ZZ Top kicks off Bend amphitheater season

Published 3:45 pm Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Photo credit: Blain Clausen

Central Oregon lovers of live music, it’s here: Hayden Homes Amphitheater’s summer concert season, featuring approximately one billion shows. OK … 51. But that’s a lot for this venue. Or at least it was before this year.

Anyway, what better way to kick off the season than with ZZ Top, the Texas blues-rock institution that’s preparing to release a new live album called “Raw” in July. Recorded in 2019 at the legendary Gruene Hall near San Antonio, the recording features the band’s original lineup of Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, who played together for more than 50 years until Hill’s death in 2021.

The track list for “Raw” includes some of ZZ Top’s best-known songs, such as “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Tush” and “Brown Sugar,” and it captures one of the best rock bands of the past half-century doing what it does best. These days, ZZ Top is a “catch ’em while you can” act, even without Hill and with Elwood Francis in his place on the bass.

ZZ Top: 7 p.m. Tuesday, doors open at 5:30 p.m., $45-$125, Hayden Homes Amphitheater, 344 SW Shevlin Hixon Drive, Bend, bendconcerts.com.

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