BOYS OF FAITH

BOYS OF FAITH

“First off, I need to just simply say I love tennis stadiums. They’re my favorite places to shoot. This is in Charleston, [South Carolina,] in summer 2022. These were a set of shows we did with Nathaniel Rateliff. This was the first time where I was like, 'I'm gonna get up close'; I started feeling like being bolder and trying to do more. This was also the first time on stage I was using flash, on a two-dollar Canon Sure Shot from Goodwill. When you have a point-andshoot camera that can take a picture and you putgood film in it, it can make a great picture. And so, to me, the significance of this Charleston shot, I love how it’s composed and how it looks because Zach looks like he's bigger than the stadium. He’s a giant, sticking his head out above it, and the American flag, and the stadium lights, and not a cell phone in sight.”

Zach Bryan’s risen to the top of the contemporary country renaissance. His buddy Louie Nice is close behind with a camera.

"I never have really been a country music fan.”

An ironic statement coming from Louie Nice, the photographer touring with rising country star Zach Bryan. Bryan began his musical career when he was still in the Navy, writing songs and recording them with his iPhone in the barracks. His song “Heading South” went viral in 2020, and Warner Bros, offered him a record deal. The Navy honorably discharged him, thinking that his time and, frankly, the world would be better served by him writing music.

From there he’s been on an upward journey, playing sold-out arena shows, collaborating with artists like Bruce Springsteen, Kacey Musgraves, and Bon Iver, and releasing his latest record, The Great American Bar Scene, in July. He leads the pack of emerging country musicians, along with contemporaries like Tyler Childers, producing music accessible to listeners who don’t quite jive with the clichds of chicken fried beer, toes in the water, ass in the sand.

Louie identifies with it: “It’s wild to find myself in a place where there’s such a renaissance of people wanting to do something meaningful.”

As far as Louie’s own journey, he moved to L.A. at 22 to pursue acting. He picked up photography casually, shooting press photos and headshots for other aspiring actors and musicians. He eventually made his way back to his hometown of Pittsburgh and started shooting film; he went out on the road with his friend Charles Wesley Godwin, who would eventually open for Zach on some Pittsburgh shows, and a dear friendship was born.

Now, in addition to shooting several of Bryan’s album covers, Louie has earned a production credit on one of Zach’s songs, and you can even hear bits of their story on tracks like “Boys of Faith”: “You were fakin’ photos in Kentucky/Sayin’ we were lucky for the light/Who’ve thought those things would find a billboard/Way out in New York at night.” There’s surely something to be said about a creative connection born out of friendship; there is a shared vision, an understanding.

“Zach is also a really great photographer,” Louie says. They originally met in Raleigh, but later, at a show in Kansas City, Zach noticed Louie’s Olympus XA camera and invited him to join his tour. “He was like, ‘Hey, we’re only shooting film, we’re not doing anything else.’ And it’s like the past three years have just been this whirlwind of me growing as a photographer and learning something new every time.”

Pinpointing Jim Marshall as his photography idol, Louie explains that instant gratification is not the name of the game when working as a tour photographer, on film no less, at least from his perspective.

“I don’t look at it as, oh, I need to get this out as quick as possible, put it on Instagram, and it lasts for a day, and I get a couple of followers out of it,” he says. “I just want it to be something that years down the line, someone looks back at this the way I look back at Jim Marshall taking a picture of Jimi Hendrix lighting a guitar on fire.”

MANDY BROWNHOLTZ

“This is realistically the first real work I ever did for Zach. I flew to Oklahoma, and Zach was moving to New York, and the idea was to fly down and me and him were just going to drive across the country and shoot the cover for American Heartbreak. We didn’t do any work for a while; I hadn’t taken a picture, and I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t doing something right, or something wasn’t working. We had just left Paducah, [Kentucky,] we were on Highway 24, and just off to the right there was a destroyed barn, and I was like, ‘Hey, we should go there and shoot, there’s still daylight.’ The songs he was playing in this room are songs that are on American Heartbreak, and just the fact that staying in some random town in Kentucky, we shot the cover, to know that came out of that incredible trip—it’s a picture that I’ll never forget.”

“These are both antics on ‘Revival.’ This was on the Burn, Burn, Burn tour [2023] in Kansas City. This was one of the first times he got off stage and ran through the pit. It’s funny because Zach is very focused during the shows; it’s a very honest performance. But when ‘Revival’ happens, it’s a huge party. If someone big is there, they’re gonna come up on stage. It’s probably happened, I don’t know, 10 or 15 times. He’ll just give me a look like this, and I know it’s him saying, ‘Come sing,’ and I’ll go sing on the mic. This is just another example of him having trusted me and us being friends.”

"This is New York City, March 2022. This was the first time I had a picture on a billboard. Zach called me to come up for it. He said he wasn’t going to go to Nashville to record American Heartbreak, we're just gonna cut the record here in New York. I stayed in New York for a month, and I'd get up in the morning and walk to his place, and me, him, and his dog would then walkto Electric Lady and be there from 10 in the morning till 10 at night or later. We were churning out three, four songs, sometimes five songs in a day.”

"This was April of '22, a little after we got done recording American Heartbreak. This is at my apartment [in Pittsburgh], He called me like, ‘Hey, do you have recording stuff at your house? Do you have a guitar? I want to record a song.' I set up my laptop with GarageBand, which is funny, because three weeks prior, we were in such hallowed ground [Electric Lady], I had, like, an old math teacher projector, and I had Zach put all his lyrics on there, and they recorded ‘Late July,’ and it was really beautiful. He made it the opening song on American Heartbreak and gave me a producer credit.”

"This was Red Rocks in November 2022. It was a bummer day in a lot of ways, because with the snow [Charles Wesley Godwin's] set got cut, and I think that weighed on Zach. This picture is just Zach doing his miles for the day. Another twodollarcamera. Justa piece of plastic with film in it, you know? I look at it as Zach blowing off steam, with how much lead-up there was to this day and how much of a pain in the ass it was going to be.”

“This is Toronto in March 2024. We travel with this pool table. We play a lot of pool; Zach loves pool. It’s his game. I don’t know that it’s something that he wants to work at, it’s just a good game to be around this table with people and it’s fun and competitive. This is just a realistic moment backstage; Bri [Zach’s girlfriend, Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia] is superfunand down to get in on things and play and have a good time, and the dogs are always around backstage. It’s a good one.”

“This is also in Toronto. So basically, ever since I've known Zach, when it's someone's birthday, we’ll get a cake and have a whole thing backstage. You know it’s coming, if it’s your birthday, you have to be on red alert because at any point he could show up out of nowhere and just smash a cake in your face. I’ve actually been very lucky because in all the time I’ve worked with Zach, I’ve never been ontourfor my birthday, at the end of N ove m ber. T h is yea r we go back on the road, like, the day before my birthday, so I know it’s coming."

"This is this year, at Barclays [in Brooklyn], This whole day was just very wild, because with Zach, Bruce is a huge, huge part of his musical journey and his taste and the things he loves and enjoys and is just a complete idol to him. That moment when he walked out on stage, I could just see in Zach's eyes that like, ‘Bruce came to my show.’ Like, Bruce flew in for this one, between his two California shows. He walked out and Zach lit up like the Fourth of July. There’s just something there with Bruce's hand, with emotion, coming in to give him a hug, and Zach looking at him as a predecessor to everything he's done, kind of almost like handing off a torch."

“This was in 2022 when we played Big Sky [Montana] for the second time, which if you ever get a chance to see it, it's so beautiful. Thirty minutes away from the city, out in the wilderness. This was the first time in a good little while that we're not in a bus, in a city, stuck in an arena all day, and instead we’re out and we’re doing just exactly what all these guys love, to be outside in nature relaxing. It was a moment before everything turned into Zach headlining every single thing he’s on, no matter what.”