Although they’re approaching their 57th year as a band, ZZ Top has spent the bulk of 2025 on the road, even expanding their ongoing Elevation tour – which began last October – so that it stretches until the end of November.
Late last month, the Texas trio of guitarist/singer Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard, and bassist Elwood Francis – who replaced the late Dusty Hill in 2021 – came to the region for two dates: first at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster and then the Wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem. Following the pair of gigs, Rock Music Menu caught up with Gibbons to touch base on a range of topics.
First up was to see if he was surprised by how well Francis, who did time as Hill’s longtime guitar tech, had been received by the fans over the past few years, as, looking like a dry-spun Q-Tip, he appears to have been seamlessly slotted into the threesome both musically and image-wise.
“Elwood’s got it,” Gibbons said. “And the reality of his long-standing star quality exuded his poised interplanetary acceptance from the very first gig. Not to mention, that huge beard kind of serendipitously sprouted while that peculiar lockdown invited an abject laissez-faire attitude toward scraping chin whiskers. Our initial encounter finding ‘Mr. Wood,’ prompted asking our legion of onsite techs [to ask], ‘Who is the new bearded guy?’”
While Francis’s beard was a hot topic in the ZZ Top camp, he was about to shave it when two things conspired for him to keep the growth. One was the passing of Hill, who had been adamant about “that little ol’ band from Texas” continuing without him, and the other was a certain Hollywood actor and musician in his own right.
“Just in time, Billy Bob Thornton, of all people, sent word to leave the razor alone ‘til he could catch a glimpse of the new Elwood,” Gibbons said. “As it happened, the tradition was maintained with a splendid segue, stepping up and taking the slot of bass-guitarist, full-time. Elwood comes through, night after night, with a wicked, expert raspiness, all about grinding ZZ’s bottom-of-the-top.”
Live, ZZ Top rips through a solid representation of a five-decade-plus catalog of hits. From the bluesy Texas boogie of “La Grange” and “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide,” through the synthesized years of “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Sharp Dressed Man,” few stones are left unturned.
It was that latter era in the mid-’80s that catapulted the group into the mainstream as the iconic videos featuring the perpetually sunglasses-clad trio, two of them sporting lengthy beards, with Frank Beard, ironically, the only one clean-shaven, appearing hourly on MTV. The experimentation with more electronic elements was rooted in an interesting foundation, a relationship with UK synthpop legends Depeche Mode.
“I was introduced into the world within the Depeche orbit, unexpectedly transfixed with their dramatic application over synths and sequencers…all the while submerging into an artistic radius of hard-hitting sounds of soulful rock electronica,” Gibbons said. “We met during an after-show cooling where we exchanged our mutual curiosity with the usual, ‘How do you do that thing you do?’ The quick answer was, ‘Well, let’s dig deep and find out.’ Enlightenment ensued as it worked out over time with us both in studio and onstage.”
Another meeting of note in Gibbons’ past was when his late-’60s, pre-ZZ Top outfit, The Moving Sidewalks, were tapped to open for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the time, they didn’t have enough material to fill out the set and forced to pad it with songs by the headliner, which is not so much a “no-no” as a never, ever do.
“We contracted the Experience tour, later discovering our set was somewhat shy timewise and, having zeroed in intimately with the album’s recorded compositions, we simply added what we were holding special, that being our fav-rave numbers right off our coveted early import of Jimi’s British release,” Gibbons said.
“During the first night’s closing set, a quick glance caught a shadowy side stage view of a lone figure with arms folded, leaning studiously and nodding his head while we ripped through ‘Foxy Lady.’ As we came off the deck, Jimi stepped forward to greet us and said, ‘You cats got nerve. I want to know you.’ That was the inauspicious start of a real friendship. Needless to say, no regrets!”
A version of this article appears in this week’s print and online editions of my syndicated Rock Music Menu column under the title “Catching up with ZZ Top and Billy Gibbons.“
The Chronicles of Michael Christopher 
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