Billy Gibbons Hopes to Release Two Albums This Year

ZZ Top fans can look forward to possibly two new albums from Billy Gibbons in the coming months.

The first is a follow-up to his 2015 solo album Perfectamundo, and the second is newly recorded music by the Moving Sidewalks, the late-'60s psychedelic garage-rock band Gibbons was in before forming ZZ Top.

Gibbons recorded the solo record with the BFG's, the same group that backed him on Perfectamundo. As he told ABC News Radio, it will be a little closer to what's expected from him. "Following the success of Perfectamundo, which was our stab at taking a piece from the Cuban influences … they've said, 'Okay, we've done this Cuban thing, can you go back to your bluesier roots?'" he said. "And we've decided to do just that. So, hopefully summertime we'll see something BFG and blue coming out."

The Moving Sidewalks reunited in 2013 for a couple of shows to promote a two-disc compilation consisting of 1968's Flash and a disc's worth of outtakes. Two years ago, Gibbons said the reunion went so well that he was returning to the studio with the band. He's now offered an update, noting that "hopefully that'll see the light of day. Probably this year."

But first, ZZ Top have three dates left to their residency at Las Vegas' Venetian. Then they'll team up with John Fogerty for the month-long Blues and Bayous Tour that starts on May 25 at the Borgata Spa and Resort in Atlantic City. When Fogerty and Gibbons met to discuss details about the tour, they wound up jamming on each other's tunes and even wrote a song together.

sounds like zz top, is that good or bad?

sounds like zz top, is that good or bad?

"Missin' Yo' Kissin'":

Watch Billy Gibbons’ Lyric Video for ‘Standing Around Crying'



Billy Gibbons has given us another taste of his upcoming album, The Big Bad Blues.

You can watch the lyric video for "Standing Around Crying" above. The Muddy Waters cover is an exclusive premiere.

"When we decided that our next solo album would focus on the blues ... make that The Big Bad Blues, we felt it was absolutely necessary to join with a Muddy Waters influence because if he hadn’t left Stovall’s Plantation and moved to Chicago where he ‘discovered electricity,’ we’d be living in a very different world," Gibbons tells UCR.

"He first recorded 'Standing Around Crying' in 1952 and Chess released it first on 78 RPM so that’s really going a ways back. The song is, on a certain level, a bridge between the rural blues of his early days in the Mississippi Delta and the electric blues of his Chicago reign. James Harmon, in tribute to the original, did a great job channeling Junior Wells' harmonica tone as this was recorded just as Little Walter left Muddy’s band and Junior came in to replace him for a short time."

"The cadence of the song brought to mind the rhythm of choppin’ that wood so we searched for that vintage lumberjack footage for the lyric video," Gibbons continues. "Of course, we have our respective 'axes' in common so there’s that. It’s the blues in a forest of green, rendered, of course, in black and white."