Before ZZ Top embarks on their 50th anniversary celebration next year, guitarist and singer Billy F. Gibbons released his second album on Friday.
The Big Bad Blues, the follow-up to 2015’s Perfectamundo, contains 11 songs – six originals, four covers and one written by Billy’s wife, Gilly Stillwater.
We caught up with Billy on Friday in New York, the day the album was released, and he told us it came together without him even knowing it.
Billy Gibbons on how his new album, The Big Bad Blues, came about:
“The Big Bad Blues has its inauspicious beginnings with booking some session time down in Texas and the next thing you know we’re rockin’ and rollin’ and bluesefying it with some of our favorite stuff. And, the real bonus, you know, when you don’t have that red light glowing through the control room – red light fever is absent – and this is a tell-tale expression of what we call natural, casual, free-form feeling. It was really straight ahead stuff and that’s what got the ball rolling.”
Gibbons starts a tour in support of the album on October 13th in Riverside, Iowa with 27 shows through December 29th in Austin, Texas.