Give ’em all your lovin’: Tres Hombres lends hand to pets

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

Local musician Mark Akers wanted to grow the beard, and he didn’t doubt that, given proper care and enough time, he’d have a facial rug that would do Dusty Hill himself proud.

But Akers also wanted to keep his spot as a winter-time player for the gospel group The Kingdom Heirs — and a dude sporting a two-foot long beard doing gospel songs might make some folks a little uncomfortable (unless that bearded dude’s name happens to be William Lee Golden).

In the end, Akers and his Tres Hombres bandmate Rik Asher — who plays the part of the other bearded member of ZZ Top (the band to which Tres Hombres pays tribute), Billy Gibbons — decided to go with fake beards.

“I can grow a great beard, but I don’t think it would go with the (Kingdom Heirs’) protocol,” Akers said. “And to grow it that length would take about two years. So we decided to order them from a theatrical supply house out of New York.

“It’s a challenge when Rik and I put them on, and it takes a little getting used to. It gets tangled in your strings when the wind blows, or it’s sitting on top of your bass, and you end up pulling at it. So it gets interesting sometimes.”

ZZ Top (which returns to East Tennessee for a June 3 date at The Tennessee Theatre in downtown Knoxville, by the way) rose up out of the 1970s, fusing Texas blues with gritty, swampy Southern rock. “Cheap Sunglasses,” “La Grange” and “Jesus Just Left Chicago” are staples of the band’s early career, but it was the advent of MTV and the early 1980s that shot ZZ Top to superstardom with the album “Eliminator” (and the hits “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs” and “Gimme All Your Lovin’”).

Local rock ‘n’ rollers Akers, Asher and drummer Uwe Lueth have played together in various lineups for years — most recently as members of the RMS Band, a local cover outfit that plays around East Tennessee. Akers, a Greenback resident, met Lueth (of Lenoir City) and Asher (owner of Rik’s Music in Knoxville) several years ago, and when local promoter Aaron Snukals urged the three to form a ZZ Top tribute act, they were intrigued.

“He had seen us doing ZZ Top stuff in our other bands and suggested we put a tribute together because we sounded so close to them,” Asher said. “That was about four years ago; then I ran into him at an event two years ago, and he said he would headline us on the water stage at Rockin’ the Docks (held annually in Lenoir City) if I would put this band together.”

Asher called Akers — who works at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville as the brainchild behind “The Shed” — and Lueth, and Tres Hombres was born. They’re all involved with other commitments, but they find time a few dates a year to strap on the beards, plug in the guitars and enjoy their chance to pretend their rock stars for a few hours.

“We’ve known each other for years, and we figured we would put together an action-packed set, and so we basically figured we would try it and do it well enough to keep going because we didn’t want to do anything halfway,” Akers said. “I think Rik’s job is the hardest part of the whole thing. He’s the guitar expert, so he had to do Billy. Uwe and I are just grooving on the backbeat. In that respect, ZZ Top is just like a jazz group, so to speak, with a great guitar player up front. That’s why I’ve always enjoyed ZZ Top — the drummer and bass player sit back there and lay it down, and Billy is just up front, tearing it up.”

The guys do right by the audience, too — “La Grange” is always a crowd favorite, Akers said, and the guys themselves love playing the song “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers.” It’s not fancy, but then again, ZZ Top never was. And it’s not a shtick — the local trio just wants to light a fire under each other and the people who come out to see them. They want to play rock ‘n’ roll, and they want to play it well.

“We’ve been doing four shows a year over the past couple of years, and I think we’ve done a good job in respect to ZZ Top,” Akers said. “We’re just old buddies and friends, and everybody loves ZZ Top.”