Homegrown

Album: Jekyll + Hyde (2015)
Charted: 35
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Songfacts®:

  • This jubilant song finds Zac Brown singing of his Georgia hometown:

    Got a good lookin' woman with her arms around me
    Here in a small town where it feels like home
    I've got everything I need
    And nothing that I don't


    Brown is satisfied with the life he has in the small town that is his home. With his "good lookin' woman" and "good friends that live down the street," he is happy with his lot and has no ambition to leave.
  • The song was co-written and co-produced by Zac Brown with Jay Joyce, who also helmed Little Big Town's Pain Killer and Eric Church's The Outsiders albums.
  • This was released as the lead single from Jekyll + Hyde, the fourth major-label studio album by Zac Brown Band. The record is named after Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which follows a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The Scottish author based his story on William Brodie, a respected businessman and Edinburgh town councillor by day and a leader of a gang of robbers by night.
  • The album cover shows Brown's face with two different-colored eyes. "We wanted the Jekyll + Hyde thing to be subtle," Brown told Country Countdown USA's Lon Helton. "We thought about doing the warped face on one side and regular face on the other, but it was too on-the-nose. So we got one of the best rock photographers of all time, Danny Clinch, to shoot the video, and one of his guys came up with the two colored eyes. I've had a lot of compliments on it."
  • Zac Brown wrote the song with his go-to collaborators Wyatt Durrette and Niko Moon. It was Moon who brought the song idea into their writing session. He originally came up with the concept while relaxing at his house, thinking how much he loves being home. "Especially if you grew up in a little bit of a smaller town, it's just a certain culture, a certain vibe," he explained to American Songwriter. "Everything's a little bit slower-paced. More people know who you are. They take time to say 'hey' to you if you run into somebody at the grocery store or something. It's like a blanket–like an emotional blanket–when you're in your hometown."
  • Moon penned "Homegrown" out of a wish to remind people what matters most. "I wanted to write a song that other people could really identify with, that would make them think of where they're from and their hometown, their people, their family and their friends and the things that are important to them," he explained. "Because when it really boils down to it, your family and your friends and where you're from are some of the most important things in life, if not the most important things. So that's what this song right here's all about."

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