Zach Top Says Willie Nelson Gave The Stamp Of Approval On His “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” Cover

The Willie Nelson stamp of approval.

Today, Zach Top is the guest on the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast, and he talked all about getting his start in country music, his forthcoming sophomore album Ain’t In It For My Health (which is due everywhere on August 29th), and some of the legends he’s gotten to meet since bursting onto the scene as one of the hottest young acts in the genre.

They talked about George Strait and Alan Jackson, who Top has opened for before, and he said the other two legends he’d love to meet that he hasn’t had a chance to yet would be Willie and Hank Williams Jr. While he hasn’t met Willie yet, he did get the stamp of approval from the red headed stranger that Willie really like his cover of his classic heartbreaker, “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning.”

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 said it’s one of his all-time favorites, which I wholeheartedly agree with, and I love that he’s continuing to bring it to a new generation of fans who have likely never heard the song before.

Zach said that he’s friends with Willie’s son Lukas, who is also a very talented artist, 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…

Zach also talked about meeting Chris and Morgane Stapleton, who he’s a huge fan of:

“Stapleton was another big one, Chris Stapleton. I hadn’t met him until just at the ACM‘s back in April… anyway I’d seen him a couple times just in passing and kind of done the thing where it’s like, man, am I really gonna be another guy that goes up to him? But anyway, I went up to him, he was super nice, him his wife Morgane. That was that was a cool one, big, big fan of him.”

And he recalled how cool it was when Luke Combs came up to him during an award show last year to tell him he was a fan, which is so humble and so on-brand for Combs:

“Luke Combs was one that was just like, I saw him at the CMA’s for the first time last fall, and I’d seen him across the room, wasn’t going to go bother him. anyway, he ended up coming up to me and was just cool as can be. Just like ‘Dude, I’ve heard your stuff, love it. You sound great.’ Its’ so awesome, I’ve been a fan of him for a long time.”

Between Stapleton, Combs and Top, they’re three of the best, if not the three best, acts in mainstream country right now, so it’s cool to hear about the mutual respect they have for each other and now that I’m thinking about it, I would actually do anything to hear the three of them sing together… no one matches them vocally, and maybe at least two of them will collab one day. We deserve that.

And if you’ve never heard Zach’s “Last Thing I Needed Cover,” it’s well past time to change that. Aside from the aforementioned Chris Stapleton, who also does an incredible cover of this song, you can’t beat this:

I can never, ever get enough of this one… inject it into my veins.

“Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning”

The full podcast:

The post Zach Top Says Willie Nelson Gave The Stamp Of Approval On His “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” Cover first appeared on Whiskey Riff.