The ZZ Top Notes: San Antonio, 12/7-12/8/13

In the conclusion to the background notes to the 2013 Austin Chronicle cover story, the entire band finally speaks to me, and Billy Gibbons leads us through a scene from A Hard Day's Night.

Billy F. Gibbons and Tim Stegall at South Texas Pop Cultural Center, San Antonio, TX., 12/8/13. (photographer unknown)

NOTE: This installment concludes the background notes then-Austin Chronicle Music Editor Raoul Hernandez requested for ZZ Top: Tracking The Beards, the paper’s Dec. 27, 2013 cover story. The notes would have made a helluva article in and of themselves. It’s been an honor presenting them. If you need to catch up, here’s Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Please let me know if you would also like to see the interview transcripts. Meantime, we rejoin Our Heroes at San Antonio’s Alamodome…. 

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS – 12/7/13

"Tim, you have pockets on you?" 

Billy F. Gibbons is coming at me with a jar of Central Market Peanut Butter. The kind that's natural. Which means it must be kept in a refrigerator, and has to be stirred before it's spread.

"Man, this is some good-spreadin' peanut butter," he says. "You need to take this home. But you need some crackers to spread it on," he says, dashing into the next room, where ZZ Top had changed into their stage clothes earlier in the evening, before playing to 14, 000 people at the Alamodome.

Next thing I know, ZZ Top's singer/guitarist/mastermind is handing me boxes of both Ritz crackers and Premium Saltines. "You need both for that peanut butter, man. And pockets aren't gonna do. We need a bag for you."

I reach into my small briefcase. "It just so happens that Austin recently outlawed plastic shopping bags, Billy," I inform him. "So, I have to carry these canvas grocery shopping bags everywhere now."

"Outstanding!" he says. He soon starts shoveling everything on that Lil’ Ol’ Band From Texas’ dressing room rider into my bags. "Here, you need some Dr. Pepper...and Fanta Orange...and ginger ale. Oh, man! Do you drink tea? Here, we've got all kindsa tea! Now you need something to sweeten it!" Gibbons says, now stuffing my pocket with packets of Sweet 'n' Low. "Here, you need to drink more water! Have some fruit - that can be your breakfast! Peanuts - there's your protein! Mustard, honey...oh, we've got juice! Here, you need your juice!" Then he begins scooping up handfuls of plastic knives and forks. "You need some silverware, right?"

Then he looks at me with profundity. "Always take the rider home with you. When you're on the road, you never know where the next meal is coming from."

And so it is that Billy F. Gibbons did my grocery shopping for the next week.