ZZ Top @ MGM National Harbor – October 25th 2019

Blues rockers ZZ Top likely hold the title of being the longest-running band with a single line-up in rock history. Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard have been touring and recording together for fifty years now, with hardly a break in all of that time. In celebration of this, they’ve embarked on a 50th Anniversary celebration tour, which last Friday brought them to the MGM National Harbor casino, right outside Washington, DC.

Even at ages 69 and 70 respectively, Gibbons and Hill are still sporting their famous beards, and all three are still rocking as hard as ever. With a setlist that spanned from their second album 1972’s Rio Grande Mud (“Just Got Paid”) right up to their latest, 2012’s La Futura (“I Gotsta Get Paid”), the group led the audience through a tour of their long and storied career that featured songs from eight of their fifteen albums. Featured, of course, was their biggest record, 1983’s Eliminator, with “Got Me Under Pressure,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs” (even breaking out their famous furry guitars for the song) spread throughout the set.

Five decades in, ZZ Top shows little sign of slowing down. Only a handful of dates remain on the current tour, but it likely won’t be long until they’re bak around beer drinkin’ and hell raisin’ again.

Pittsburgh/NYC-based rockers Ghost Hounds opened the show with an energetic set, playing songs from their forthcoming album Roses Are Black.

ZZ Top setlist

Photos © Matt Condon

ZZ Top

Ghost Hounds