Zach Bryan and His Wife Samantha Bring Oklahoma Soul to Their Manhattan Home

Zach Bryan’s latest record, With Heaven On Top, starts with a poem. “Bought a house from a man in New York,” he says in his no-nonsense drawl. “This house had four small apartments in it when he bought it in ’78. Said he had seen children grow old and elderly people die in each little apartment. Said he didn’t change the wooden floors for 16 years ’cause he knew where each scuff came from.” From there Bryan launches into an aching meditation on the water-rush of time with this building, inspired by his new Manhattan home, at the center.

Time has indeed moved quickly for the Oklahoma-raised country music sensation. Just eight years ago, he was serving in the Navy and releasing his acoustic, lo-fi songs, recorded in the barracks, on YouTube. While still on active duty, he made his first album, DeAnn, in a rented Airbnb, using pillows and mattresses on the wall for better acoustics. Success came fast for the artist whose writerly lyrics and DIY ethos resonated in a world where authenticity is at a premium. Before being honorably discharged in 2021, he landed a deal with Warner Records, with whom he has produced several multiplatinum studio albums. Last year, he broke national records for the largest single-ticketed concert. All of it has meant that he and his wife Samantha are spending more time in New York City.

“I’d walk through the neighborhood, past all the brownstones, and think how beautiful it would be to own a home here and sit in the park,” Bryan recalls of his early days wandering around the city. A couple years back he found a place of his own in a historic building chosen for its cozy, wood-burning fireplaces and all that history that sat between the floorboards. “The creaky wood and the old architecture made me feel attached to it,” says the musician.

He spent time in the place with his dog, Jack, a roaring fire, and nothing but the bare necessities for a year before he was introduced to Alan Eckstein, of Somerset House, a fashion- and music-world veteran whom he met through mutual friends. “I always felt like he understood what we were going for,” explains Bryan of the relationship, which started out with long conversations on the roof that meandered from the Kings of Leon to Carlo Scarpa, drawing parallels between music and design.

“He’s an old-school artist who does it all himself,” says Eckstein, who DJ’d for a decade and cofounded the clothing line Timo Weiland before turning to interiors. “He does it his way. And right from the get-go, he laid out what he wanted with the house.” Just like his music, it needed to be unpretentious, relatable, and comfortable for friends passing through. “They wanted character. They wanted patina.”

Eckstein worked to conjure that tough yet sentimental feeling, cladding walls in stained white oak and selecting furniture pieces in a palette of leather, iron, copper, and timber that channeled the same raw refined equilibrium of Bryan’s songs. One of the first things they sourced for the house was a pair of rare 1920s pendants by Poul Henningsen. “They’ve been through a lot,” Eckstein says. “They’ve been through almost a hundred years of life, and that kind of set the tone.” The aged quality of the metal and the warm woods that fill the residence feel like they could find their way into his lyrics, which often squeeze a kind of soulful nostalgia out of classic American scenes: dive bars, a fixed-up car flying down the freeway, fried eggs at a diner (this is also Bryan’s specialty, according to Eckstein).

“He really pulled themes from throughout our lives and embedded them into the space,” says Samantha, explaining the way the dark woods evoke Oklahoma, Bryan’s home state, where he recently recorded With Heaven On Top in three different houses, seeming to prefer those domestic settings to a studio. Meanwhile, an oil portrait of a sailor conjures his time in the Navy. An artwork by his friend Ian Felice hangs in the living room. And a guitar given to him by his hero turned collaborator Bruce Springsteen leans casually against the striped sofa. “Alan put the Eagles sticker on my piano and hung photos of our family all throughout the home,” continues Bryan, who says his favorite design element is the wool-wrapped bed frame Eckstein designed to match the wooden walls.

Eckstein never lost sight of the fact that he was crafting the home of one of today’s great songwriters. “It was important to put a substantial desk in here,” he explains of the midcentury Jacques Adnet piece—“a splurge,” he admits—trimmed in red saddle-stitched leather. It’s placed in the corner of the bedroom, looking out the window. Bryan spends long swaths of time there, writing from a 1970s Pierre Chapo chair that has the ad hoc look of a backyard woodworking project. For him, though, it isn’t really about the furniture. “The way the sunlight hits the room makes it feel like home.”

This story appears in the November issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.