Zac Brown Band
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Via Tasteofcountry.com

Zac Brown Band is gearing up for summer with another beach/paradise tune, ‘Knee Deep,’ which wouldn’t be complete without the legendary Jimmy Buffet sharing singing duties on the track. But it’s the song’s co-writer Wyatt Durrette’s love of the sand that brings us the catchy chorus.

“I’m a huge Jimmy Buffett fan, and I have been since I was really young,” Durrette, who co-wrote the song with Brown, tells Taste of Country. “I’m a huge beach bum. I love the beach — I go there every second I can and every chance I can. I grew up going there as a kid, and it’s my favorite place to write music. It’s where my mind kind of opens up the most and all those things.”

Since he spends so much time at the coast, the chorus for ‘Knee Deep’ came effortlessly for Durrette:

“Wishing I was knee deep in the water somewhere / Got the blue sky breeze and it don’t seem fair / Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair / Sunrise there’s a fire in the sky / Never been so happy / Never felt so high / And I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise.”

“The song itself, mainly the first verse and chorus, kind of came from me having just broken up with a girl,” Durrette explains. “I was kind of wanting to just get away. I just wanted to get away from the world for a minute … kind of go to a beach and sit in the water and not worry about anything.”

“Gonna put the world away for a minute / Pretend I don’t live in it / Sunshine gonna wash my blues away / Had sweet love but I lost it / She got too close so I fought her / Now I’m lost in the world trying to find me a better way,” the band sings in the song’s opening verse.

Durrette brought what he had started to Brown, as he often does with his songs, and the two came close to completing the tune on their own. “I had this song sitting around for a little bit while I waited on Zac to find a melody,” says Durrette. “A lot of times, he won’t hear where I’m coming from every now and then, so I just kind got to wait and sit back and go, ‘Okay … how about now?’ [laughs] He eventually hooked onto it and found a real cool guitar lick.”

The song’s bridge was finished thanks to the help of songwriter Jeffrey Steele. “We couldn’t figure out where to go with it bridge wise,” Durrette admits. “We went and wrote with Jeffrey Steele one day. We just couldn’t figure out where to go with it melodically or lyrically. Jeffrey found a melody for the bridge, and me and Zac just ran with it. Right when we found the melody, we knew what we wanted to say. Jeffrey was a big help.”

“It’s one of those songs about ‘Ok, I’ve had enough of the real world … I just need to get out of here for a little while,’” notes Durrette. “That’s what came out.”

Watch Zac Brown Band Perform ‘Knee Deep’ With Kenny Chesney

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