Zac Brown Band, performing at Mandalay Bay, seeing wild career success

He's been a rock star since he started playing music full time at the age of 20.

It's just that nobody knew it but him.

"Being a rock star is a frame of mind," explains John Driskell Hopkins, bassist and singer in country-rock fireballs the Zac Brown Band. "You just decide that that's what you are and that's what you're going to be whether you make any living at it or not."

The Zac Brown Band, which got its start a decade ago, didn't make much of a living for years, self-releasing a pair of albums and gigging constantly, as indivisible from the road as asphalt itself.

But then in late 2008, that began to change.

Swiftly.

That's when the band dropped its major label debut, "The Foundation."

The following April, the band played a free show at the Fremont Street Experience.

Now, they're selling out arenas.

"That gig was pretty awesome," Hopkins recalls of the aforementioned performance. "I think that was a big deal for us, in terms of playing historic Vegas to such a big crowd and everybody kind of going crazy. We were just at the beginning of it all, you know?"

Since then, they've sold several million records, scored seven No. 1 hits on country radio, won a Grammy (for Best New Artist in 2010) and become regulars on the late-night talk show circuit, performing for Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien.

In the span of three years, their lives have changed considerably, and you can tell by speaking with Hopkins even for just a few minutes that the band is still very much in the midst of processing it all.

"On the stage, it's just us. It's the same, there's just more people out there," he says of his band's heightened profile. "The big thing is when you go back home and you see it on your TV, and you're like, 'Wow, that really happened.' "

The Zac Brown Band's appeal is akin to the cold Friday night beer they've been known to sing of: the eternal promise of good times, with the temporary suspension of higher cognitive functions.

"I got my toes in the sand, ass in the water / Not a worry in the world," Brown sings on "Toes," the hit lead off track from "Foundation," neatly encapsulating this band's feel good sensibilities.

In song, they allude to life's laments -- bills pilin' up, the wrath of angry boss men -- but mostly postpone those concerns for another day.

"I'd be a fool to worry about those things I can't change," Brown notes on the fiddle-fired "No Hurry" from his band's most recent disc, "You Get What You Give."

The group's sound is reflective of its easy-going, live-for-the-moment demeanor: It's like a good dive bar jukebox on shuffle, with Lynyrd Skynyrd's Southern rock bluster, the boozy, sunbaked frivolity of Jimmy Buffett and the hard drinking, harder swinging honky-tonk swagger of Hank Williams Jr. all figuring into the band's backwoods bombast.

And then there are those four-part harmonies, equally rooted in classic rock and classic country.

"I wore out a Queen greatest hits tape when I was probably 10, because the harmonies and the vocals were so incredible," Hopkins says. "It was Queen, it was Journey and it was Little River Band -- all the big harmony vocal bands were tremendously appealing to me. So I guess it's kind of fitting that I'm in a big harmony vocal band."

At their raucous live gigs, the band members underscore the musical cross-pollination of their youth, covering tunes by everyone from Charlie Daniels to Rage Against the Machine.

"Everybody knows some Bob Marley, everybody knows some Rolling Stones, everybody knows their favorite country song or rock song or rap song -- but to see it all on one stage, maybe that's something that doesn't happen all the time," Hopkins says of the band's pan-genre appeal.

As such, the band occupies a unique position in Nashville: They've been embraced by the country music establishment, even though many of their influences lie outside of it.

They're equally at home performing jam band festivals and opening for the Dave Matthews Band as they are playing shows with contemporary country radio mainstays like Little Big Town.

It doesn't seem like country music, then, was a given direction for this bunch.

But to hear Hopkins tell it, location had a lot to do with it for these Georgia natives.

Musically speaking, they may be country outliers, but not in terms of geography.

"I think country, having originated in the South and being relatable to Southerners, is a good home for us because we're so Southern," Hopkins says. "In the South, we have so many influences like the Allman Brothers, the Black Crowes, Widespread Panic and all these other bands who helped mold our youthful musical experiences.

"Now we're a big melting pot of all those influences," he adds. "The South is much more than country can handle. We're hitting every single thing that appeals to us, and a lot of things do."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.