The album captures the Texas trio's bare-bones, 11-song 2019 set at Gruene Hall, “the oldest continually run dance hall in Texas”
(Image credit: Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images)
ZZ Top have announced a new, 11-track live album, called Raw.
Recorded at Gruene Hall – “the oldest continually run dance hall in Texas” – in 2019, Raw features the band's original lineup of electric guitar player Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard and the late Dusty Hill on bass guitar.
Made in connection with the 2019 ZZ Top Netflix documentary, That Little Ol’ Band From Texas, the album was produced by Gibbons, and is dedicated “in righteous memory of Dusty Hill." It's set for a July 22 release via Shelter Records/BMG.
You can check out a preview of the album – in the form of some professionally-shot footage of the band playing their timeless hit, La Grange, at Gruene Hall – below.
Raw is "in a very real way, a return to our roots," write Gibbons and Beard in the album's liner notes. "Just us and the music, no audience of thousands, no concession stands, no parking lot social hour, no phalanx of tour busses. Just us and the music. We knew right then it was a very special circumstance, all of us in the same place at the same time – and what a time it most certainly was.
"It was as bare bones as when we first started touring in a behemoth Chrysler station wagon, driving vast stretches between those early far-flung shows under blackened Texas skies and first hearing our records on the radio," the band continues. "We were bonded as brothers.
"‘The Dust’ may have left the building but he’s still very much with us.”
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In tandem with Raw, ZZ Top also announced an extensive North American tour, which will run throughout the summer. Just as he did on the band's shows last year, longtime ZZ Top guitar tech Elwood Francis will take the place of Dusty Hill on bass for the tour.
1. Brown Sugar
2. Just Got Paid
3. Heard It On The X
4. La Grange
5. Tush
6. Thunderbird
7. I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide
8. Gimme All Your Lovin’
9. Blue Jean Blues
10. Certified Blues
11. Tube Snake Boogie
Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.
