If you’ve heard a new song on country radio lately that sounds like it came straight out of the 1990s, there’s a good chance it was Zach Top.
The 29-year-old singer grew up on a family farm in Sunnyside, Washington. Now he’s one of the hottest names in Nashville. His album “Ain’t In It For My Health” won the first ever Grammy for Best Traditional Country Album. He was named CMA New Artist of the Year in 2025, and on Nov. 18 he’s up for Album of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year at the 60th CMA Awards.
And last Friday he wrapped up a tour most singers only dream about.
His “Cold Beer & Country Music Tour” has sold 921,820 tickets since it started in 2025. It ended Friday, Oct. 30, with a sold-out show at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville that ran more than two hours. Zach told the crowd, “I can’t thank each and every one of you enough for being here tonight.”
His guests that night were singer Lukas Nelson and Brandon Coleman of the band The Red Clay Strays. Zach and Brandon pulled a real surprise on the crowd with a country version of “That’s All,” a song by the rock band Genesis.
Whiskey Riff caught the moment from inside the arena, so you can see the surprise for yourself.
Zach Top and Brandon Coleman surprising the Nashville crowd with “That’s All”
On Sunday he premiered a concert film from two sold-out nights at Red Rocks in Colorado, at a drive-in theater in Watertown, Tennessee.
Fans know him for his twangy guitar.
But that isn’t where his music started.
“I was playing piano before I was playing guitar,” he told Billboard.
His parents kept him at piano lessons, but the music never grabbed him. “For whatever reason, I never had a lot of interest in Chopin and Bach and Beethoven and stuff like that,” he said.
He might have felt differently with another kind of teacher. Zach said, “If somebody could have taught me to play piano like (Hargus) ‘Pig’ Robbins, maybe I would have been excited about that.” Hargus “Pig” Robbins was a Country Music Hall of Fame session pianist who played on records for some of the biggest stars in country music. He lost his sight as a small child and learned piano at the Tennessee School for the Blind.
He didn’t get that kind of teacher, and he fought the lessons hard. “I kicked and screamed through… shoot, seven or eight years it must’ve been of piano lessons,” he admitted, “and they (his parents) finally gave up on that, I guess.”
He tells the whole piano story himself in his Billboard cover interview.
Zach Top in his Billboard cover interview, talking about the lessons he fought
Once the piano was out of the way, the guitar took over his life. “I played guitar for, shoot, two to three hours a day probably. I just loved it.”
The funny part is that music didn’t come from his folks at all. “My folks were not musical at all, but they always had it playing around the house,” he told Country Central. Country greats George Strait and Marty Robbins were the ones who made him want to pick up a guitar. “George Strait was the first thing I remember hearing all the time,” he said.
As a boy he even started a bluegrass band with his brothers and sisters. They called it Top String.
On Nov. 18, that boy from the family bluegrass band finds out if he’s taking home a CMA Award or two.