Billy F Gibbons has revealed his third solo album will be called Hardware and released on 3 June via Concord Records – you can check out first single West Coast Junkie above. Like on predecessor The Big Bad Blues, former Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum returns to play drums on the album, but co-produces it with Gibbons, Mike Fiorentino and engineer Chad Shlosser too. But this album will mark a departure from the previous two.
Unlike solo outings The Big Bad Blues and Perfectamundo, 11 out of the 12 songs are originals this time, written Gibbons, Matt Sorum, Mike Fiorentino and Chad Shlosser. The exception is Hey Baby, Que Paso, originally recorded by the Texas Tornados. Elsewhere, the track Stackin' Bones features a guest appearance by Larkin Poe's Megan and Rebecca Lovell.
“We holed up in the desert for a few weeks in the heat of the summer and that in itself was pretty intense," says Gibbons on the album sessions at Escape Studio in California’s high desert, near Palm Springs. "To let off steam we just ‘let it rock’ and that’s what Hardware is really all about. For the most part, it’s a raging rocker but always mindful of the desert’s implicit mystery.
“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.”
Hardware tracklisting:
1. My Lucky Card
2. She’s On Fire
3. More-More-More
4. Shuffle, Step & Slide
5. Vagabond Man
6. Spanish Fly
7. West Coast Junkie
8. Stackin’ Bones (featuring Larkin Poe)
9. I Was A Highway
10. S-G-L-M-B-B-R
11. Hey Baby, Que Paso
12. Desert High
For more info visit billygibbons.com
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I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar in the UK. When I'm not rejigging pedalboards I'm usually thinking about rejigging pedalboards.
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