By Dave Gil de Rubio
Last Word Features

Billy Gibbons celebrated his 76^th birthday this past December. And while most of his contemporaries of that vintage are kicking back and enjoying retirement, the ZZ Top founding member is racing through 2026.

The year opened with Gibbons flying solo with help from his band, The BFG’s. Now, with that solo jaunt behind him, Gibbons has returned to his full-time job leading ZZ Top, the band he founded in 1969.

ZZ Top comes to Colorado Springs on Wednesday for a 7:30 p.m. show at Pikes Peak Center, 190 S. Cascade Ave. Tickets are available at axs.com and pikespeakcenter.com.

The original band became a model of longevity, with the trio rounded out by bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard until 2021, when Hill died at the age 72. For Gibbons, the death of his longtime friend and bandmate came as a shock.

“We of course miss the Dust,” Gibbons said.

Luckily enough, Hill’s running buddy and guitar tech, Elwood Francis, was able to step into his late friend’s role, something for which Gibbons is grateful.

A big factor in ZZ Top’s longevity has been the band’s willingness to simultaneously cling to their blues roots while infusing disparate twists into the creative process. The big one came at the dawn of the 1980s, when the band started experimenting with synthesizers, a move that started with 1981’s “El Loco” and exploded with the 1983 follow-up “Eliminator.”

As Gibbons recalled, a swing through England at the time planted the seeds for that pivot that made ZZ Top fixtures on the then-emerging MTV and soon one of the most popular bands going. 

“London set the stage initially when we became pals with the cutting-edge band Depeche Mode,” Gibbons said. “On returning stateside, we were confronted somewhat unexpectedly by sequencers, synths and all the allied gear in the town where rock and roll, blues, rockabilly and everything else worth listening to finds its origin: Memphis, Tenn. … We just engaged the weird gear on hand and made it work for us.”