It is one of those cases where any introduction is unnecessary since the name alone carries tons of musical history. The Van Zant brothers’ rich legacy on the global music scene is not only a given but unparalleled. So, in the wake of the release of Johnny and Donnie Van Zant’s new album “Always Look Up”, we catch up with them for a conversation revolving around God and faith. However, we couldn’t help but ask Johnny about the 1985 AOR masterpiece for all the die-hard fans out there.
Interview: Sakis Nikas
Rockpages.gr: Guys, how are you doing? I know Johnny has been in Greece with Skynyrd a while ago. How about you, Donnie?
Donnie Van Zant: I think I was there, but I was pretty drunk back then, so…(laughs)
Rockpages.gr: Any memories?
Donnie Van Zant: No memories at all.
Johnny Van Zant: I will tell you this…when I was in Greece, when I was in Athens, I remember looking at the sky and saying to myself: that’s the most beautiful sky I’ve ever seen in my life. That was a pretty good day. I remember that day very, very well. That was a great day. I want to come back again.
Rockpages.gr: Johnny, my best wishes for your daughter Taylor. I hope she’s doing okay after all those health issues.
Johnny Van Zant: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Any prayers are welcome, my friend. She’s doing pretty good actually. We’ve put her in the hands of God and the doctors…she had a mass on her brain and a bunch of blood vessels bursted. It was a difficult situation. But she’s doing OK and her last scan was better. So I thank God for that. Hopefully she will be back stronger than ever.
Rockpages.gr: I am glad to hear that. All right, guys…first of all, let me tell you that we missed you. It’s been…what…17 years since “My Kind of Country”. What took you so long?
Donnie Van Zant: You know what, buddy, we had a lot of free time during the pandemic as everything stopped all over the world. Johnny wasn’t busy at all. The whole music industry shut down and there was bucket list of things that we wanted to do, you know, and another Van Zant album was at the very top of it.
Johnny Van Zant: Also, Donnie went through some health trouble himself with his ears. So after our second country record that we did, I think it was more Southern rock and country, but they called it country…anyway…after that one, we were so busy, you know, me doing Skynyrd, Donnie doing 38 Special. But we kept writing and calling each other exchanfing ideas and stuff like that. When we thought that we had the right songs we went to our little studio behind my home here in Florida. And this is where all these new songs were created. I had a lot of time off and we spent a lot of nights out here and and having a good time, you know, and and the good Lord gave us inspiration and and power to do this new record. And we’re so happy to be able to get it out to people like yourself. It’s a good timing, too because we need God now more than ever.
Rockpages.gr: Yeah, that was actually my next question, because that’s an album about God and faith. I guess we are living in a time and age that we need God more than ever, right?
Johnny Van Zant: I call this a Jesus record. You know, that’s what we’re doing. We’re praising Jesus. There were probably times in our lives when we were taking care of ourselves and not thinking about others, but we always had religion in our heart.We’ve still believed in Christ all our life. So, to be able to put out an album is just an amazing thing. And we’ve been reading a lot of comments of people that have heard the songs, and we couldn’t be happier as lots of people connect with those songs about Jesus.Donnie texted me last night and said that our church here, I guess this past Sunday, mentioned our album and our songs. You wouldn’t believe how gratifying it was. We had no idea.
Rockpages.gr: I guess that’s a sign of how an album can be successful without even mentioning sales and statistic figures, right?
Donnie Van Zant: Exactly! It really is. You know, if we touch one person with this record and bring them to Christ, we won. Usually you go into a record going, okay, well, I hope it’s successful because I need to make money or, you know, or I want to be famous or whatever. So, we don’t care to be famous all that we want to be the guys praising the Lord. Yeah, we want to be the guy thinking of Jesus.
Rockpages.gr: One of the lyrics on the song “There you are” says and I quote: “I didn’t care if I lived or died, then you appeared”. When did you realize the presence of God in your life?
Johnny Van Zant: Was there a specific incident? Man, a lot of them really. I think when you’re young, you’re out there trying to make a living and you’re trying to get a good car or a great house and you’re not thinking about other more important stuff, like even a good education. But you’re we are working to try to get all these material things. And as you get older, you go, you know what? If you have your health, you have everything you need, you really have it all. I always say that if you have your health, you are rich already here. Real rich. We got a song called “Awesome God”, And he really is…he’s everywhere. For me, I think the thing that brought me back up, you asked about my younger daughter being sick, and I had an older daughter that passed away seven years ago. Going through that and as a parent, losing a child was a big strain, not only physically but spiritually. We really hope that she could make it but she didn’t. And so I was kind of mad at God. You know, I was questioning my faith and God said, Stay with me. Stay with your faith no matter what. I remember Donnie coming by…we are neighbors, we live right next door to each other. And he came by and I was checking my mail and I he asked me, How’s it going today, brother? And I was like, you know, I was just mad because I couldn’t fix it. As a parent, you want to fix things, you know, for your children. And so, like, when they hurt their knee, you know, you put a Band-Aid on, you tell them it’s okay but this was a big thing. And at that point in time, I kind of knew at that time that she probably wasn’t going to survive this awful, awful disease. And Donnie said to me: don’t get mad at God. And whenever he said that to me, it kind of a peace came over on me and we started writing the song called “Awesome God”. What I am trying to say is that I want your readers to know that God doesn’t put these awful diseases on his children. I think this world that we live in is a test, you know, And we need to really try to survive this test. And my faith really came in at that time. It’s God, who am I to tell God not to take her, you know, or let her go? You know, He must have needed a great angel because she was a great girl, a wonderful person.
Rockpages.gr: This sound more like words of a preacher than a singer, I tell you this.
Johnny Van Zant: (laughs) I don’t know the Bible that good!
Rockpages.gr: Johnny, listening to that life-changing experience of yours I wonder how much it affects you as an artist…
Johnny Van Zant: Obviously you have to cancel a few gigs if there’s an emergency. But for me, I go out and I play with Skynyrd and I have a great time. I always say that when you come to our show it’s like a ritual; Ronnie wrote a lot of great songs that use the word God, Lord, you know. And whenever we play “Simple Man”, that’s a godly song, you know, “Free Bird”…that’s another one. But we can still have fun. I always say that it’s cool to love Jesus. You know, I think as a Christian, I wish more people thought that way. You could still have fun, too. I don’t mean that you have to be boring.
Rockpages.gr: Getting back to the album, guys, if you take aside the central lyrical theme of the album, it’s a classic Van Zant record. It’s like a follow up to “My Kind of Country”. What do you think?
Donnie Van Zant: Yeah, I agree. Actually, it also has a lot of common ground with another album of ours called “Get Right With The Man”. For us, I think of all the music that we’ve made over the years, just to be able to make an album and talk about our faith is the most gratifying thing to me, you know? It really is. God leads me in this direction, and he put us in this place for a purpose. And so all this is because of him…that’s the most important issue here.
Rockpages.gr: I was reading the press release from the record company, and it says that it was always on your bucket list to do a record like this, you know, about God and Faith. I hear you now and although you got it out of your system, something tells me that you’ll do another one.
Johnny Van Zant: I can tell you that we have enough material to do another one. There’s a list of songs that it didn’t make it here, but they are really good songs. We hope now we can do another one but honestly, during the lockdown we also wrote a rock record. So we have a rock record that we could put out and we also have leftover songs from this record. That’s a great thing. We’ll see what happens in the future. We probably got about a good eight, nine, ten songs that we wrote that were rock songs. During the whole Covid thing we were at home like everybody else and obviously we were scared to death with what’s going on in the world. We really didn’t leave our houses and we just really settled down and started writing songs. We would love to have them out for our fans.
Rockpages.gr: Will you do any promo for this record? I mean, maybe an acoustic mini tour or something…do you have time for something like that?
Donnie Van Zant: We don’t know but we never say “never”! The truth is that I have a hearing disability. I have inner nerve damage that makes the whole concert thing more difficult but who knows…maybe we can go out. Like you said, we could do a bunch of acoustic gigs but as for a proper electric show I don’t see that happening as I don’t really want to take a chance with my hearing problem.
Rockpages.gr: A few years ago, we did an interview with you Donnie, and one of our questions was if you ever felt Ronnie’s presence or his spirit around you and you said “not really”. That was the answer. Has anything changed from that time?
Donnie Van Zant: To tell you the truth, I don’t ever remember saying that, but Ronnie is always around us and he always lives through his songs. We miss him and that will never change. Ronnie was like a father figure to me. He was the reason why I stayed in music; you know? I can remember him over at our parents’ house. I’ve been through so many band break-ups; it was common to rehearse for a year and then break up, you know. So, I was at that point where I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do music deep down inside, you know, But I had to go to go to work with a couple railroad companies here in Florida. And there were good paying jobs, too. But I but I had Ronnie over to the house and I was talking to him about it, and I was down. I remember telling him: “Do I need to take this one to security and forget music”? He laughed at me. He goes: “Brother, you’ve got music in your blood, whether you realize it or not. And you ought to yourself to go after it one more time but give it 110%”.
Rockpages.gr: How cool is that! And you don’t need me to tell you that you did the right thing! You know what…we were doing an interview with Jim Peterik from Survivor. yeah. Yes. And one of the highlights, Donnie, of his career was his collaboration with 38 Special.
Donnie Van Zant: Really? (laughs) I will tell you this, I have fond memories of working with Jim. All the moments with him. I mean, he is such a great guy and absolutely professional musician that’s always a pleasure to be around him. You know, he’s a fantastic songwriter. So, it’s great to hear that he also feels the same.
Rockpages.gr: Speaking of solo stuff, I gotta tell you, Johhny, that I am a huge fan of your self-titled album that you released in 1985. As a matter of fact, there is a strong community here in Greece that they can’t get enough of that record. Any special memories from that period?
Johnny Van Zant: It’s a great record! “2 + 2”, “She’s Out With A Gun”…what a great bunch of songs…I really enjoyed those sessions and that period in my career. But shortly after that, though, I actually quit music for about a year and a half and drove a truck. I drove a truck for a while and our daddy was a truck driver. So I loved the whole thing of driving a truck and being out on the road doing that sort of stuff. But I kept writing songs and then I end up coming out with “Brickyard Road”, I guess a few years later…about five years later. I know for a fact that there are a lot of people in Europe that love that 1985 album.
Rockpages.gr: Guys, why do you think your songs have touched the lives of so many people around the world? I mean, look at us now…you are talking to a guy in Greece from Florida! You have written some legendary tunes…
Johnny Van Zant: I guess it has to do with the fact that we always write songs about truth and everyday life. We just write what we know and about our experiences in life. I think it comes from our background. We didn’t grow up rich, but we weren’t poor either…we always had things, you know, we had food, we had clothes. I think that evolved into the songwriting process and Ronnie was a master of that. We would try to stick to writing things that we know and try not to exaggerate too much. And you are absolutely right…we are here in Florida and your living in Athens, Greece. 3 individuals talking about music. It’s an amazing thing, really. It goes back to God and always being true to yourself and all the others around you.
