The ZZ Top Files: Nashville, Part Two

As we resume the background notes for my 2013 Austin Chronicle cover story on the Lil’ Ol’ Band From Texas, we’re still in Nashville, and Billy F. Gibbons is still avoiding our interview.

(Pic courtesy zztop.com)

Thursday, November 22, 2013: Nashville, TN

"What would Ernest Tubb do?" So reads a bumper sticker above Elwood Francis' workstation. This question surely weighs heavier than usual upon ZZ Top, taking the stage where country music was built. Billy F. Gibbons acknowledges the thick history in the Ryman air, indeed, hits his nervous system hard when ZZ Top plays there. It surely doesn't get easier when beautiful framed portraits of all the greats who have played there - Ray Price, Hank Williams, Faron Young, Minnie Pearl, even Elvis - look down from the backstage corridors.

What Ernest Tubb would do, at least in the collective mind of ZZ Top, is exactly as they would in Austin. Or anywhere else, actually. The set list is identical. Not that this is unusual in big league rock 'n' roll: The mechanics of putting on a show even as stripped-down as Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard presents this year relies on a lot of factors that must be synched night after night, down to lighting cues and suchlike. It all must be precisely choreographed, especially considering that ZZ Top has to play to the movie unspooling on the screens behind them.