ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd are teaming up for a 23-date joint run this summer, dubbed “The Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour.” The trek kicks off on July 21st at West Palm Beach, Florida's iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre and runs all the way through September 17th when the two iconic Southern Rock legends hit Camden, New Jersey's Freedom Mortgage Pavilion. Tickets go on sale this Friday, December 16th, at 10 a.m.
It's going on 40 years after ZZ Top's MTV era-defining 1983 Eliminator album, which featured such instant band classics as “Gimme All Your Lovin',” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs.” We asked guitarist Billy F. Gibbons how the band was able to embrace the 1980's while staying true to themselves musically: “Yeah, well as the old saying goes: 'One foot in the blues.' It keeps it honest and kinda straight ahead. We can narrow the range — take it far left, far right; let's go back to step one — the blues.”
Frontman Johnny Van Zant told us that the best of Lynyrd Skynyrd's music has always seemed to defy genres: “They gave us a tag years ago of 'Southern Rock,' and to me I always thought that must mean it's 'Country Rock,' which is the truth, and around our house we were listening to Merle Haggard and George Jones, but we also watched Ed Sullivan and saw Elvis Presley and the Beatles, too, and loved all that stuff too, so there's no boundaries in music these days.”