Project Description
BILLY GIBBONS
Anita’s Theatre Thirroul NSW
Saturday 6 January 2018
(Live Review)
Reviewer – Benjamin Smith
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When you find out Billy Gibbons is playing, you go. When you find out the show is in a place hours away and you might not make it, even if you ignore the speed limits, you go. If Billy Gibbons is playing on Mars, you call Elon Musk because goddammit, you go. The payoff for such dedication, of course, is the sweet, sweet blues only Billy Gibbons knows how to caress from the neck of his shiny red SG.
Playing in the beautifully adorned old theatre that is Anita’s in Thirroul, Billy Gibbons treated audiences to a night of music and storytelling with a band of likely locals calling themselves the Billy T’Zz.
In between riffmaking, Gibbons was joined on a couch by Jimmy Shine, who is apparently a famous revhead guru with whom Gibbons builds hot rods. They answered questions about everything from working with Jimmy Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan to machining parts for 427 engines (or something like that).
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The run sheet for the show was unusual in that Gibbons hit the stage, played a few numbers and then disappeared to be replaced by support act Jacob Lee. This might have seemed like good strategy back stage, maybe thinking that a little taste of Billy would get the audience primed. The problem though, is that once we got a taste of Billy, we lost our appetite for anything else. This meant that Mr Jacob Lee was perhaps not as well received as he otherwise might have been. I’m not certain that his indie-folk inspired liltings were the perfect choice to back up the man who gave us the Moving Sidewalks and ZZ Top anyway, but that’s by the by.
When Billy returned, he let his trademark east-Texas blues flow effortlessly from his fingers in the typically understated way for which he has become renowned. Oozing Southern cool, he came, he played and he left without so much as raising a single bead of sweat.
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The chance to see a truly legendary figure whose influence is felt across the spectrum in such an intimate setting is a rare privilege. The opportunity to engage the man in a real dialogue and connect in such a genuine way is something extraordinary.
When asked his secret to having survived where so many of his rock n roll compatriots have fallen, Gibbons simply chuckled to himself and repeated the phrase “I want to be a pharmacist”. I think I’ll leave you with that for now.
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