown Band / Photo Credit: Cole Cassell/Southern Reel

Excerpt:

The Grammy-winning Zac Brown Band, an Atlanta-based group that plays a roots-y brand of country which genre-hops enough to appeal to the neo-hippies of the jam band scene, embarked last week on its “Great American Road Trip Tour.” It includes dates Thursday and Friday at the MidFlorida Amphitheatre on the Florida State Fairgrounds. It’s the first time in recent memory an act has played back-to-back dates at the 20,000-capacity shed in Tampa. The Zac Brown Band already sold out two shows next month at Fenway Park in Boston.

“It’s flattering and it’s amazing but it’s funny, too,” says Hopkins, a multi-instrumentalist most often seen wielding a guitar on stage. “We sold out Fenway two nights in a row but we can’t sell out Atlanta. We have lots of hometown friends here but there’s not, say, the same excitement as in Tampa and other places.”

FULL ARTICLE: http://ticket.heraldtribune.com/2014/05/28/zac-brown-band-interview-john-driskell-hopkins-talks-toes-kacey-musgraves-and-more-before-tampa-shows/