Zac Brown is best known for celebrating simple pleasures. As his most popular song puts it, all he needs is “a little bit of chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right, and the radio on.”

Now, he’s telling a darker story.

The Zac Brown Band’s new album draws partly from Brown’s youth growing up outside Atlanta. “Unless someone knows me very well and is very close to me, I haven’t shared a lot of what drove me into music,” he told Morning Edition.

Brown recalled that both his mother and stepfather lived with mental illness. “I grew up in a really crazy environment, in and out of battered women’s shelters,” he said. “And as a kid, trying to make sense of that, trying to protect my mom, trying to figure out what the hell is going on in my house or whatever, that drove me into music.”

He left home young. Brown said he was playing coffeehouses at 14 and touring by 17. Those early experiences, he added, helped him find his voice. “It gave me my resilience. It gave me my resolve,” he said. “The level of empathy that I am able to hold, it can be kind of crippling in a way, but I think it really serves me well as an artist. Those were all gifts, but you don’t know them at the time.”

That desire to draw inspiration out of that dark backstory explains the tone of songs like “Butterfly,” his duet with Dolly Parton.

Other songs build on elaborate harmonies, which come from another side of his youth. “I grew up as a choir nerd,” he admitted. “The vocal arrangement for me is always my favorite part.”

Brown said he worked with a 20-piece choir on this album, including the standout track “Animal.”

“When you can wrap the right story with the right melody with the right harmony … that’s how you get that visceral feeling. That’s how you get the chill bumps,” he said “I long to hear things that really move me.”

“Love & Fear” was released on December 5 — the same day the Zac Brown Band played its first of several concerts at The Sphere, the giant performance space in Las Vegas.