Heavy is an Attitude: on weight, time, and return

There are moments when music stops feeling like something you’re listening to and starts feeling like something you’re standing inside of. Time loosens, movement slows without losing momentum. Nothing rushes forward, and nothing pulls away. That was the feeling in the room at the historic Paramount Theater in Denver the other night, watching and hearing Billy Gibbons play. He was my first guitar hero - long before I knew what a guitar hero was supposed to be, long before I understood tone, groove, or craft. I knew how his music and guitar playing felt in my body. I remember playing air guitar to La Grange as a kid, responding to the groove before I could name it, enchanted by the sounds before understanding them had a role to play. The music didn’t ask for interpretation - it simply moved, and I moved with it.

Seeing him now, decades later, what struck me most wasn’t nostalgia or surprise. It was how little had been added - and how much had been distilled. The music was heavy. Not because it was loud, or aggressive, or saturated with gear, but because everything landed with such certainty that the groove carried its own weight. Each phrase arrived exactly where it belonged, and just as often, didn’t arrive at all. Space wasn’t a gap between ideas - it was part of the statement. Heavy, in this sense, isn’t a sound. It’s a relationship with time and the confidence to let it stand.

At 76, he still moves with the smoothness and bravado that can’t be practiced directly. The choreography is still there, so is the humor, the stories, and the stamina. Whatever aches and fatigue may come with nearly six decades of playing and touring, they aren’t what you notice. What you notice is how completely himself he remains - unhurried, unbothered, fully at home in the music. Cool, not as something performed, but as what emerges when confidence, ease, and experience no longer need to announce themselves. Nothing in his playing felt anxious, nothing was pushed. Dynamics weren’t used to impress, but to shape conversation. The music breathed because it was allowed to. The band was clearly part of that agreement. This kind of space can’t exist unless everyone is listening deeply enough to trust it. No one rushed to fill the silence. No one tried to take more than their share of time. The groove lived between them, not in any one set of hands.

Moments like this make it clear that mastery doesn’t come from accumulation. It comes from staying with something long enough for unnecessary movement to fall away. From allowing rhythm to settle into the body, rather than trying to manage it from the outside. From learning, over time, when not to act. Watching him play, it was clear that the guitar wasn’t something he was doing to the music. It was something he was inhabiting. The playing didn’t feel like a series of decisions - it felt lived!

As a teacher, this is where the mirror inevitably turns. I think about how often students and many experienced players rush - not because they’re careless, but because they’re uncomfortable with space. How quickly silence gets interrupted, and how effort steps in where listening might otherwise deepen. We spend so much time talking about adding more notes, more information, more control - without spending nearly enough time learning how to stay with what’s already there. Restraint, when it’s real, doesn’t reduce expression - it concentrates it, gives authority to placement, and allows rhythm to speak without explanation. This kind of playing doesn’t argue for itself or announce its importance. It simply exists, steady and undeniable, shaped by years of return rather than the constant addition of new ideas or the debilitating habit of chasing information. Heavy, it turns out, isn’t about force or gear, or tone, or volume. It’s about trust - trust in time, in the groove, and in the patience to let the music reveal itself.

There’s also gratitude here. Billy Gibbons lit the spark that pulled me toward the guitar early on, and his playing continues to offer something to return to as I grow, learn, and teach. He also set the bar for believing that heaviness, groove, and swagger are best carried by a Sharp Dressed Man!