I know they just learned this one yesterday, but I need them to get it in the studio ASAP.
Zach Top was at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville last night for the final stop on his Cold Beer & Country Music tour, and if you weren’t there…well, you missed out.
Obviously Zach is one of the leading voices in the neotraditional country music resurgence that we’re seeing right now, and that was fully evident as he powered through his two and a half hour set in front of a sold-out Music City crowd. Not only did the show feature his own biggest hits, but there was also a portion of the show devoted to bluegrass as well as tributes to both John Anderson with “Seminole Wind” and Dolly Parton with a cover of “9 to 5.”
In a show that was full of highlights, maybe the best moment came when he invited Brandon Coleman of the Red Clay Strays on stage in the middle of his ballad “Use Me,” a pairing that left me wanting a duet version of the song from the two powerhouses.
But after they finished with Zach’s song, the show took an unexpected turn into some ’80s yacht rock – with, of course, a country twist.
Zach and Brandon delivered a rockin’ version of “That’s All” by Genesis that has fans begging for a studio version:
As Zach explained after the performance, he and his band had jokingly started playing around with the song during sound check, when he got the idea to try to play it during the show – so he texted Coleman about it:
“He said, ‘I’ve heard it a bunch of times, is that what we’re singing tonight? I can start memorizing the words now if that’s it.’
I said, ‘Well, I’ll be memorizing them right there with you, and I think that’s what we’re doing.'”
Safe to say it worked.
The tour has been full of special moments, including during a recent show at Gas South Arena in Duluth.
Towards the back half of the set, Top would spot a fan holding a sign in the pit. After reading his sign, Top would invite the fan, whose name is Brayden Frasure, up to the stage and ask him what he wanted to sing. Not skipping a beat, Brayden would ask to sing none other than “Tennessee Whiskey.”
Sorting out the order of the duet, which saw the “I Never Lie” singer take the first verse while Brayden took the second, Top would jokingly give an apology to both George Jones and David Allan Coe, who performed the song before Chris Stapleton made it the double Diamond smash hit that it is currently in 2015. Additionally, he’d apologize to Stapleton as well, joking that
“Before we start this, we want to say sorry to George Jones, David Allan Coe for not doing your version. And then we want to say sorry to Chris Stapleton in case we screw up your version. I love you, Chris. We’re gonna try our best,”
It’s pretty safe to say that an apology was not needed in any way, shape or form here. Brayden, who is a young singer/songwriter, guitarist and actor himself with over 100,000 followers already on Instagram, gave nothing short of a jaw-dropping performance.
There’s no doubt that you never truly know what to expect when an artist brings a fan up to the stage for a duet. For every great one, like the time Riley Green brought a woman up in Glasgow for “you look like you love me” last year, there are seemingly dozens of truly awful ones that make you question why they’d go up in the first place.
With Brayden, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually gets record labels contacting him in the coming days after this “Tennessee Whiskey” performance. For a kid no older than 15, it’s truly that impressive.
Watch here:
