New Billy Gibbons Album HARDWARE out now and Global Listening Party next Tuesday
June 4, 2021
Hardware, the widely anticipated third solo album from ZZ Top front man Billy F Gibbons hits this week with official release set for Friday, June 4, The album, recorded during the heat of last summer in California’s high desert near Joshua Tree, includes a total of 12 tracks, 11 of which were written by Billy and collaborators for the album plus “Hey Baby, Que Paso,” the Texas Tornados classic. The album’s release has been preceded by three videos to date including “My Lucky Number,“ “Desert High” and “West Coast Junkie.” A fourth video, “She’s On Fire,” will be out June 10; all were shot on location by Texas filmmaker Harry Reese while the album was in production.
Concord Records is hosting a Global Virtual Listening Party on Tuesday, June 8 to mark the release of the album. It will afford participants across the planet an opportunity to stream Hardware and chat live with Billy as well as with Matt Sorum and Austin Hanks, his Hardwarebandmates. The event launches at 12 Noon/Pacific, 3 PM/Eastern, 2 PM/Central, 8 PM/GMT+1, 5 AM(Wednesday)/AEST.
Link to register: Global Virtual Listening Party
Billy Gibbons commented, “It’s gonna be a good time and we’re looking forward to checking out the grooves with everybody in the world, known or otherwise, who wants to join us. We’re really delighted with the way it turned out, not to mention that we managed to avoid rattlesnake bites and cactus punctures over the course of the recording process.”
Hardware follows The Big Bad Blues and Perfectamundo in Billy Gibbons’ solo canon. The album was produced by Gibbons along with Matt Sorum and Mike Florentino with engineer Chad Shlosser providing additional production.
Sorum, veteran of Guns ‘N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver and The Cult, also serves as Hardware’s drummer and was joined in the album’s core band by guitarist Austin Hanks. The same Gibbons-Sorum-Hanks aggregation recorded The Big Bad Blues, Billy’s previous solo effort for Concord and winner of a Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Award. The new album’s title is a tribute to the late Joe Hardy, the beloved recording engineer who worked with Gibbons and ZZ Top on projects dating back to the mid-1980s.
Advance reviews of Hardware include Bill Bentley’s piece in Americana Highways where he notes, “..the electric guitars are turned up to ‘stun,’ and the backbeat boogie is sun-cooked into the grooves. Guy Oddy, writing for TheArtsDesk.com (UK) opined, “This is good time, beer drinking music for sweaty bars in the summer heat and has no interest in posing and pretense. But when you can make a guitar sing like Billy Gibbons, what have you got left to prove to anyone?”
Hardware track listing
My Lucky Card
She’s On Fire
More-More-More
Shuffle, Step & Slide
Vagabond Man
Spanish Fly
West Coast Junkie
Stackin’ Bones (featuring Larkin Poe)
I Was A Highway
S-G-L-M-B-B-R
Hey Baby, Que Paso
Desert High
