Quick: ask someone who they think of when they hear the term “Texas music.”
We bet you get “George Strait” or “Willie.”
Country music may be the first genre that comes to mind for many, but historically, Texas is as much a blues state as it is anything else. The genre’s early greats Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and T-Bone Walker were all born here. Lead Belly and Robert Johnson may not have been native Texans, but they got here as fast as they could; Johnson’s only two recording sessions took place in San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937), before his death in 1938. Blues music has helped define Texas music ever since—from Albert Collins to Edgar Winter to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
The appearance of ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Gary Clark Jr., and Demi Lovato (yes, that Demi Lovato) on Slash’s new album, Orgy of the Damned, a collection of blues covers released May 17, suggests the legendary Guns N’ Roses guitarist is familiar with that history.
Among Orgy’s dozen tracks, Clark sings, plays rhythm guitar, and cuts a lead guitar solo on an electrified take on Robert Johnson’s seminal “Crossroads”; ZZ Top front man Billy Gibbons sings and plays guitar on Willie Dixon’s “Hoochie Coochie Man”; and Demi Lovato delivers a soulful take on “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” made famous by the Temptations. The Texas roots of the album also include recordings of T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday” (with bluesy rocker Beth Hart on vocals) and Lightnin’ Hopkins’s “Awful Dream” (sung, improbably yet enthusiastically, by Iggy Pop).
Guns N’ Roses has significant ties to Texas, from its first world tour, in 1987, when it played Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, Irving, McAllen, Midland, and San Antonio, to a recent lawsuit filed by the band against a firearms and flower shop called Texas Guns and Roses for trademark infringement.
Lovato might seem like an outlier, but the pairing isn’t odd. Slash has become something of a source of credibility for artists who want to add some edge to their personas (see Rihanna’s “Rockstar 101,” Macy Gray’s “Kissed It,” and even “I’m Just Ken,” from Barbie). Lovato utilized Slash as an avatar of rock and roll energy on last year’s rerecording of her “Sorry Not Sorry,” so he may be returning a favor.
“Slash is a legendary talent and friend I’ve known for years, so I was thrilled to collaborate with him again for his project,” Lovato said in a statement sent to Texas Monthly, noting her own connection to a song about an absent father. “He had such a clear vision for the song and I’m grateful that he wanted to honor my story.” The track is a highlight of the album, with Lovato allowing her vocals to soar and Slash matching her pitch with his guitar, bringing the song to a thrilling climax as the two harmonize.
The collaboration with Clark is more straightforward rock and roll—less Robert Johnson and more Eric Clapton. Clark’s solo work, especially on this year’s JPEG RAW, has grown more expansive in style, incorporating elements of hip-hop, jazz, psych rock and other nonrock styles, which makes the Austin guitar hero’s recording on Orgy of the Damned something of a throwback.
While Slash is indebted for his guitar sound to a range of musicians—including Gibbons—there’s one way in which he owes more to ZZ Top than to guitar gods Jeff Beck or Eddie Van Halen. Gibbons pioneered the visual iconography of a guitar hero with a pile of hair pouring out from beneath a tall hat. The two have played together many times over the years (here they are doing “La Grange,” an ode to Texas’s legendary Chicken Ranch, at Slash’s forty-forth birthday party in 2009), and their “Hoochie Coochie Man” sounds like what you’d expect from two guitar icons shredding a standard together.
Slash isn’t a Texan by any definition—in his own way, he’s as tied to L.A. as Gibbons is to Houston—but the way he’s created this album counts for a lot. (So does having Austin guitar great Jackie Venson play on selected dates of his touring summer festival.) For that, we’ll award him temporary “honorary Texan” status.
