ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas

Produced by the Emmy award-winning Banger Films, ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas is a new documentary that tells the story of how three oddball teenage bluesmen – Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard – became one of the biggest, most beloved bands on the planet, all while maintaining a surrealist mystique that continues to intrigue fans and entice onlookers 50 years after the band’s inception.

ZZ Top lay undisputed claim to being the longest running major rock band with original personnel intact and, in 2004, the Texas trio was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Of course, there are only three of them – Billy F Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard -- but it’s still a remarkable achievement that they’re still very much together after almost 50 years of rock, blues, and boogie on the road and in the studio.  “Yeah,” says Billy, guitarist extraordinaire, “We’re the same three guys, bashing out the same three chords.”  With the release of each of their albums the band has explored new ground in terms of both their sonic approach and the material they’ve recorded. ZZ Top is the same but always changing.

Buoyed by candid band interviews, never-before-seen archive, animation, celebrity fan testimonials (Billy Bob Thornton, Joshua Homme and more), and an intimate performance at the legendary Gruene Hall shot exclusively for this documentary, the film runs the gamut, from the absurd to the poignant, from squalid Texas bars to MTV heroics, all in celebration of this notoriously private, but larger than life, power trio. In the end, ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas unravels the extraordinary tale of a band whose image we know, but whose story we don’t.