Summer is coming early to the Deep South and what better way to welcome it in than with some smoking hot sets by ZZ Top, Black Stone Cherry and headliners Lynyrd Skynyrd on Thursday, April 04, 2024. Out on what they’ve dubbed the Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour, this is a killer ticket and the Mississippi Coast Coliseum in Biloxi was lit up like an all-night firecracker. With close to a sellout, the fans came in their favorite band t-shirts and plenty of vocal energy to yell and sing along to such classics as “Freebird” and “La Grange” by two of the Masters of rock & roll.
Black Stone Cherry kicked the night off with a six-song atomic bomb set that just burst open rocking and stayed that way. Hailing from Kentucky, they released their eighth studio album, Screamin’ At The Sky, in November. “I think our original goal was just to be able to go out and play music,” drummer John Fred Young told me in a 2020 interview. “When we started in 2006, we were all kids on the music scene and we were always able to find and gain the respect of the older bands because we’re one of those few bands that are going today that are still true to what rock & roll used to be,” explained singer/guitar player Chris Robertson back in 2013. “It’s not about a bunch of make-up or computer-simulated music. It’s guitars and bass and drums and four dudes on stage.” And play rock & roll they did, beginning with a fan favorite, “Me & Mary Jane” from their 2014 Magic Mountain album and wrapping up with their debut hit, “Lonely Train.”
With only room in their thirty-minute set to play one song from the new album – “When The Pain Comes” – the crowd only got a taste of what BSC has done twenty-three years down the road. “Sometimes you don’t get around to playing everything you want,” Young said in our recent interview. “But it’s a good problem too cause you’ve got that catalog of so many albums and we’re fortunate enough to have eight records. It’s a good problem (laughs).”
New bass player Steve Jewell fits in well with the band, his energy merging with guitar player Ben Wells like a well-oiled crazy critter machine. “Our job is to get you up off your ass and on your feet,” shouted Robertson before kicking into “Blame It On The Boom Boom.” If this house wasn’t familiar with them before now, they won them over from the first slam of the drums.
The legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd, celebrating fifty years as a band and honoring late original member Gary Rossington, who passed last year, was the other bookend of the night. With a legion of devoted fans, young and older, the band members took us on a tour of their history, from their 1973 debut album (4 songs) to 2009’s God & Guns (featuring the anthem “Skynyrd Nation”), with stops at 1974’s Second Helping, 1975’s Nuthin’ Fancy, 1976’s Gimme Back My Bullets and 1977’s Street Survivors, which was released just days before their tour plane went down near Gillsburg, Mississippi, and ended the lives of band members Ronnie Van Zant and Steve and Cassie Gaines.
But fans are loyal and Skynyrd has yet to wear out their welcome. Guitarist Damon Johnson was back out with the band, after coming in in 2021 when Rossington was out recovering from health issues, and has melded in with a bang. Put him alongside Rickey Medlocke and Mark Matejka and they blazed the place up. At times each pulled out the slide – Medlocke on “I Know A Little,” Matejka on “Ballad Of Curtis Loew” and Johnson on “Freebird.” Medlocke also played acoustic on “Curtis Loew.” Billy Gibbons joined them on “Call Me The Breeze.”
Rossington’s spirit was still fresh on the stage. His name joined the candles lit for members passed during the piano solo by Peter Keys during “Freebird.” And the modern-day version of lighters went up during the video homage during “Tuesday’s Gone.” Many bands celebrate their former members in memorials but nobody does it better and more devoted than Skynyrd. Leaving the stage as a video of Ronnie singing “Freebird” played behind them, Johnny let the old memories flood back in while those who never got to experience Skynyrd with his brother create new memories, leaving the band to ride the road home in exceptional guitar solos that would make Rossington, Gaines, Ed King and Allen Collins very, very proud.
But the night belonged to ZZ Top. Sixteen songs with unwavering blues snake oil boogie, the Reverend Billy Gibbons blessed Biloxi with his Texas cool, tent show revival preaching. That gravely snarl, those meaty guitar lines and backed by the deacons, Frank Beard on drums and Elwood Francis on bass, Gibbons called in the copperheads before raining their blues venom upon us. It was praise the lord hymns from the get-go.
Announcing to his congregation that he’d been coming to this area for five decades, he introduced Elwood, who replaced Dusty Hill following the bass player’s death in 2021: “He just got out of prison.” Gibbons sidled into his slide for “Just Got Paid” while Elwood got down on his red “Thrasher” double bass that matched his shoes. And this was after everyone flipped their lids over his 17-string monster of a bass on opener “Got Me Under Pressure.”
But nobody can pluck a guitar like Gibbons. It’s like dripping hot sauce on a rattlesnake’s rattler – it hisses, it hums, it throbs and finally just takes off. This was moodily visible on the oldie but goodie “Brown Sugar” from their 1971 debut album and of course “La Grange.” When he brought out Jeff Beck’s guitar to play “a country song,” he tore it up, taking “Sixteen Tons” to a place Merle Travis never imagined. “You know this song? Wish we did,” Gibbons joked. And once they hit those opening chords to “Sharp Dressed Man,” the crowd went wild, as they did when they saw the furry guitars that signaled “Legs,” the only song that actually sounded weirdly out of place for some reason. But “La Grange” was the perfect tonic to soothe the fever the trio had conjured up to this end point. With ZZ Top on the ticket, you really don’t need anybody else.
Hail, Hail to the Reverend!
Lynyrd Skynyrd Setlist: Workin’ For MCA, Skynyrd Nation, What’s Your Name, That Smell, I Know A Little, Whiskey Rocka Roller, Saturday Night Special, Ballad Of Curtis Loew, Tuesday’s Gone, Simple Man, Gimme Three Steps, Call Me The Breeze, Sweet Home Alabama ENCORE: Freebird.
ZZ Top Setlist: Got Me Under Pressure, I Thank You, Waitin’ For The Bus, Jesus Just Left Chicago, Gimme All Your Lovin’, Pearl Necklace, I’m Bad I’m Nationwide, I Gotsa Get Paid, My Head’s In Mississippi, Sixteen Tons, Just Got Paid, Sharp Dressed Man, Legs ENCORE: Brown Sugar, Tube Snake Boogie, La Grange.
Black Stone Cherry Setlist: Me & Mary Jane, Burnin’, Like I Roll, When The Pain Comes, Blame It On The Boom Boom, Lonely Train.
