Zach Top Told His Parents He Was Dropping Out Of Engineering School To Pursue Music, But It Was Really Because Of A Girl

The real story on how Zach Top got his start.

Today, he’s 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.

He also got into the details on how he ended up in Nashville from his hometown of Sunnyside, Washington, after first moving to Boulder, Colorado for college and falling in love. In fact, he was one year away from getting his mechanical engineering degree at CU Boulder, though when he met his then-girlfriend, he started skipping his circuits class and ultimately failed the course.

It was a class that was only offered in the Spring, so if he was going to complete his degree, he was going to have to wait an entire year to finish, and he had no interest in that whatsoever. But he couldn’t tell his parents he was quitting because of a girl, so he told them it was because of his passion for music… while that wasn’t totally untrue, that wasn’t the real reason for why he wasn’t graduating:

“I mean, I’ve always wanted to. That was always kind of the goal, but I think, you know, my parents having no exposure to the music business… I didn’t have, being in Washington, I didn’t really have anyone to guide me on what I need to do to get into the music business. So I was just playing and singing, I practiced like crazy, and that was kind of it.

And then in college, I moved to Boulder, went to CU Boulder for a year. I guess three semesters. And then decided I hated it, and I was a year away from finishing a mechanical engineering degree, and decided I was sick of it. Well, that was my story to my parents. I started dating a girl… and never went to my circuits class and failed that class, and then I was gonna have to take, it was like one of those that only is offered in the Spring or something, so it was gonna take a whole extra year to go back and do that circuits class again.

So I was like, I think I’m done. I’m gonna go work construction and save money and move to Nashville. That was not what I told my parents when I told them I was quitting school, though.”

He got a job working in construction, then started posting videos online, mostly on Facebook, and it was one of a cover of “Spilled Whiskey” that went viral in 2018 that first started garnering some attention.

Top started getting emails from random scammers who wanted him to pay them to help cut a record, but it wasn’t until a producer by the name of Carson Chamberlain reached out that he finally felt like he was getting a legit opportunity:

“I told them, I was just like, ‘No, it’s just, music is where my heart is at. This is really what I gotta do.’ But that was always their advice to me, was just, go get a good job and you can go play Bluegrass festivals on the weekend with your buddies. And so that was kind always what I thought I’d do. I started working construction, started posting some of these videos on Facebook was kind of the first thing that I did. That was the first one that blew up for me anyway. I’d posted a few and I’d get like 1500 views or something. It wasn’t nothing.

But a named Daryle Singletary, who was one of my favorite singers, he was late 90’s, early 2000’s guy. Phenomenal singer, real old-school sounding. And he passed away in February of 2018 and I put up a video, ‘Spilled Whiskey’ was the song. I put that up and that was the first, it blew up, it got like 330,000 views or something like that on Facebook. And so I got a few calls from and emails from people in Nashville, mostly like shyster types, like if you can come up with $20,000 we’ll cut you a record and make you a star. And I didn’t know anything about the music business, but I was pretty sure that that was not how it worked.

And a guy named Carson Chamberlain, who is my producer to this day, sent me some email. Well it’s funny, the girl I was dating at the time was the one that saw it… he sent some email, and didn’t hardly say anything in it. Was just like, ‘Hey, my name is Carson Chamberlain. Been in the music business a while. I’m not much for tooting my own horn but you can probably look me up if you want to. Give me a call sometime if you wanna talk about working together.’ So my girlfriend texted me, she was like, ‘Do you remember this Chamberlain guy?'”

His ex-girlfriend, who he later married and is now divorced from, encouraged him to reach out after finding out Chamberlain had been Keith Whitley’s steel player, and worked with many other big names in the business.

Top contacted him, and Carson started flying him out to Nashville, let him stay at his house, set up co-writes, and four years later, helped him put out his debut album Cold Beer & Country Music last year, which was a big hit, and along with the viral hit “I Never Lie,” put him on the map and helped his career really explode:

“I was like, ‘No, not really. and she was like I’m sending you a Wikipedia link right now, you’re gonna wanna call this guy back.’ Pulled up the link, and he was Keith Whitley‘s steel player and band leader, tour managed Alan Jackson for a few years, you know, big producer on Mark Wills, Billy Currington, Easton Corbin, a bunch of guys that I was a fan of already and stuff.

I was like, oh dang, well this guy might actually be legit. He came about it a much different way too, he wasn’t asking for money to go in and cut songs. He was like, ‘Man, let’s see if we can be buddies and then we’ll see if we can work together after that.’ I started coming to town that fall of 2018. He would fly me in, let me stay at his house set, up co-writes for us. He was big-time mentor and kind of a father figure for me out here as well.

I started working with him, we wrote songs for four years I guess before we ever put out that first record last year. He showed me the ropes on the music business, making records, everything. That was kind of my first foot in the door where it was like, ‘Oh, if this guy thinks I got something, maybe I can have a chance at making it in this business.”

It’s a pretty unique story, especially considering Zach went about his career very differently than most other young artists in the country genre… he fully moved to Nashville after laying the ground work for many years, when normally an artist will move first then try to figure it out from there.

Of course, his raw, natural talent was apparent even in those old Facebook videos he referenced, though he certainly wouldn’t have been able to fast track his career the way he did without Chamberlain, who also produced Zach’s forthcoming sophomore album, Ain’t In It For My Health.

But if his parents are watching the podcast or reading this now, it’s safe to say they might be surprised about why their son really dropped out of school before becoming a mechanical engineer, but also, I’m sure they might’ve had a little bit of an idea. Plus, it has certainly worked out for him in the long run…

You can watch the full episode here:

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