ZZ Top

The most spectacular blues/rock festival of ever goes into the third round. Over four hours top performances by Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Steve Winwood, ZZ Top, b.b. King, Ronnie Wood, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill and many others.Crossroads Festival founded by Eric Clapton took place in the summer of 2010 for the third time and brought who is who of the Blues, rock and folk to the stage where the. More than 27,000 fans visited the 11 hours Festival at Toyota Park in Chicago……….

Perfectamundo, the 2015 solo debut from Billy F. Gibbons, found the ZZ Top majordomo indulging in his fascination with Cuban music, which meant that it felt fundamentally different than his main gig. The same can't quite be said of Big Bad Blues, its 2018 follow-up. Working with a band featuring drummer Matt Sorum, guitarist Austin Hanks, harpist James Harman, and bassist Joe Hardy, Gibbons dives deep into blues and boogie that's been at the foundation of ZZ Top since their first album in 1971. Superficially, Gibbons is covering the same ground, but having Big Bad Blues as a busman's holiday does significantly change the feel, particularly in regards to rhythm. Sorum and Hardy provide a looser foundation than Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, which lets Gibbons slither a bit more, plus it's fun to hear him have foils in Harman and Hanks.

Billy F. Gibbons launched his belated solo career in 2015 with Perfectamundo, a loose exercise in Latin rhythms that was slightly outside of the wheelhouse of ZZ Top, which had been his main gig since 1969. Big Bad Blues, its 2018 sequel, could also be seen as a bit of a genre exercise, as it was a heavy blues album, but Hardware is something else entirely. This 2021 platter is a straight-ahead rock & roll album in the vein of ZZ Top, a record filled with originals that feel familiar, as they're built of the same components Gibbons has relied upon for decades: fuzztone guitars, thick swing and burly boogie, sly jokes and growled vocals.