ZZ Top, Skynyrd coming to Covelli

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Rebels & Bandoleros Tour starring ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd will come to Covelli Centre on May 22. Tickets are $36.75, $56.75 and $76.75 (additional fees may apply) and go on sale at 10 a.m. April 2 at Ticketmaster outlets, Ticketmaster.com, by phone at 800-745-3000 and at the Covelli box office.

The three-week tour begins May 12 in Wichita, Kan. It’s the first time in years that the two iconic standard-bearers of Southern Rock have toured so extensively together.

Concertgoers will hear a lot of classic rock, including ZZ Top’s “Tush,” “LaGrange,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Cheap Sunglasses”; and from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “What’s Your Name,” “Saturday Night Special” and “Free Bird.”

ZZ Top last played Youngstown in 2007 at Covelli (then Chevrolet Centre), while Skynyrd played the Canfield Fair in 2008.

The bands first toured together in 1974 when Texas-based ZZ Top invited Lynyrd Skynyrd, then an emerging band from Jacksonville, Fla., on its The Outlaw Tour. ZZ Top, which formed in 1969, would become the major band with the longest-running original personnel line-up — Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard — in music history.

Tragedy struck Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1974 when a plane crash killed original band members Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines. Today’s Lynyrd Skynyrd includes founding member Gary Rossington along with Johnny Van Zant, brother of the late Ronnie Van Zant, and Rickey Medlocke, Michael Cartellone, Mark “Sparky” Matejka, Robert Kearns, Peter Keys, Dale Krantz Rossington and Carol Chase. Both bands are Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.