ZZ Top concert at Rupp will be homecoming for one band member with Kentucky ties

For decades — five and change, to be exact — ZZ Top was the self-proclaimed “Little Ol’ Band from Texas,” a trio of Lone Star blues and boogie misfits with an M.O. that Billy F. Gibbons, the band’s guitar-slinging chieftain, proudly recited during concerts — “Same three guys, same three chords.”

Until it wasn’t. When Gibbons, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard — ZZ Top’s lineup since 1969 — returned to the road after a COVID 19-dictated hiatus, all was not well. Hill left the tour following a July 18, 2021, concert in Louisville with what was reported as a hip injury.

To stay in motion, the Texas trio went in for a Kentucky tune-up. Enter Hazard native and longtime Lexingtonian Elwood Francis. Actually, Francis was already there, having served as the band’s guitar tech for the past 30 years. He knew the workings of the band, knew its music and with a past rooted as much in Bluegrass-brewed punk rock as Texas blues, he knew his way around a stage. Shoot, he even had a beard, a seeming prerequisite for front-line duty in ZZ Top.

“When Dusty got sick, I was thrown into it,” Francis said. “But I was just covering for Dusty. For the first couple of gigs, I was so nervous it was ridiculous. I didn’t have time to think about it. It was just, ‘Get it done.’ But it was me helping out, you know? I was like, ‘Sure, man. I can do this. I can help you.’ And then Dusty passed. And then it was different.”

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Ten days later, Hill died. Suddenly, what was to have been a substitute role in a longstanding band famous for its camaraderie and consistency took an unexpectedly permanent turn. In short, ZZ Top’s Texas-meets-Kentucky connection was now cemented.

“It was really weird,” Francis said. “It still freaks me out some, because I do think of ZZ Top as ‘those three guys.’ I mean, this is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band spanning over 50 years. To be the person to come in and be the only personnel change ... and not only that, to be picked to be that guy ... that still blows me away.

“There was no audition or anything. It was, ‘Can you do this?’ In fact, that’s exactly how they put it to me when everything happened. It was, ‘Tell me that you cannot play Dusty’s parts.’ I was like, ‘Well, I can’t say that. I can probably play them.’ Then it was, ‘Okay then. We’re going to do it.’ I’m like, ‘Oh-kay. I guess we are.’ And we did.”

Punked in Lexington

Francis moved with his family from Hazard to Lexington when he was 6. Following graduation from Henry Clay High School, he became immersed in the city’s fertile punk and post-punk scene, although much of his musical education came from diving into his mother’s record collection.

“In my mom’s records were Elvis and Bo Diddley. We even listened to Bobby Vinton. We would listen to all of that stuff. But then I got into Frank Zappa at a young age and I’m still right there. I’m still very huge into Zappa. And the whole punk rock movement, that was good for my age, because it broke when I was 15. I was already playing guitar but I wasn’t even thinking about playing in a band, ever, until I heard punk rock.”

And, yes, among the sounds he absorbed in his youth was ZZ Top, whose early ’70s albums (“Rio Grande Mud,” the breakthrough “Tres Hombres” and “Fandango”) defined a Texas trio brand of Southern soaked rock, soul and blues. By the time he and friends from the sound and lighting company Showco attended a ZZ Top performance at Rupp Arena in February 1991, the band was still relishing in a ’80s-era renaissance aided by a series of synth-charged singles (“Legs,” “Sharp Dressed Man”) and accompanying music videos where the matching chest-length beards of Gibbons and Hill served as some of the most distinctive fashion accessories of the MTV-era.

“I knew those guys from Showco when I broke into the business,” Francis recalled. “Not long after that, I was told Billy was looking for a guitar tech. He had had the same guitar tech his entire career, so I was the second guy. When I came in, ZZ Top had already been a band for 17 years and I was replacing the only tech they ever had, so I was freaking out. But Billy just called me up, asked a few questions. Didn’t talk about guitars too much. Talked about my accent. He really liked my accent. Talked about Kentucky and said, ‘Well, can you come down here and meet us?’ I was like, ‘Yeah. Sure.’ And I went down there (to Houston) three days later and I never really left.

“It was strange at first because they’re larger than life characters. Absolutely larger than life. And from a guitarist standpoint, my gosh, man, I’d go down there, and Billy’s got the best guitars in the world and some of the craziest custom guitars. It was like, ‘How could you not have a good time?’ We just clicked, you know? I understood he does things differently than other people, so I just learned his way of doing it and we don’t really venture from that. There is a process, but we don’t even talk about it at this point. It’s non-verbal. We know what we have to do and we do it.”

Bringing it all back home to Kentucky

Now comes the homecoming. Not only will ZZ Top’s March 28 Rupp show at Rupp Arena with Lynyrd Skynyrd be Francis’ first Lexington show since going from backstage tech to onstage bassist, it will serve as the trio’s first local performance since the 1991 concert its newest member attended as a patron.

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ZZ Top has played almost every imaginable regional locale over the last decade or so, but it hasn’t hit Lexington in over 33 years (Gibbons, however, performed with a side-project band at the Opera House in 2016.)

“I will be a bundle of nerves,” Francis said of the upcoming Rupp outing. “But I’m still a nervous wreck most of the time. When I stop and think about it, I’m like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ It still hits me. It still feels new. But I still miss Dusty.

“These hometown gigs are rough. They’re really rough, but I’m excited for my kids. This is probably more exciting for them than it is for me. It will be pretty wild.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and Black Stone Cherry

When: March 28, 8 p.m.

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

Tickets: $56-$251 through ticketmaster.com.