Understanding Zach Top and Neotraditionalist Country Music

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Is Zach Top really a traditional country artist? Or is he just reimagining the sounds of ’90s country in the present tense? And by the way, with all the nostalgia about ’90s country music these days, are people forgetting that in the ’90s, traditionalists at that time thought that guys like Garth Brooks were terrible, and were complaining about popular country no different than they do today?

All of this creates some very interesting and important questions about the cyclical nature of country music that is worth exploring deeper.

Before we get to Zach Top in the present tense or country music in the ’90s, let’s first go back to the very formation of the country music genre nearly 100 years ago. In 1927 when a sound engineer and producer named Ralph Peer set up a little remote studio in a hat shop in the town of Bristol right on the state line of Tennessee and Virginia, he recorded the songs that would go on to constitute the “big bang” of country music. Though there had been recordings before from Vernon Dalhart, Fiddlin’ John Carson, and the Lomax Family also deserves some credit here, Bristol is really where “country” music came into commercial form.

Ralph Peer recorded performers like Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Ernest Stoneman, and others. But what’s important to understand about the songs that came out of these sessions is that many of them were not contemporary compositions of their time in 1927. They were songs and compositions often from 30 years back, or even older. At the very beginning of country music, hearkening back to the songs of yesteryear was part of the genre. It was historical music that evoked nostalgia and preserved traditions from the past.

Let’s then fast forward to the mid 1980s, when country music was in somewhat of a malaise. That’s not to say there wasn’t some great music in the period, but in the mainstream of country, there were a lot of synth sounds, and a lack of a cohesive direction for the music, or true superstars. Commercially, the music also suffered. Country was coming out of its Outlaw era, but even Willie was now recording mostly country pop. They tried to make mainstream stars out of songwriter Rodney Crowell, and from the bluegrass world, Ricky Skaggs. Alt-country started to crop up to describe artists like Steve Earle. Hank Williams Jr. reached his peak in this era, but he was just as much Southern rock as county.

Meanwhile, two performers who had to spend years banging on doors and trying to get through finally found some traction in the decade. Both George Strait and Randy Travis had been told they were “too country” for years before they finally landed record deals, and began to find success. Keith Whitley also deserves to be in this conversation, but even his first album L.A. to Miami is quite schmaltzy and synth-like. But these artists were working against the grain of country music at the time, and began finding success.

George Strait and Randy Travis brought back the hard twang sounds of country, and a lot of the songwriting traditions as well, but they weren’t exactly Hank Williams or Webb Pierce either. It was a more contemporary sound of traditional country. This is when the term “neotraditional” was coined to describe what George and Randy were doing. This term would also be used to describe the throwback band BR549 who would get their start at Robert’s Western World on Lower Broadway in Nashville some years later.

But fast forward to the end of the ’80s era, and 1989 specifically. This was the year Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, and Clint Black all exploded onto the scene, later referred to collectively as the “Class of ’89.” Brooks & Dunn also came around shortly thereafter, and also found immediate and major success, along with a host of other artists, and country music in general. Country became cool again, and entered one of its most commercially successful eras.


Though Garth, Alan, Travis, and Clint might not have been as traditional as Randy Travis and George Strait, these artists were still much more traditional than most of what was going on in the ’80s prior. There was that hot Telecaster sound of session player Brent Mason, who in many respects defined the era’s sound. And the songwriting was very country. Though they exploded commercially, sonically all those members of the “Class of ’89” aside from maybe Travis Tritt who was more rock, were considered and referred to at the time as neotraditionalists.

So does that mean that traditionalists at that time in the ’90s recognized Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, and Brooks & Dunn as revivalists and preservationists of country’s values? Of course not, and there’s a few specific reasons for that. First, the commercial success of the “Class of ’89” made them very polarizing among established music fans. The popularity of the genre brought in a lot of trend seekers and interlopers. Listen to Alan Jackson’s song “Gone Country” for context.

As country music arrived in arenas and stadiums, a lot of long time country fans lost touch with it. This was perhaps best symbolized when Garth Brooks took to the skies at Texas Stadium in 1993, and like Sandy Duncan playing Peter Pan, flew over the stadium audience on wires for a big NBC television special. This felt like a Rubicon-crossing moment where country music had become more show than substance.


But was the music of Garth Brooks at the time neotraditional? Listening back to his biggest songs like “Friends in Low Places,” absolutely it was. So was the music of Alan Jackson, who spent his whole career in the ’90s singing the praises of legends like George Jones, even though a song or two like “Chattahoochee” pushed the boundaries into pop. Then Shania Twain came along later in the decade, pushing country towards pop even more, eventually ending the neotraditionalist era of the late ’80s and ’90s. But make no mistake about it, the ’90s were a twangy time in country music.

Now fast forward to pre-pandemic times, and roughly somewhere between around 2017 to 2019. Coming out of the Bro-Country phase, listeners were looking for more twang and substance. Also, not only did you have the country fans who grew up listening to ’90s country seeking out that sound, you also had the their kids who grew up with it in the household who were now becoming consumer age themselves, and finding favor with the ’90s sound compared to contemporary country, no different than how ’50s music found favor with ’80s kids, all following a rather predictable retro pattern.

Some of these ’90s influences started to emerge in new music as well, but it was a little fleeting, and hit-or-miss. William Michael Morgan had a surprise #2 hit with a song called “I Met a Girl” in 2015, co-written by producer and songwriter Shane McAnally. Shane would also be the producer and co-writer behind the band Midland, who though not exclusively ’90s country, had some of those inflections. Jon Pardi also evoked some ’90s neotraditional country sounds, including his #1 song “Heartache Medication” in 2020, which was the first song to hit #1 with a prominent fiddle in nearly eight years.

Then in May of 2021, the alt-country North Carolina-based band American Aquarium released an album of ’90s country covers called Slappers, Bangers, and Certified Twangers, with a second album following up in December. Now all of a sudden, the ’90s country influences weren’t just bleeding through, they were coming to prominence. There are plenty of other examples of this too, while you also started seeing festivals and events catering to ’90s country as listeners both young and old re-connected with the music.

But this was all still mostly cover songs and paying homage, not really the ’90s country influence directly imparted to new, modern country songs. This is where the Mayor of Lower Broadway, and Mr. Jukebox, Joshua Hedley comes in. A mainstay of Lower Broadway’s home of traditional country, Robert’s Western World, Joshua Hedley decided to release an album in April of 2022 called Neon Blue. From cover to cover except for a Roger Miller song, it was new songs, but rendered in ’90s country style, both in sound and in writing style.


As Joshua Hedley said at the time, “The last bastion of country music was the early 1990s, roughly 1989 and 1996. You could turn on the radio and immediately know you’re hearing a country song. You could still hear steel guitar and fiddle.” And so that’s the kind of album he made. It would be the prototype for the type of ’90s country albums others would make, including Zach Top’s now landmark 2024 album Cold Beer & Country Music, and in more ways than one.

Of the twelve songs on Joshua Hedley’s album Neon Blue, not one, not two, not even three of them were written by the combination of Zach Top and another guy named Carson Chamberlain. Five of Neon Blue‘s tracks were Zach Top co-writes. And remember, this is in 2022, when barely anybody has heard of Zach Top. Neon Moon came out a month before Top’s 2022 self-titled bluegrass album. Hedley’s Neon Blue plays a huge role in the story of Zach Top and the neotraditional resurgence, and a role that few people appreciate.

Just for the record, Joshua Hedley wrote a couple of the songs for his Neon Blue album too, also with Carson Chamberlain. In fact, Chamberlain co-wrote nine of the album’s 12 songs. So what you’re probably asking now is, who is Carson Chamberlain?

If you want to mine ’90s country gold, go directly to the source. That’s what both Joshua Hedley and Zach Top did. Carson Chamberlain is a Kentucky native that played steel guitar and was the bandleader for Keith Whitley all the way up to Whitley’s death in 1989. After that, Carson was the tour manager for Alan Jackson and Clint Black. Carson Chamberlain quite literally helped craft the ’90s country sound back in the day. Chamberlain also co-wrote every song on Cold Beer & Country Music with Zach Top, and produced the album.

Carson Chamberlin


Another key player is Brent Mason. He played the lead guitar licks on a lot of the hits of Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, George Strait, and others in the ’90s. He also spent years performing at Robert’s Western World on Lower Broadway in Nashville. He also performed many of the lead guitar parts on Zach Top’s Cold Beer & Country Music. Zach Top plays his own lead guitar live, and he does so on a signature Brent Mason custom Fender Telecaster.

But still, some complain that what Zach Top is doing is simply re-creating the sights and sounds of ’90s country in the present tense as opposed to something more original. For sure, Top’s music is ’90s inspired, and it’s also probably fair to point out that some of his songs could use a bit more substance. Zach has said that he and Carson Chamberlain wrote hundreds of songs together leading up to the Cold Beer & Country Music album. This is why there were songs just waiting on the shelf for Joshua Hedley to record. Writing from inspiration instead of perspiration would probably do Zach Top some good.

But what Zach Top is doing in 2025 is no different than what George Strait and Randy Travis were doing in the mid 1980s, Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks were doing in the ’90s, Bill Monroe was doing throughout his bluegrass career, and what The Carter Family was doing in the 1920s. They were all paying forward the sounds and styles of yesteryear, to preserve those traditions in the present tense, and because frankly, they constituted better entertainment than the stuff that existed in the modern time.

And so are Jake Worthington, The Castellows, William Beckmann, and other neotraditionalists, despite not even having been born in the ’90s. So are other throwback artists such as Charley Crockett, Sierra Ferrell, Kimmi Bitter, Jesse Daniel, and so on and so forth. The reasons they’re drawing such large audiences is because it’s appealing to both young and old, with the younger generations hearing the music of their parents they grew up with, but seeing performers their age like Zach Top performing it. It’s the best of both worlds.

This is country music. It’s about bringing the past forward, to remember, to preserve, to be entertained, to keep the circle unbroken, and to recognize that you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. That is the magic, the allure, and the ever-present cycle of country music’s influences.

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