ZZ Top’s last State Farm Center show was a double feature with Lynyrd Skynyrd in October 2011.
Blain Clausen
CHAMPAIGN — Forty-five years after their first show at the arena then known as the Assembly Hall, a familiar Rock & Roll Hall of Fame act is headed back this spring.
State Farm Center announced Monday that it’s booked ZZ Top for a Saturday night show on April 5, 2025. Tickets, ranging in price from $59 to $139 (plus fees), go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday.
It will be the Texas-born band’s fourth show at the basketball home of the Illini and first locally without longtime bassist/vocalist Dusty Hill, who died in 2021. He was replaced in the lineup by Elwood Francis, who joined forever frontman Billy Gibbons and drummer Frank Beard in the three-man band.
ZZ Top was last in town in 2017, for a show at the Virginia Theatre.
The band’s collection of hits includes songs from the ’70s (“LaGrange,” “Cheap Sunglasses”), ’80s (“Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man”) and ’90s (“Concrete and Steel,” “My Head’s in Mississippi”).
Presented by WKIO 105.5-FM and The News-Gazette, the concert is the second on State Farm Center’s April 2025 live music calendar. On April 8, the arena will host “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.,” a tribute to Aretha Franklin.