Traditional country’s most credible recent arrival comes to the Finger Lakes this summer. Zach Top’s Cold Beer & Country Music Summer Tour ’26 stops at CMAC in Canandaigua on Saturday, August 8 — a booking from The Bowery Presents that, given Top’s trajectory over the past two years, looks less like a gamble and more like well-timed positioning.
About Zach Top
Top’s music operates in a register that most of Nashville abandoned somewhere around the mid-’90s: unhurried honky-tonk with real pedal steel, real twang, and lyrics that assume the listener is an adult. His 2023 debut A Solid Year generated the kind of slow-burn word-of-mouth that no publicist can engineer — it reached people who had stopped paying attention to country altogether, and it held up on repeat listens. The live show, according to those who’ve been in the room, matches the record’s directness. Whether CMAC’s 15,000-capacity outdoor setting brings out the full weight of that material is the question worth showing up to answer. Special guest Wyatt McCubbin opens the evening.
About the Venue
CMAC — the Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center — occupies a genuinely enviable spot in the Rochester / Finger Lakes touring circuit. The outdoor amphitheater in Canandaigua sits in the middle of wine country, and a warm August evening here carries a particular quality: open sky, a hint of the lake in the air, and the sense that you’re somewhere rather than just somewhere with a stage. For music with Top’s unhurried, plainspoken sensibility, that setting is a better fit than any climate-controlled shed would be.
Tickets & Pricing
Tickets are on sale now. VIP upgrades include the Keybank Headliner Lounge at $30 — a private tent with a complimentary drink voucher, snacks, and dedicated restrooms — and the Corona Cabana at $25, which offers fenced lawn access, a private bar, and Adirondack chairs for the first 100 guests. Premium lot parking off Lakeshore Drive runs $30 with advance purchase only. Doors open at 6:30 PM; showtime is 8:00 PM. Artist presale registration was available at zachtop.com.