Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top has been playing with drummer Matt Sorum and guitarist Austin Hanks on the side for a while now, and his third solo album, Hardware, the trio were clearly inspired by the California desert where they recorded.

Gibbons’ voice is deep and smooth, and if he wasn’t so good at shredding on the guitar, he’d make an excellent narrator of children’s books. Here, however, he narrates the life of a criminal on the run from scorpions and his own dark desires, regales the dangers of the arid landscape and the embrace of poisonous women. Hardware pairs excellently with the rushing sounds of rubber on pavement and the thoughtless drone of a drive to the middle of nowhere.

Three videos, all filmed within a few miles of the studio where Gibbons and co. recorded the album are important to the overall narrative. “My Lucky Card” is a rockin’ tribute to Sorum’s wife and was filmed at the famous Pappy and Harriet’s honky-tonk outside of Joshua Tree National Park and north of Coachella. The bar should showcase the new album on its jukebox. The performance was captured in one take, likely because of its immediate perfection and the talent of the veteran musicians. Gibbons plays slide guitar with a beer bottle and sings about a love that smacks of gratitude. “When she’s on top, there is no doubt,” Gibbons says, extolling the merits of reverse cowgirl.

“Desert High,” one of the sleekest tracks on the album, is a slow and deliberate creep, like a snake through the sand. Mysterious and slow, it makes references to rock and roll legends like Jim Morrison and Gram Parsons. “The desert toad takes me for a ride/ The Lizard King’s always by my side,” Gibbons sings of Morrison, whose alter ego was dubbed the Lizard King.

“Gram died in room eight and left it all to Keith,” he sings about Parsons’ death at the Joshua Tree Inn in 1973. Parsons’ body being stolen by his road manager and burned in the Mojave Desert is one of the region’s (and rock ‘and roll’s) most legendary stories.

“She’s On Fire” shows off Gibbons’ guitar skills with a solid solo, paired alongside romantic lyrics. “Lighting my fuse and grinding my gears/ She’s all right,” he sings. “More-More-More” brings the same vibe, starting off slow before the lyrics take a hard turn: “I try to give her all my money, ‘cause she likes a fat stack.” The song is reminiscent of Rob Zombie’s “Dragula,” and it makes me wonder if the two would have hung out together in high school. “Shuffle, Step & Slide” is a particularly fun song, giving listeners instructions on how to dance in any room that’s filled with their parents’ friends.

“Vagabond Man” serves as the slow jam of Hardware. “I’ve been a liar and a thief, a gambler and a chief/ Living the best life I can, like a vagabond/ A vagabond man,” Gibbons sings. It’s reminiscent of a Willy Nelson and Waylon Jennings rendition of “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

“Spanish Fly,” like the drug itself, is meant to be an aphrodisiac and is the perfect song for bumpin’ and grindin’ in the back of a hotrod. “You gotta get down if you want to get high,” Gibbons suggests over the prominent bass. In a shift in mood, “Stackin’ Bones,” featuring Larkin Poe, begins with a heavenly vocal chorus, made up of what could only best be imagined as babes in leather shorts. “Oh la la, he’s lookin’ for a hustle” the ladies sing, as Gibbons responds, “I’m stackin’ bones.”

“I Was A Highway” tells the story of a woman leaving her man to die on a deserted road. “You’d think I was a highway, the way she hit the road,” Gibbons sings, and then, “She left me on the road still a hundred miles from home,” in a deadly reveal. “Hey Baby, Que Paso,” the only track not written by Gibbons, Sorum and Hanks, is a rockin’ blues song about picking up a pretty girl by using the little Spanish one can muster. It lightens up the ending of the album and teaches a few Spanish phrases in the process!

Hardware may not hold big surprises, but it rings in another hot girl summer for anyone sitting in the bucket seat of a hotrod or riding on the back of a motorcycle. Billy Gibbons is still making drivin’ music. If you find yourself in the desert, take a look out the window at rattlesnakes, psychedelic cacti or maybe even a man who’s been left to die by his hot-headed lady.