Zach Top, Jake Worthington Evoke George Strait, Alan Jackson at the Ryman
It’s been a big weekend in Music City as Billy Strings has been playing sold-out shows at the Bridgestone Arena, while just down the street at the Ryman Auditorium, Zach Top played two sold-out shows of his own. And being in Nashville, you knew that guest collaborations would be a big part of these presentations.
Country music is going through a big revitalization of the ’90s country sound, and it’s off the backs of guys like Zach Top, as well as Texas native Jake Worthington with his 2023 self-titled album.
But you have to wonder, how do these young men feel about the state of country music themselves? They might revitalize the sound. But would they revitalize the sentiments of Outlaws like Willie & Waylon, or of their ’90s country heroes like George Strait and Alan Jackson, who famously sang the country protest song “Murder on Music Row” written by Larry Cordle and Larry Shell.
Well on Friday night (2-28), we got our answer. “Nashville in general has a real good knack for ruining country music,” Zach Top said while introducing Jake Worthington to the stage. And then right there on the stage of the Country Music Mother Church, the two sang their own version of “Murder On Music Row.”
It also happened to be a damn fine version of the the song as well, showcasing the stellar voices of the two young men.
Also on Friday, country legend Mark Chesnutt took to Facebook randomly and declared, “After a long long time of thinking that my kind of country music was gone forever, I FINALLY HAVE HOPE! That hope is ZACH TOP! He’s single handedly bringing real country music back. GEORGE JONES would call him the real deal!”
Chesnutt said similar things about Jake Worthington at the 2024 Two Step Inn Festival. And if Mark Chesnutt is praising you, you know you’ve earned it.
The collaboration some people have been anticipating is Billy Strings and Zach Top taking the stage together once again, especially since Top just released a 3-song EP showcasing Strings. Since Billy and Zach were busy playing their own shows Friday (2-28) and Saturday (3-1) night, there was no opportunity for a collaboration. But on Sunday, Strings is playing his own Ryman show, and Zach Top is off. We’ll have to see if Zach Top shows up for that one.
March 2, 2025 @ 9:40 am
I’ve been visiting the site the last couple of days hoping for a story on Ingrid Andress’ great performance of the national anthem.
It took some guts to make her return performing the exact same song that threatened to destroy her career.
Unfortunately though it seems to have received only a tiny fraction of the coverage that her disastrous performance last year received.
March 2, 2025 @ 9:50 am
For the record, I made the editorial decision to not cover the Ingrid Andress National Anthem performance because I found it VERY mid. And judging from many of the comments online, it would have just become a forum for more criticism of her, despite the praise others seem to be giving it.
Besides, Ingrid Andress is not exactly a beat I cover on a regular basis. I covered her first National Anthem debacle because it was an example of the mediocre talent pool mainstream country music pulls from, something directly called out by a song like “Murder On Music Row.”
March 2, 2025 @ 10:41 pm
You “covered” it because it was an excuse for you to talk trash on a newer artist. You’re insufferable and country music STILL doesn’t need saving.
March 2, 2025 @ 10:56 pm
I’m definitely insufferable. And you’re right. It’s a fair question to ask if country music still needs saving with Zach Top, Jake Worthington, and Billy Strings running around.
But this is a very, very weird place to open up an attack vector on my Ingrid Andress coverage from seven moths ago that was basically par for the course from ANY country music outlet.
Again, I avoided broaching the subject now to avoid drama and negativity. Y’all are doing an excellent job making sure it gets brought to Ingrid anyway.
March 3, 2025 @ 1:39 am
That’s fair enough, I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s your site and you should be free to cover whatever you wish.
Speaking about the media as a whole rather than singling you out, I find it quite unfortunate (and typical of today’s climate) that establishments are very quick to cover the fall during the lowest point of someone’s life, but not the redemption part of story. Let’s take a minute to appreciate the balls it took to come back and not do a set of your own material, but a live, a cappella version of a notoriously difficult song that almost destroyed your career in front of an arena full of sports fans!
In my eyes, every establishment that reported the original story, should have reported the recent performance (whether one found it to be ‘mid’ or ‘decent’ as I did), but alas that wouldn’t go with the narrative of us being fed far more negative stories than positive ones.
It’s a shame that places veer from the normal beat they cover only for negativity rather than positivity, but that’s the world we live in.
March 3, 2025 @ 9:26 am
Dennis,
For the record, the press release from Ingrid’s label about the performance didn’t go out until this morning (Monday). My guess is now you probably will see more stories about it now. Where I first saw the info was when Whiskey Riff reported on it, and aggregated a bunch of negative reactions to it. That’s when I determined that even if I wrote a positive story about it, it would simply be a vector for negativity going towards Ingrid. So my editorial decision was to not cover the story at all.
Sometimes NOT covering a story is the best decision to make. I also have to underscore that I am a (mostly) one-man operation. I’m not Rolling Stone or Billboard with the big Penske Corporation behind me, or Whiskey Riff with 15 employees. I’m not going to be able to cover every topic. I cover the ones I believe are most critical to my mission.
March 6, 2025 @ 5:16 am
That’s cool. I’m just not sure how covering the original story was ‘critical to your mission’. She’s signed to Warners Nashville but clearly isn’t a country act and I don’t think she has ever claimed to be.
You are far from alone in being a writer who will publish a story about a negative moment rather than one about the positive. It’s a sickness in the human condition sadly.
March 3, 2025 @ 11:44 pm
hello
March 2, 2025 @ 4:55 pm
I saw that on Instagram and feel vindicated for my comments on how she has little vocal talent and that she does these weird vocal’isms what a talented singer would just hit that higher note. Early Taylor Swift is 100% to blame for that because every other open-mic’er chick was suddenly viable on the big stage then.
March 2, 2025 @ 4:21 pm
It doesn’t bother me that they played the song, but how many times do we have to hear that Music Row and modern country sucks?? WE KNOW! Waylon and George Jones made that loud and clear. Get on with it and leave pop country to the schmucks.
March 2, 2025 @ 5:09 pm
I agree that criticizing Music Row has become its own cliche, and have said as much many times over the years about certain “protest ” songs. But Zach Top and Jake Worthington are both in their 20s, and don’t have a long history of doing this stuff. They just wanted to pay tribute to a couple of their heroes at the Ryman, and I think it was a really cool moment. They also both sung the hell out of the song. In fact, I’m surprised more isn’t being made of the moment.
March 2, 2025 @ 5:23 pm
Great job, Trigger!. These guys sound great too.”Murder On Music Row” is an iconic song for George Strait, Alan Jackson And Lee Ann Womack. The melody is so true and relevant today for both George Strait and Alan Jackson who have experienced horrible tragedies in their families. The song is personal and relevant to my current situation.
March 2, 2025 @ 5:51 pm
The only version of “Murder on Music Row” that I can listen to is Larry Cordle’s original. I thought the Straight-Jackson version was ridiculous on its face–two of the biggest stars on country radio crying crocodile tears over what country radio is not playing. I still cringe at it. This new version sound like play acting.
If I want to hear a country song ripping country radio, I’ll put on Dale Watson. “Help me Merle, I’m breaking out in a Nashville rash…..I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash, Hmm, hmm.” Funny, and from the heart. Dale’s one one of the greatest honky tonkers of his generation and I don’t think he’s ever had a single on the radio,
And I saw Dale open for Merle in a stand-up club in Downtown Manhattn (no seating) before he had tattoos.
March 3, 2025 @ 12:55 am
You mean “too country like NAMEDROPPING Johnny Cash”
I love Johnny, but his music had a lot of rock/blues and alternative sounds. His famous American Recordings are unapologetically more Americana than country.
But putting his name in country is as country as drinkin’, cheatin’, mama and Dog.
March 3, 2025 @ 3:08 am
Performers who name drop Cash, Haggard, Waylon, Hank, Strait, Jones, etc to try and get “country” credibility just end up looking ridiculous. If you were country, your music would say you were country. The music speaks for you. Name dropping is a pathetic rap crap thing.
March 3, 2025 @ 11:43 am
@black, @nic–Well, it depends on how it’s done and if it sounds honest and heartfelt–and if the song is good, in its own right. Are you guys going to say that “Set ’em Up, Joe,” is a bad song because it “name drops” ET and “Walking the Floor?”
When Moe Bandy “name dropped” Hank Williams, it worked because, whatever Bandy’s skills as a singer, you got the sense that he really did listen to Hank Williams and performed his songs in honkytonks when he was starting out.
Johnny Cash may not have been “country” if you define it as making records that sound like the top country hits of a given period, but that’s only how radio programmers or radio chart fans define it. From “Five Feet High and Rising,” “Hey Porter” and “I Walk the Line” to “A Boy Named Sue” and, yes, “Hurt,” The whole country knew Cash was country.
And Dale Watson needs to name drop Cash or Merle to get “country cred” like a tiger needs to name drop a lion to get “jungle cred.” Dale has it in spades
March 3, 2025 @ 1:16 pm
Ernest Tubb isn’t well-known like Cash and Nelson.
March 9, 2025 @ 3:14 pm
In a just world he would be, along with Floyd Tillman, Merle Travis, Ernie Ford and a lot of the other guys from that period.
The guys who did their chores in the 1940’s seems to be largely neglected in the popular narration of country music.
Or maybe they died too late to be interesting.
March 4, 2025 @ 10:18 am
Lucky was that at the Rodeo bar? If so I was there, saw him every time he comes to NYC
March 2, 2025 @ 5:57 pm
Well, let’s do something about it and start seeing some Damn fine country music.
MAKE GEORGE JONES, ALAN JACKSON, AND GEORGE STRAIT PROUD,,,,LETS HEAR A BIG HELL YA!!!!
March 2, 2025 @ 6:52 pm
What about 4th music generation Ben Scrugs age 10 on the opry last night with Marty Stuart?
March 2, 2025 @ 8:39 pm
They should follow it up with “A Few Ole Country Boys”
March 3, 2025 @ 3:56 am
… zach top’s earworm “i never lie” is most likely going to be one of the singles of the year and i love jake worthington’s singing, style and songs, however, zach top’s statement “Nashville in general has a real good knack for ruining country music” is as false as it can be. only a grand stand of imbeciles might cheer to nonsense like that from someone, who has – in my book – still to prove that he can come up with something evolutionary and not just reactionary in country music. let’s see.
in history and reality nashville has been the beating heart of country music – everything else is just minor organs in the greater scheme of things.
March 3, 2025 @ 8:20 am
Nashville is not the “beating heart.” It is the Mother Brain and economic epicenter. Those are two different things.
March 3, 2025 @ 1:24 pm
Tommy Boy obviously never heard of Bakersfield or the old cowboy songs that constitute Country & Western.
March 3, 2025 @ 1:23 pm
Go back to CountryUniverse, Tom.
Nashville has done it best to ruin country music. Fortunately, every generation, a new crop of singers arrives to save the genre and then the cycle starts again.
Country music would be in much better shape if Nashville never became a thing.
Zach Top doesn’t need to be evolutionary. He just needs to be good. Evolutionary is how you end up with carpetbaggers like Jonathan Keefe praising non-country junk like Amythyst Kiah. Because they want country music to not be country music.
The Neo-Traditionalists were based in tradition. Zach Top sounds like his idols. His idols were demigods in the genre. That works.
March 4, 2025 @ 4:27 am
…„”if there’s one thing i found, you can’t change the way you sound, you can only change the words that you choose” sings american aquarium’s bj barham in “southern roots” wisely (album “the fear of standing still”, 2024).
perhaps food for thought for you, countryknight.
March 9, 2025 @ 3:18 pm
Nashville did more to ruin country & western than any joke could ever manage.
In fact, Nashville IS the joke.
When asked to explain the Nashville Sound, it’s co-creator Chet Atkins shook a handfull of pocket change.