by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Kathy Conner, an employee of Pine’s Edge Grocery & Liquor, did a double-take when a customer with a long, long beard and wearing black pajamas walked into the store Easter morning.
Pine’s Edge is along Hwy. 10, just a couple miles south of Rice.
“Right away, I knew he must’ve been somebody, but I didn’t know who,” Conner recalled. “I knew he was somebody because he had an aura about him, like a rock ‘n’ roll star.”
Conner’s hunch was correct. The bearded, pajama-clad gent was none other than Billy Gibbons, masterful lead guitarist and singer for the legendary ZZ Top band and, more recently, a TV actor. Gibbons founded ZZ Top nearly 50 years ago, and the power-blues band has been making hit records and touring ever since. Rolling Stone magazine named Gibbons number 32 on a list of the greatest guitarists of all time.
As he entered Pine’s Edge, Gibbons was talking on his cell phone. Conner glanced out the store’s windows and saw two huge touring buses parked in the lot. Then she was sure the man really was somebody.
Just then, another employee, Dana Leason of Rice, showed up for work with her husband, Jim. Instantly, they recognized Gibbons and were stunned that he was standing, in black silk pajamas no less, smack dab in the middle of Pine’s Edge Grocery. Then it dawned on Conner why the man looked familiar. Sure enough, he was that “somebody” who’s in ZZ Top, a band she remembered from her youth.
Gibbons chatted with the female employees about the “cute little” fishing poles he spotted in the store. He wondered why the poles were so small. They explained to him they are for ice-fishing. The Texas-born Gibbons expressed amusement that people in the Far North actually cut holes in lake ice to catch fish. He even had Conner explain ice-fishing to the friend he’d been talking to on the cell phone.
Then he decided he just had to have one of the “cute” fishing poles. He grabbed one and handed it to his manager, who was not quite as enthused about the fishing pole as Gibbons was. He and his crew also bought all kinds of food items. Then they left the store. They returned a bit later, after Gibbons realized if he was going to fish, he’d need some jigs. He picked some out and bought them. His manager, with a mock frown, sighed, “Oh, great, now we’ll have to pull over on a bridge somewhere so he can fish ‘til he gets bored.”
They all had a good chuckle.
As Gibbons left the store, he flashed a peace sign to the employees and customers and said, “Rock on!”
Everybody in the store was thrilled by Billy Gibbons the Star Customer. Employees and customers alike were impressed by how friendly and fun Gibbons and his crew were.
Conner now wishes she’d asked him for his autograph.
“I wish I would have asked him to sign a wall in the store,” she said.
Next day, two photos and comments about the ZZ Top customers were placed on the Pine’s Edge website where they quickly went viral, eliciting all sorts of comments, such as the following:
Wow, Billy Gibbons!
Cool!
OMG!
Nooo waaaayyy!
I met him on an airplane years ago and he signed my napkin.
What a sharp-dressed man!
My son-in-law is there tonight at the concert in Bemidji. He won a beard contest and got two free tickets.
Gibbons is wearing Grandma Lois’s pant-suit from the 1960s.
Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top gets his photo taken with employees of the Pine’s Edge Grocery & Liquor store on Easter Sunday morning. From left to right are Jim Leason, his wife Dana Leason, Gibbons and Kathy Conner.
Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top flashes a peace sign in Pine’s Edge Grocery & Liquor just south of Rice during a stop he and his touring band made there on Easter Sunday morning.
