ZZ Top rocks the Rutland fairgrounds

By KAYLA TOHER Herald Correspondent

ZZ Top is just about as identifiable with their beards and sunglasses as the catchy choruses of such songs as “Legs,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Gimme All Your Lovin’.”

The veteran band played the Vermont State Fairgrounds on Saturday.

According to the band’s publicist, Zeke Feimster, the rock icons still love touring, even after all these years.

“Everyone likes to get out. They’ve still got a lot of energy,” Feimster said.

After almost 40 years, the band’s original members, Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard are still together. Feimster called this an almost unheard of phenomenon in rock history.

Because ZZ Top has been together so long, they’ve reached multiple generations. Feimster noted that even adolescents today are familiar with and excited about the band.

“Good music translates to many different generations,” Feimster said.

One of their albums, “Eliminator,” released in 1983, has the distinction of being among the first albums awarded diamond certification for sales of 10 million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America. In 2004, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

ZZ Top had last played in Vermont in the mid 1990s at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction.

“ZZ Top is gonna give 125 percent to every show,” he said. “If you’ve never seen a show, you’re missing something. They have an ease that a lot of performers can’t duplicate.”

Production manager Donny Stuart noted that the concert will be “very high energy.”

Stuart said the band’s show features state-of-the-art lighting.

“It’s an extremely intensive theatrical-type stage show,” he said, noting the band will play accessibly close to the front of the stage. “You won’t see a better lighting show in such a small, intimate setting.”