Hardware
Billy Gibbons
- LP
- Label
- Concord Records
Hardware was produced by Gibbons with Matt Sorum and Mike Fiorentino with additional production by engineer Chad Shlosser.
Guns ‘N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver and The Cult drummer Sorum also plays on the album as part of a core band featuring guitarist Austin Hanks. It’s the same musical backbone that starred on Gibbons’ second solo release for Concord, The Big Bad Blues, which came out in 2018 and won the Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Award.
As a title, Hardware is an affectionate nod to the late and great recording engineer Joe Hardy, whose working relationship with Gibbons and ZZ Top goes back to the mid-1980s.
The album also bears the influence of its recording location. “The desert settings, replete with shifting sands, cacti and rattlesnakes makes for the kind of backdrop that lends an element of intrigue reflected in the sounds created out there,” says Gibbons.