ZZ Top to play Adler Theatre in April

A year and a half after the death of their longtime bassist, ZZ Top continues to tour, and the veteran rock band will play Davenport’s Adler Theatre on April 11, 2023.

Tickets ($39.50 to $159.50) will go on sale Friday, Jan. 13th at 10 a.m. online here at Ticketmaster and in person at the Adler Theatre Box Office (136 E. 3rd St.).

“With iconography as distinctive as their sound, ZZ Top is virtually synonymous with beards, hotrod cars, spinning guitars and that magic keychain, all of which transcend geography and language,” according to a tour release.

After the July 2021 death of bearded bassist Dusty Hill, at 72, the band’s longtime guitar tech Elwood Francis slid into that role.

It was in Houston in the waning days of 1969 that ZZ Top formed from the core of two rival bands, Billy Gibbons’ Moving Sidewalks and Frank Beard and Dusty Hill’s American Blues. Their third album, 1973’s Tres Hombres, catapulted them to national attention with the hit “La Grange,” still one of the band’s signature pieces today. Eliminator, their 1983 album was something of a paradigm shift for ZZ Top, the band bio says.

Their roots blues skew was intact but added to the mix were tech-age trappings that soon found a visual outlet with such tracks as “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” on the nascent MTV. It was one of the music industry’s first albums to have been certified Diamond, far beyond Gold and Platinum and a reflection of domestic sales exceeding 10 million units.

The band has performed before millions of fans on four continents and has been the subject of its own Grammy-nominated documentary titled That Little Ol’ Band From Texas. The band’s line-up of the bearded Gibbons and Hill and Beard, who ironically is clean shaven, remained intact for more than 50 years until Hill’s passing.

“When Dusty temporarily departed the tour in the summer of 2021, it was a given that Elwood would be the perfect choice to stand in for Dusty until he could return,” the tour release says. “But Dusty’s return was not to be, and Elwood continues to handle the bass duties for the band now and into the future.”

The elements that keep ZZ Top fresh, enduring and above the transitory fray can be summed up in the three words of the band’s internal mantra: “Tone, Taste and Tenacity.”

They have sold hundreds of millions of records over the course of their career, have been officially designated as Heroes of The State of Texas, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by Keith Richards, no less) and have been referenced in countless cartoons and sitcoms.

For more information, visit the band website HERE.

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