Blues icon Billy F Gibbons announces new solo album – hear the first single now

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.  

Gibbons

(Image credit: Joby Sessions/Future)

"To let off steam we just ‘let it rock’ and that’s what Hardware is really all about"

“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.” 

Billy Gibbons

(Image credit: Billy F Gibbons)

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

Rob Laing
Reviews Editor, GuitarWorld.com and MusicRadar guitars

Rob is the Reviews Editor for GuitarWorld.com and MusicRadar guitars, so spends most of his waking hours (and beyond) thinking about and trying the latest gear while making sure our reviews team is giving you thorough and honest tests of it. He's worked for guitar mags and sites as a writer and editor for nearly 20 years but still winces at the thought of restringing anything with a Floyd Rose.