• AllMyVinyl #116
• Band: Billy F Gibbons
• Album Title: Hardware
• Release Date: 4 Jun 2021
• Date purchased: 27 Mar 2021
• Location purchased: Record Label
• Color of vinyl: orange (or as they call it – “orange crush”)
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

“Out from the mountain of soul!”

This one is one I get to play a little bit of name dropping.  It’s well known I have helped out a few of the Sabbath guys doing websites and social media.  One of them is Geezer Butler.  Been involved with him for awhile now.  A few years back, Geezer started to put a new band together after Sabbath was “finished” in 2017, and this band was called Deadland Ritual.  They came out with a couple of songs in 2018 and 2019.  Sadly, once covid was over, they decided they didn’t want to do it anymore, so we just got two songs out of them (Broken & Bruised and Down in Flames).  The drummer in Deadland was Matt Sorum who is well known for being in Guns & Roses, Velvet Revolver, and several other bands.  But he’s the reason I’m heading down this path.  In helping publicize Deadland (through Geezer’s socials/site), I had a lot of communications with Matt through email and I found out in early 2021, Matt was playing drums with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top on Billy’s new album to come out in the summer of 2021.  So I instantly jumped on that.

I ordered the album direct from the record label (Rounder Records) as they had a cool looking orange vinyl available.  The cover has what mostly looks like the Eliminator car from ZZ Top, and the vinyl itself has a picture of an odometer from said car, and just a cool looking orange colour, so I quite liked the sheer visuals.  The cover art itself is plain, but it doesn’t matter – it sets a mood.

Billy Gibbons basically *IS* ZZ Top.  Now I know Frank Beard & Dusty Hill are super important to the overall ZZ sound, but Billy is the lead vocalist and lead guitarist.  An awful lot of what makes the ZZ Top sound is him.  So when he does a solo record that’s him singing and playing guitar, it’s going to sound a lot like ZZ Top, and this album does to an extent.  It’s not a ZZ Top album under a different name or anything, but there’s a LOT to the overall sound of this album that will be super familiar to fans of ZZ.

One odd thing, when I ordered it from the label, and they delivered it, the copy arrived warped.  It still played, tho.  The needle went up and down a lot, so I contacted the label.  To their credit, they immediately sent me a replacement. In fact, they sent me TWO replacements – for a time I had three copies of the album on vinyl.  I gave away the warped copy to a friend who didn’t really care about that, and the other one to another friend – share the wealth I guess, since I didn’t really need three copies of Billy Gibbbons’ third solo album. :)

The band on this album is credited oddly.  In fact, Billy plays most everything (except drums).  Check these credits:

• Billy Gibbons – vocals, guitars, bass guitar, ‘virtual’ bass
• Austin Hanks – guitars, bass guitar, ‘virtual’ bass
• Matt Sorum – drums, bass guitar
• Larkin Poe – vocals on “Stackin’ Bones”

What exactly “virtual bass” is, I don’t know, and Gibbons, Hanks, & Sorum all are listed as bass.  “Big Bottom” anyone? #SpinalTap

Anyway, there’s not a ton of intro here, as it’s a new-ish album, and there was no backstory to this beyond what I said above.  It’s oddly a short one.  In fact, there’s 12 songs on here and the entire album is 37 minutes long (a late 70’s early 80’s length).  The longest one is 4:01, with quite a few of them coming in under 3 minutes.  So no “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” on this album.  :)   Lets get to some songs…

My Lucky Card (2:34) – This starts off the album and song with a dirty as hell guitar riff, sounds like something right out of ZZ.  The song itself has a different vibe than a ZZ Top song.  It has a slightly fatter sound to it, and since there’s multiple credited bassists, it might contribute to what I perceive as a fatter bottom end sound than usual when we hear Gibbons. The guitar solo is quite nice, but then it’s Gibbons, so it is going to be – much like Iommi in that regard. The song ends abruptly with a “single note”. Kind of like that.

She’s on Fire (2:47) – Starts off with a clean guitar riff that reminds me of something I think I’ve heard before.  It’s a simple riff, but runs through the whole song.  We also get that sound where it sounds like Billy is doing lead and rhythm guitar at the same time.   A song that should appeal to big ZZ Top fans for sure as it’s the most ZZ sounding of anything on this album, I think.  It ends abruptly too like the first song.

More More More (3:02) – Starts off with a quiet guitar sound, like you’re hearing the guitar playing from the next room over or something.  When it kicks it with the full band it has a sound that reminds of ZZ again (also again – no surprise).  The chorus has a bit where there’s vocals where a background guitar riff would go singing (More More More) – a cool sound for sure.

Shuffle, Step & Slide (3:10) – The title of this song sets expectations before you even hear any of it.  The final song delivers, although it’s a bit faster than I expected for a song with this title.  A pretty simple beat that runs through it – but again, that’s the expectation set.  Perhaps not the most memorable song on here, but an enjoyable three minutes for sure.

Vagabond Man (4:00) – We hit the section where we get the two 4 min long songs in a row.  We go into the slow blues based guitar sound.  The guitar sound, the vocals, it’s all a slower blues based song for sure.  Some restrained keys playing in the background (at least that’s what I think my ears are hearing).  Billy’s vocals are a bit back in the mix here.  When the full band is playing at parts it’s hard to hear what he’s singing to me.  But I love good slow blues song, so this works.

Spanish Fly (4:01) – While they don’t intentionally run together (there’s a definite break), this song and Vagabond did in my mind.  So much so I didn’t realize I was a full minute into Fly until the needle was already well past the song break.  It’s slow like Vagabond as well. “Spanish Fly… you gotta get down if you wanna get high”.  The guitar solo is a bit different sounding.  Having come right after those lyrics, it almost sounds like the guitar itself is “high”.  heh.  Another good slow track, but a different vibe than Vagabond’s slow track, too.  I do love the musicianship in the last minute of the song when the vocals have stopped.  Great stuff there.

West Coast Junkie (2:49) – If memory serves, this was the first single, but I’m not sure.  It’s for me the catchiest song on the album for sure. The video has a 60’s vibe to it mostly due to the girls dancing against rocks in black and white.  Also in the video is a segment of the three guys walking through a door that hs no reason to be there in the middle of the area – it reminded me of the door that Wile E Coyote would use when he’d meet up with Bugs Bunny.  Now it’s just stuff in a video, but all of this gave me a throwback feel.  The song itself as I said is super catchy, and is one I can easily listen to a few times a row.  Great slice of rock and roll by the boys, lead by Gibbons’ guitar of course.

Stackin’ Bones (3:17) – This one has a nice mid tempo riff that runs through it, but has a different sound in the chorus as it’s the one that has someone else singing on it.  In this case it’s the band “Larkin Poe” – which according to their Facebook page is a female duo.  “Ooh-la-la-la – lookin for a hustle” is a main lyric they sing, but I love the way it sounds.  Goes well with Billy’s more traditional gravelly male sounding vocals – especially when they’re singing at the same time, which happens a few moments in here.  Great change of pace song even if the music is pretty in line with the rest of the album.  The female vocals here make all the difference.  Great song.

One fun thing – when I looked up Larkin Poe to see who they were, one of the two of them was wearing a ZZ Top Afterburner T-shirt in their profile picture on Facebook.  :)

I Was a Highway (2:34) – If the last song shows what Gibbons’ voice sounds like with female vocals, this one takes it the other way and has male background vocals.  They’re not the same sound as Dusty Hill, so it’s a different sound for sure.  I like this song for the exact same reason I liked Stackin’ Bones.  The background vocals make this song work for me really well.

S-G-L-M-B-B-R (2:25) – I’m sure those letters mean something. In trying to find out what it means I happened on an interview with Gibbons where he says it’s left intentionally vague for fans to try and figure out what this is all about on their own.  He references an old Cream song called “SWLABR” which had the same idea.  I don’t know if it’s because I read the interview where he talks about Cream or not, but when I listened to this track, it sounded like it was influenced by Cream – it has that same kind of bold wide sounding guitar riffle that Eric Clapton had in Cream.

Hey Baby, Que Paso (2:53) – This is a cover of a song by a band called the “Texas Tornadoes“.  Had to look that up as the vinyl shows it’s the only song not written by someone who is either on the album or on the production side.  It’s OK – not my favorite, but I suspect it’s something Billy Gibbons really liked, hence it being here.

Desert High (3:28) – This is a song that’s dripping with attitude.  The vocals here are almost talking – it’s something modern Roger Waters does all the time.  It’s a slow song – even slower than the other two above I mentioned being slow.  Even the guitar sound is super slow.   I mean check these lyrics. Sets the mood right away..  “The rattlesnake shake takes you by surprise, The coyotes sing in the calm of night, The cactus water goes down like fire…”  You get the idea.  It’s a killer vibe to close the album out with.  When it ended, I was really hoping that it was going into a slow part before one final burst, but nope, it just ended.  I instantly had to replay this – it’s a killer vibe, and an awesome track.  Give this track a shot, it’ll worm its way into your head too – I could easily see this being used in some film noir movie.

Thus ends “Hardware”. I have to say when I first got this album I was just expecting more ZZ Top.  As I mentioned above to some extent a Gibbons solo album is going to sound like ZZ Top in places, but there’s a lot here that goes beyond that sound that he’s known for in ZZ that makes this both familiar and different at the same time.

ZZ Top’s last proper studio album was in 2012 (La Futura), and it’s been 13 years since then.  In ZZ land they lost Dusty Hill about 7 weeks after the release of this album, so I wondered if this would be the last album of new studio material.  Read an interview with Gibbons in Jan 2025 that there’s probably new stuff coming from ZZ, so hopefully this isn’t end of line.  As long as Gibbons is breathing, what comes out of his guitar will be worth listening to.  This album was for sure.