On a hot Sunday afternoon, Tim Montana reclines in the gleaming-white interior of a luxury RV outside the Wise River Club, the musical mountain outpost he co-owns with Billy Gibbons in the state that shares his surname.
Lodging in his tour vehicle is only temporary while he renovates his family’s nearby permanent lodgings. But it’s still a marked improvement on how he grew up while learning to play guitar – at least this home has power and water.
“I’m very fortunate now, but a single-wide trailer with no electricity and an outhouse is how I spent most of my life,” he says of his rural upbringing.
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Back then he kept himself occupied with a nylon-string acoustic and a Squier while learning how to fret the grungy guitar riffs he still favors today, and making a deal with his maker: if music didn’t pan out by the time he turned 40, he’d try to make a living another way.
He’s enjoyed some big moments before reaching that golden age, like performing his song Butte, America on Letterman in 2008, scoring co-writing credits with Gibbons on his 2016 album Tim Montana and the Shrednecks, and touring with ZZ Top and Kid Rock.
Then, at 39-and-a-half, his song Devil You Know became his first bonafide hit after nearly two decades of grinding. “It was getting close, and all of a sudden, bam, we smack one up the Billboard charts!” he laughs.
That breakthrough gave him room to recruit some of his guitar heroes as guests for his seventh album, Entire State of Tim Montana. But it wasn’t mapped out in advance: “I had one or two collabs in mind but it wasn’t intended to be a giant collab album – it just naturally happened.”
Gibbons lent a hand on a cover of Brown Sugar, which originally appeared on ZZ Top’s First Album in 1971. Montana thought the chord structure would translate well to modern rock. “Billy laid down the intro, and you can hear his jewelry vibrating,” he says. “It was not intended for the album; it was for him to tell me how to play his part.
“He did this one take, and he’s growling and all that stuff he does. I can’t redo that – no way! It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. His heart and soul and his blues musicianship are all over it.”
Another connection traces back to a night at the Troubadour in LA, when Montana played alongside Slash at Gibbons’ birthday jam. When the ZZ Top hero reached out on Montana’s behalf, Slash texted him two hours later, saying he was in for Brown Sugar.
Montana sent the tracks over and the part was done in 48 hours, after Slash asked what Gibbons thought a solo should sound like. “He looks up to Billy as much as we all do,” Montana says. “Now I have a group text with those two, and every time it lights up, I just smile, thinking about 13-year-old me!”
He got to know another teenage idol, Jerry Cantrell when they both toured with Bush in 2024. The Alice in Chains guitarist invited him to jam so Montana showed him Watch Me Drown, a work-in-progress that’s a highlight of the album. “I said, ‘Do you want to finish writing this?’ He goes, ‘Dude, I’d love to, but this song’s in the bag. It sounds like a hit. Finish that yourself!’”
I went and found my heroes, the people that I’ve listened to my entire life
Back in Nashville, producer John Pierce suggested spicing up Kinda Like It with an Alice in Chains vibe. They added a wah-wah to the mix; but before the album was finished, Cantrell replaced it with his own part after a phone call about hunting changed direction when the Gibbons and Slash pairing came up.
“Jerry was like, ‘You got something for me to shred on?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, actually, I do.’ I was kind of nervous that he was gonna be like, ‘Are you ripping off my sound?’ I fixed that problem by having him play it! You hear the first 60 seconds of that song and that insidious wah pedal, and there’s only one person on planet Earth who does that.”
Gibbons has become a big-brother figure to Montana. He tells him to slow down, to play fewer notes, his pedalboard is too big. He’s particular about wardrobe, too – screenshotting YouTube clips of Montana’s outfits and texting corrections: ‘Wear long sleeves, ditch that jacket.’
He sends clothes, guitar straps, and gear on his own. The two are also building a street rod together, a ’42 Ford, fitted with a pair of Magnatone amplifiers in the back. One is running Gibbons’ signature model, the other has Slash’s.
“I went and found my heroes, the people that I’ve listened to my entire life,” Montana says. “I haven’t changed much since I was a kid – it’s grunge music and rock ’n’ roll.”
