Zach Bryan’s newest music video for “Oak Island” featuring actors Casey Affleck and Jack Martin has recently been released after being filmed in Schenectady this past August.
Country singer-songwriter Zach Bryan has channeled his innermost emotions into folk melody, country sound, and raw, cutting lyrics since he came into the public light in 2019. One of many of his first songs to be uploaded onto his YouTube channel, “Heading South” was recorded outside of his Navy barracks by phone only minutes after he had written the song.
The video quickly caught traction and ended up going viral, with just under 30.5 million views as of September 2024. Since skyrocketing into fame, Bryan has stuck to the same principles that had captured the public, delivering lyrically raw, human songs that leave it all out on the table.
Released on September 10, Zach Bryan’s music video for “Oak Island” delivers the gut wrenchingly human and emotional narratives he’s known for once again. One of 19 tracks from Bryan’s newest album, “Oak Island” tells the story of a jaded older brother with mistakes of his own watching his younger brother fall down the same path.
In “Oak Island,” the narrator is crushed by the realization that the hope he had placed in his younger brother’s future, a brother who had a good head on his shoulders and a better life than his own ahead of him, had thrown it all away and fallen in with a bad crowd. The narrator turns first to resentment for the people that had done this to his brother, which quickly becomes an aching sense of loss as he watches the kid he had grown up with become one of the men he loathes.
Actors Casey Affleck, known for his work in Oppenheimer, Manchester by the Sea, and Interstellar, and Jack Martin portray estranged brothers in the music video’s narrative penned by Bryan and his girlfriend, influencer and Barstool Sports personality Brianna LaPaglia, that pulls heavily from the narrative spun in “Oak Island’s” lyrics.
Directed by long-time video collaborator Matthew Dillon Cohen, the music video features multiple careful frames of Schenectady, with local scenes interspersed throughout the narrative. The opening shot in particular features Affleck stepping out of local favorite Mike’s Hot Dogs while making one of many missed calls to his younger brother.
Split by unclear circumstances, the older brother played by Affleck attempts to reach his younger brother, played by Martin, in the hopes of redirecting his life away from less than favorable companions. As with the song’s narrative, the two brothers confront one another- the younger already along his own path, one diverging from everything Affleck believes to be right.
Tensions rise when Affleck pulls Martin out of a bar and goes after one of his brother’s associates, breaking into a fight. The video culminates in a car chase that ends in the two siblings staring at each other on either end of the road interspersed with flashbacks of their childhood, only to reveal that Affleck has been alone on the road this entire time – he had already lost his brother to the path he had walked down.
Bryan is currently on tour for his The Quittin Time Tour 24, with two upcoming dates at the Barclays Center on December 18 and 19. For more information and tickets, visit his website here.
Watch the music video for “Oak Island” below.
