Global Courant
Zach Bryan closed out the Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival outside of Nashville with a special set that included guest appearances from Noah Kahan, the War and Treaty, and fellow headliners the Lumineers.
Kahan surprised fans near the end of Bryan’s set, slipping onto the stage to wild applause after Bryan got a few measures into the live debut of their new collaboration, “Sarah’s Place.” The track appears on Bryan’s Boys of Faith EP, a five-song collection he released last Friday, Sept. 22, in the wake of his wildly successful self-titled album, which dropped last month. (Along with Kahan, the EP features Bryan’s collaboration with Bon Iver, “Boys of Faith”).
Earlier in the performance, Bryan welcomed War and Treaty’s Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter to the stage for a rendition of their Zach Bryan collaboration, “Hey Driver.” And for the encore, Bryan brought out the Lumineers’ singer Wesley Schultz for a moving performance of “Spotless.”
Bryan’s performance at Pilgrimage marked the singer-songwriter’s return to the stage after a whirlwind month following the release of Zach Bryan on Aug. 25 and the end of his long “Burn, Burn Burn” tour a few days later. Zach Bryan spent two weeks at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart, while the singer-songwriter also notched his first Number One single on the Hot 100 with his Kacey Musgraves duet, “I Remember Everything.”
Trending
The big moment was, however, briefly interrupted by his arrest on “obstruction of investigation” charges after he got into an argument with a police officer in Oklahoma. Bryan apologized profusely for the incident, saying, “I was just an idiot. I’ll take the fall for it. I’m a grown man, I shouldn’t have behaved like that, and it won’t happen again.”
Bryan has a few more scattered festival dates scheduled through 2023, and he’ll spend the bulk of 2024 on the road. The massive trek kicks off March 5 in Chicago, with dates scheduled all the way through Dec. 14 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
