Billy Gibbons celebrated his 76th birthday in December. And while most of his contemporaries who have hit the three-quarter century mark are kicking back and enjoying retirement, the ZZ Top founding member is racing through 2026 with plenty planned.
The year opened with Gibbons flying solo with help from his own band, The BFG’s, whose current line-up is rounded out by Hammond B-3 organ maestro Mike Flanigin and Chris “Whipper” Layton, one-half of the Texas rhythm section Double Trouble best-known for holding the bottom down for the late Stevie Ray Vaughan.
With the solo jaunt behind him, Gibbons has returned to his full-time job leading ZZ Top, the band he founded back in 1969, fresh off of playing with Houston psychedelic rockers the Moving Sidewalks. The trio will perform Thursday, April 9, and Friday, April 10, at the Majestic Theatre as part of its latest tour.
While ZZ Top’s debut, the appropriately named ZZ Top’s First Album dropped in 1971, the self-described “Little Ol’ Band from Texas” became a model of longevity. The lineup, rounded out by bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard, was unchanged until 2021, when Hill died at the age of 72.
For Gibbons, the death of his longtime friend and bandmate came as a shock.
“We of course miss the Dust,” Gibbons said in a recent interview. “He said while he wanted to do this gig, he said he was really out of sorts,” the guitarist said. “That was kind of the telling tale. I didn’t think much about it that night. I said, ‘Hey man, we’ve got a two-week break. Go home and you’ve got to go see the physician. Check yourself out. I hear you, if you’re not 100%, let’s get to the bottom of it.’ That was that and the poor guy I think was plain and simple worn out.”
Hill’s running buddy and guitar tech Elwood Francis quickly stepped into his late friend’s role, something for which Gibbons was grateful.
“The funny thing is that Elwood had judiciously kept the lid on the fact that him and Dusty were two peas in a pod,” Gibbons explained. “Elwood was teaching Dusty bass figures and they were trading off stuff. Our willing stand-in, Mr. Elwood Francis, is now holding down the bottom of the Top.”
A big factor in ZZ Top’s longevity has been the band’s willingness to simultaneously cling to its blues roots while infusing a disparate twist into the creative process. The first time came at the dawn of the ’80s, when the band started experimenting with synthesizers, a move that started with 1981’s El Loco and exploded with the 1983 follow-up Eliminator.
As Gibbons recalled, a swing through England at the time planted the seeds for a pivot that made ZZ Top fixtures on the then-emerging MTV.
“London set the stage initially when we became pals with the cutting-edge band Depeche Mode,” Gibbons recalled. “On returning stateside, we were confronted somewhat unexpectedly by sequencers, synths and all the allied gear in the town where rock ’n’ roll, blues, rockabilly and everything else worth listening to finds its origin: Memphis, Tennessee. The staff at Ardent studio were always standing at the forefront of the ‘what’s happening’ scene and offered to join in with the experiment of the ‘science project gone wrong’ and liked what we heard. We just engaged the weird gear on hand and made it work for us.”
And while ZZ Top eventually returned to a more guitar-driven sound, experimentation was never completely off the table. The band’s most recent studio outing, 2012’s La Futura, released on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings imprint, found the trio working with Houstonians and hip-hop artists DJ DMD with Lil’ Keke and Fat Pat. For Gibbons, throwing in those creative curveballs all part of ZZ Top’s creative process.
“We just go for it and ZZ fans dig it,” Gibbons said.
Currently, the Texas trio are continuing a busy tour schedule, hitting a good portion of the United States. Fans can expect a set list that covers the breadth of the ZZ Top canon.
“[Our show is] just going to be three guys bashing it out loud and proud,” Gibbons said. “In other words, that ZZ thing with songs dating back to the start of the band as well as the ones everyone always wants to hear, along with some random surprises — especially random to us three … gotta shout out those lines!”
Another recent song could be poised to move into the mix, “Livin’ It Up Down In Texas,” a collaboration with longtime friend Billy Bob Thornton for the latter’s recent Paramount series Landman. Also joining in on the song are Thornton’s co-star and country artist Mark Collie.
“Billy Bob called me up and said [creator] Taylor [Sheridan] wants some music,” Gibbons said. “Billy Bob said he had an idea that maybe he and I should do something. He wanted it to be the BFG thing, and I asked if he had any ideas. He said to give me a minute and he’d send me a text. All I got was a text of a picture of an oil well engulfed in flames. He said, ‘Let’s write it to sound like this.’ It’s called ‘Livin’ It Up Down [In] Texas.’”
While there are rumors Francis recorded some songs with Hill before the latter’s passing, Gibbons is cryptic about whether that might lead to additional ZZ Top studio material.
“We, too, would relish owning an accurate and definitive answer,” he said. “All we know is the dials continue turning in the studio, and … even out down the asphalt with a big, bad batch of our brand of sonic sauces. Always something brewing from our collective mindset.”
$84 and up, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 9, and 8 p.m. Friday, April 10, Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St., (210) 226-3333, majesticempire.com.
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