You can debate just how seriously the classic southern rock band ZZ Top really takes itself, and how seriously fans take it.
The announcement of a 50th anniversary summer/fall tour that launches Aug. 16 from Sunlight Supply Amphitheater suggests pretty seriously.
ZZ Top specializes in sly, funny, suggestive lyrics and a submerged-by-facial-hair signature look. The only guy in the trio who doesn’t wear a beard as big as the Texas state flag is the drummer, whose name is Frank Beard. No, really. You can’t make this stuff up.
“It’s been five decades, and I think we’re starting to get pretty good at all this,” guitarist and songwriter Billy F. Gibbons says on the ZZ Top website, where the band announced the launch of its 50th anniversary tour at our Fairgrounds-area amphitheater.
If You Go
What: ZZ Top with Cheap Trick.
When: 7 p.m. Aug. 16.
Where: Sunlight Supply Amphitheater, 17200 N.E. Delfel Road, Ridgefield.
Cost: Tickets start at $25.
On the web: SunlightSupplyAmphitheater.com, ZZTop.com
The opening act is Cheap Trick, another classic band with a lighthearted vibe that’s been around nearly as long. Cheap Trick was founded in 1973; ZZ Top started spinning in 1969.
What’s totally serious is ZZ Top’s musical chops and Texas cred. The band launched in Houston and considered naming itself ZZ King, after bluesy inspiration B.B. King, before subbing in its career destination: the top. Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill may sport glittery outfits and choreograph hand gestures and leg wobbles for laughs, but the band’s driving, gritty, guitar-hero sound is as no-nonsense as rock and roll gets.
When ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 2004, the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards gave the speech, calling the band “The heartbeat of the whole country. They know their blues and they know how to dress it up.”
Tickets go on sale 10 a.m. today, through Ticketmaster.
