Absolute perfection.
This weekend, Zach Top and Lukas Nelson teamed up for an incredible duet of Willie Nelson classic heartbreaker, “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning.” It’s one of my personal favorite songs, and while nothing will ever top Willie’s original, these two certainly made him proud.
The song was written by Gary Nunn and Donna Farar, it was released as the third single from Willie’s iconic 1982 album Always On My Mind, and eventually peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. Zach has previously said it’s one of his all-time favorites, which I obviously wholeheartedly agree with, and it’s one that he’s been covering out on the road for a little while now.
I love that he’s continuing to bring it to a new generation of fans who have likely never heard the song before, and he’s already gotten the stamp of approval from Willie himself.
Zach is friends with his opener Lukas, who is Willie’s son and a very talented artist himself, and Lukas showed his dad the cover that Zach had been doing out on the road last year. Willie said it was great, and I can’t imagine a cooler moment for a young artist to know that the living legend himself liked the way he sang such a classic song. Also, props to Lukas for doing that for his friend because that’s so real and so kind:
“No, that’s another great one. Yeah, huge… I did get, so I’m friends with his son Lukas Nelson, who’s also a great, great artist, great singer. Anyway, he texted me one time, last year, we were doing an old song Gary P. Nunn wrote ‘Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning,’ one of my favorite Willie Nelson songs, we were covering that in our show.
And Lukas texted me one day and he’s like ‘Man, I showed your cover to my dad. I just wanted to you know he thought you did really good job on it, and he liked it a lot.’ And it’s like, that’s pretty damn cool. So I would love to get to meet him, obviously.”
It just doesn’t get any better…
So while Top has had Lukas with him on the road, of course, they had to sing it together, and it’s just as good as you can imagine. Each of them individually have some of the best vocals in country music, so when you put them together… it’s just mind blowing and I can’t get enough. Lukas’ voice is just beyond… hey, he comes by it honest, that’s for sure.
I think they make a ton of sense when it comes to being duet partners, and they couldn’t have picked a better song in my humble opinion:
I need more… actually, I need an entire cover album from them now.
Tons of artists have covered this song over the years, but few can really pull it off, and aside from this, Chris Stapleton’s rendition of “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is stellar, as you can imagine.
It was included on his 2017 album From A Room: Volume 1, and while you’re here, you might as well check it out because it is incredible:
Nothing will ever beat this, though:
“Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning”
Zach Top 2026 Tour Dates
October 29—Duluth, GA—Gas South Arena∆
October 30—Nashville, TN—Bridgestone Arena∆
∆with special guest Lukas Nelson
