sharp-dressed men

Houston rock gods ZZ Top team up with Lynyrd Skynyrd for first time in colossal new tour

Houston's rock titans/sharp-dressed men ZZ Top will embark on a classic rock bonanza next year when the legends and Lynyrd Skynyrd hit The Woodlands as part of their first co-headlining tour, "The Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour," which will stop at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Sunday, July 30, 2023.

come to Fort Worth as part of their first co-headlining tour, "The Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour," which will stop at Dickies Arena on July 29, 2023.

Houston-The Woodlands will be the fifth of 22 stops around North America for the tour in summer 2023. It will kick off in West Palm Beach, Florida on July 21 and last around two months, finishing in Camden, New Jersey on September 17. In addition to Fort Worth, the tour will also play in The Woodlands, outside Houston, on July 30.

The name of the tour cheekily combines two of the bands' most popular songs, ZZ Top's 1983 single "Sharp Dressed Man," and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man," a song that wasn't even released as a single in 1973, but which has gone on to be one of their most iconic tunes.

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of both Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album, Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd’, and the 50th anniversary of ZZ Top's breakthrough album, Tres Hombres.

As local fans are aware, the band made headlines when an unauthorized estate sale promised trinkets and valuables belonging to dearly departed founding bassist Dusty Hill. "Devastated" widow Charleen Hill was forced to speak out and take action against the organizers in an effort to protect her husband's — and the band's — reputation.

But back to the music: Fans have lovingly embraced Hill's replacement, Elwood Francis, who spent 30 years as a guitar tech and has even grown a ZZ-worthy beard of his own since the pandemic and is ready to rock.

Photo courtesy of ZZ Top

Houston legends ZZ Top hits the road again with a co-headlining tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Tickets for the tour go on sale starting Friday, December 16 at 10 am at LiveNation.com.

LYNYRD SKYNYRD & ZZ TOP: THE SHARP DRESSED SIMPLE MAN TOUR 2023 DATES:

Friday, July 21 – West Palm Beach, FL – iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre

Sunday, July 23 – Alpharetta, GA – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre

Friday, July 28 – Rogers, AR – Walmart AMP

Saturday, July 29 – Fort Worth, TX – Dickies Arena

Sunday, July 30 – Woodlands, TX – The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion presented by Huntsman

Monday, August 7 – Denver, CO – Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre*

Thursday, August 10 – Mountain View, CA – Shoreline Amphitheatre

Friday, August 11 – Wheatland, CA – Toyota Amphitheatre

Sunday, August 13 – Phoenix, AZ – Ak-Chin Pavilion

Thursday, August 17 – Maryland Heights, MO – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre - St. Louis, MO

Saturday, August 19 – Tinley Park, IL – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre - Chicago, IL

Sunday, August 20 – Noblesville, IN – Ruoff Music Center

Friday, August 25 – Cincinnati, OH – Riverbend Music Center

Saturday, August 26 – Clarkston, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre

Sunday, August 27 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage

Friday, September 1 – Charlotte, NC – PNC Music Pavilion

Saturday, September 2 – Columbia, MD – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Sunday, September 3 – Burgettstown, PA – The Pavilion at Star Lake

Friday, September 8 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Saratoga Performing Arts Center

Saturday, September 9 – Hershey, PA – Hersheypark Stadium

Sunday, September 10 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center

Friday, September 15 – Raleigh, NC – Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek

Sunday, September 17 – Camden, NJ – Freedom Mortgage Pavilion

music concerts

Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess