ZZ Top will keep rolling along on their The Big One summer U.S. tour without longtime drummer Frank Beard. A spokesperson for the band told Rolling Stone that the outing will continue with founding vocalist-guitarist Billy Gibbons and late co-founder bassist Dusty Hill’s longtime guitar tech, Elwood Francis, who was tapped to join the group following Hill’s death at 72 in 2021.
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Drummer Michael Monahan will reportedly fill in for Beard. At press time a spokesperson for ZZ Top had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional information on Beard’s condition or the reason behind his absence.
The news came a week after the veteran Texas blues boogie band called off their planned show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with little warning. According to a social media post at the time, the band’s management canceled the L.A. show due to “unforeseen personnel matters.” No additional information has been revealed about the cause of the call-off.
Gibbons offered a comment about the Hollywood Bowl cancellation, saying that “insurmountable obstacles require canceling our Hollywood Bowl performance. Friends, fans and followers of ZZ Top are the best in the business and the band is counting on everyone to bear with us for this brief interruption.”
While it was unclear why Beard was taking a break from the road, the 77-year-old timekeeper who has been behind the kit for the group for more than 55 years has had a series of health issues over the past few years. In March of last year, the group announced that Beard had “temporarily stepped away from the current tour to attend a health issue requiring his focus in the near term.” At the time, longtime drum tech John Douglas stepped up, just as he had in Oct. 2022 when Beard was forced to miss a Paris show due to an emergency appendectomy.
After Beard, who joined the group in 1969, returned to the fold, the band said that the drummer had been suffering from foot and ankle issues. Two months later, Beard was back on stage and Gibbons said in a statement, “We’re happy that Frank is back with Elwood [Francis, bassist] and yours truly, BFG. We missed him and are looking forward to turning it up and rocking out with him as has been the case for the last few hundred or so decades. His complete recovery is cause for celebration and that’s just what we intend to do on an open-ended basis. Welcome back, pardner!”
Beard has played on all of the group’s records from 1971’s First Album through their most recent LP, 2012’s La Futura.
The Big One tour is slated to hit the Marymoor Amphitheater in Redmond, Wash. on Tuesday night (Aug. 11), followed by shows in Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The final U.S. date on the tour is slated to take place in Port Wentworth, Ga. on Oct. 9 before moving on to gigs in Mexico and South America in November.
