It’s not every day two of my worlds collide in perfect harmony, but last night at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, they did. There was Devin Booker. All-NBA guard, midrange assassin, stoic competitor. And what was he doing? Singing his lungs out to the closing song of alt-country rock artist Zach Bryan’s set like a man possessed by the moment.
“Baptize me with a bottle of Beam, put Johnny on the vinylllllllllllllll…”
Music, when it’s real, isn’t just entertainment. It’s spiritual. It’s primal. It hits you in the chest and reminds you that you’re alive. We all have those songs in our hearts and on our playlists. The ones that make you want to throw your head back and howl at the night sky, or crumble into tears over the stories they tell.
For me? I have plenty of ZLB tunes stored. I’ve been a Zach Bryan disciple for years. The man’s a poet with a guitar, spinning verses that paint scenes no one’s quite captured before. A turn of phrase that feels like it was written just for you. A life lesson tucked into a line that’s gone before you can brace for it. One of my favorite lyrical gut punches of his is: “Let it be, then let it go.” Simple. Applicable to everything from heartbreak to the mindless poison that drips across social media timelines.
So seeing Booker backstage, fist pumping, belting out Revival like it was a Game 7 bucket, was pure joy. We know he’s no stranger to concerts. He pops up at summer shows like clockwork, but I didn’t peg him for a Zach Bryan guy. Turns out, he’s got a taste for the same raw, unvarnished storytelling that pulls me in.
How an NBA star spends his offseason is as unique as the player himself. Some grind in the gym until the lights burn out. Some disappear to remote corners of the world. And some, apparently, find themselves at Red Rocks, singing along to one of the best lyricists in the game under the open Colorado sky.
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