Tim Montana Rocking With His Heroes, Including Jerry Cantrell

Tim Montana isn’t afraid to meet his heroes.

The country crooner-turned-rock star never heeded the old adage about the pitfalls and disappointment often associated with getting to know childhood idols. Instead, he actively seeks them out, and the results have been inspirational. After all, today Montana calls ZZ Top founder Billy Gibbons one of his “best friends.”

The two met in 2013, when Gibbons helped out with the song “This Beard Came Here to Party” for Montana’s 2016 album, Tim Montana and the Shrednecks. A Nashville-based indie artist at the time, Montana couldn’t believe guitar god Gibbons would even consider doing a verse and chorus on one of his songs. But there was a catch.

“I get an email that said, ‘Hey, he’s going to roll through town. He’s going to pop in the studio. If he likes you, he’ll hang out and write the song. If doesn’t, he’s going to leave,’” Montana recalls. “I was like, ‘Okay, no pressure.’”

But apparently Gibbons liked what he heard. “He rolled in," Montana says, "we wrote the song, we hit it off really well, but he left. I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll probably never see him again, but I got to write a song with one of my heroes.’ Check the box."

And that was that — or so he thought.

But “This Beard Came Here to Party” went on to become the rallying cry for the World Series-winning Boston Red Sox, as the players grew playoff beards during the run. The feel-good storyline brought Montana and Gibbons together for performances, including one at Fenway Park that got national coverage, and the kindred spirits struck up a genuine friendship from there.

“I learned not to talk about this story on stage, because people will boo or they’ll cheer,” Montana says of the unlikely baseball connection, while admitting that he’s not a “sports guy,” so he doesn’t really get why the Red Sox are so polarizing.

At this point, Montana has opened for ZZ Top nearly 100 times, and he regularly joins Gibbons during his solo tours. The two most recently partnered to purchase a bar, Wise River Club, near Montana’s hometown of Butte last year.

“I cut my teeth with ZZ Top, learned how to tour and do it watching Gibbons work,” he explains. “His work ethic is second to none. He goes harder than any 25-year-old, and he’s 74.”

After nearly a decade of “banging my head against a wall” in Nashville, Montana decided to return to his home state and raise a family. But since his breakthrough with ZZ Top and Gibbons, Montana has become a household name in the alt-country rock world. His latest album, Savage, dropped this month and received universal praise for lead single “Devil You Know.” The grunge-inspired record, which also features anthems “Die Today” and “Shut Me Out,” takes a different direction than his previous releases, but is also “the most authentic, genuine version of myself that I’ve ever done,” he says.

“I was a grunge kid who grew up in remote Montana and only listened to what was coming out of Seattle,” the 39-year-old adds while sitting in front of his wall of guitars. “This has been in my head since I was a kid. It was very liberating to get to do music the way I wanted to.”
Savage helped Montana land on the current tour of another hero, Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell. He and a solo Cantrell will play Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre on Thursday, August 1, along with Bush and Candlebox.

Montana hasn’t yet met Cantrell, but he's looking forward to the gig. And he knows to be chill when meeting living legends. “I’m cool around the heroes. I’ve been very fortunate to meet and become friends with most of my heroes. He’s the last one of my Mount Rushmore guys,” Montana says.

“Jerry Cantrell is up there for me as one of the last of my ultimate heroes I never met. And it’s going to happen. I don’t know if he’s going to like me or not, but I get to meet my hero, and I know exactly when and where. How often does that get to happen?”

For Montana, it seems to happen often, as he’s shared a stage with Staind and Seether, and also linked up with Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana fame, another one of his Mount Rushmore heroes. “All those guys were on my mixed CDs I’d make as a teenager,” he says.

The recent grunge revival gets Montana excited. He reminisces about a time when grunge groups dominated the airwaves and alt-rock went mainstream in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now Montana is looking to bring that back.

“I think that era of music is coming back to the forefront,” as he sees it. “My sixteen-year-old daughter just discovered grunge. Her and her friends are blasting the music I grew up listening to. That’s the era of music that’s hard to beat. We need to bring back guitar rock.”

Tim Montana, with Jerry Cantrell, and Bush and Candlebox, 6 p.m. Thursday, August 1, Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre, 6350 Greenwood Plaza Boulevard, Greenwood Village. Tickets are $35-$100.