Gov't Mule opened a set with three ZZ Top songs for drummer Frank Beard

Gov't Mule opened the second set of their concert at Pine Creek Lodge in Livingston, Montana on Tuesday, August 18 with three ZZ Top songs, played hours after word went round that drummer Frank Beard had died at 77. Warren Haynes had already posted a remembrance of Beard, and told followers the band would play some of his songs that night.

The run started with "Just Got Paid," which ZZ Top cut for Rio Grande Mud, their second album, in 1972. It had been an early staple of Mule's own repertoire, and JamBase counted the Montana version as the first time the band had reached for it since New Year's Eve 2024.

"Nasty Dogs And Funky Kings" followed, a track from Fandango in 1975 written by Beard with Billy F Gibbons and Dusty Hill. That one had also sat unplayed since December 31, 2024. The tribute closed on "Blue Jean Blues," another Fandango cut, this one credited to Gibbons alone, a slow blues that left Haynes room to work while the rhythm section leaned on the groove Beard built.

Haynes has never hidden what ZZ Top meant to him or to his band. Writing before the show, he said it would be impossible for a trio like his to escape their influence, and that in a three-piece every player's musical personality sets the chemistry because nobody gets to coast. "Frank Beard was the perfect drummer for ZZ TOP," he wrote.

What he kept returning to was the feel. "It was bluesy, it was rock and roll, but it was FUNKY," Haynes wrote, pointing at the fill in "La Grange" that generations of drummers have tried to copy. Given one album to point at, he chose Tejas, from 1976: Haynes wrote that "if I had to choose one as an example of his style it would be Tejas," and said hearing it the first time sounded like Beard "had opened a whole new door."

The two acts have crossed paths often over the years. Haynes wrote that "it was always an honor to share the stage and to call them my friends," and set Beard's death against the earlier loss of bassist Dusty Hill, calling it a tough blow while saying the band's spirit would carry forward.

Beard was the only man in ZZ Top who did not wear a beard, a detail that trailed him for five decades. His drumming was economical and deeply funky, and Haynes singled out the way it locked into Gibbons' guitar and Hill's bass to make the groove the band became known for. MusicSuey covered Frank Beard's death at 77 the day before the Montana show, and a Hollywood Bowl date called off over his health a week before that.

The three covers ran back to back at the top of the second set at Pine Creek Lodge, the Montana room the band had booked for that Tuesday night. Gov't Mule's remaining dates are listed on the tour guide, and the rest of our rock coverage sits on the genre hub.