With a third leg of their Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour, Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top are holding to the adage of not trying to fix something that’s not broken.

But they’ve found a way to make it better.

Different than the tour’s stop a year ago at Pine Knob Music Theatre, fans are likely to see ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons up on stage with his tourmates, joining Skynyrd during its rendition of J.J. Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze.” “He’s become a regular,” reports Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke, a one-time Ann Arbor resident when he led the band Blackfoot. “All of a sudden we look behind us and here he comes, walking out there. It’s at the point where if he didn’t walk out, we’re gonna miss him, y’know?”

For his part, Gibbons says, the collaboration was inevitable.

“There hasn’t been a single night gone by in the past few decades where somebody in the third row doesn’t shout out, ‘Play some Skynyrd!’” the famously bearded guitarist says, with a chuckle. “And now we get to do it.”

Even before that, of course, the two veteran, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted acts had a good and very saleable thing going.

They’re of a similar vintage — Skynyrd from Florida, ZZ Top from Texas — and musical lineage, both drawing from the blues and early rock influences. Both became arena headliners during the early and mid-’70s — ZZ Top elevated to the stadium circuit for its Worldwide Texas Tour in 1976-77 — and between them, they possess a passel of iconic and enduring rock hits from Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” to ZZ Top’s “La Grange,” “Tush,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Legs.”

“Those guys are pretty fierce when it comes to playing good rock ‘n’ roll,” Gibbons, 74, says of his tour mates, “and I believe that, bottom line, it’s a pretty nice ticket to have a night full of ferociousness.”

Medlocke, also 74, concurs. “You’ve only got a handful of classic rock bands left, so when you put two of these bands together, you’ve got a lot of great music you can come hear in one night. It’s a rarity to have two such bands together in the first place, and … we’ll see this through into October, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we do it again together, maybe sooner than later.”

Skynyrd and ZZ Top also share a resilience of spirit, continuing through both ebb-and-flow commercial trends and the losses of band members over the years. Skynyrd’s has been the most tragic; the group lost three members in a plane crash in October 1977, while other original and long-term members have died since 1990 — most recently guitarist Gary Rossington in 2023.

ZZ Top, meanwhile, kept the same lineup intact for 52 years, until bassist Joe “Dusty” Hill died in 2021 at the age of 72, replaced by longtime band tech Elwood Francis.

“Dusty used to say, ‘If I’m late coming to the gig, give my guitar to Ellwood,’” Gibbons recalls. “He’s got it now.”

“It’s about the music, man. People want to hear these songs,” explains Medlocke, who was with Skynyrd in the early ’70s before forming Blackfoot, and then rejoined in 1996 and currently guides the band with frontman Johnny Van Zant. “The fans … when Gary passed away, they didn’t want to see it end. The biggest thing we go on our social media and on our website and in the street was, ‘Please don’t let this be the end of it.’

“That’s what Johnny and I have gone about doing, and we’ll keep this thing going for as long as we want.”

Neither band is showing any sign of reaching the point soon — and are, in fact, talking about new albums 12 years after each of their last releases. Besides launching a new branded whiskey, Hell House, Skynyrd is eyeballing a new album based on recordings that Rossington was working on with the band. “You can hear Gary talking, you can hear him laughing, it’s just beautiful,” Medlocke says. “So we’re talking about a new Lynyrd Skynyrd release, and it would be a memory and a tribute specifically to Gary Rossington.”

ZZ Top, meanwhile. has been spending time in the studio, and Gibbons says new material has been piling up for its first new release since 2012. “They’re not quite in the final stages, but probably at least by the end of the year we’ll have a handful of things to throw out,” he says. “Squeezing in recording time while you’re out on the road is getting easier and easier. There was a time when you needed a high school gymnasium to make a record; now you can do it on a laptop.”

And like Skynyrd, ZZ Top has songs that date back — decades, according to Gibbons. “If you ask Frank (Beard, drummer) he will be the first one to remind the avid listener that we have a song we started writing in 1969 — and we’re still trying to figure it out,” Gibbons says with a laugh. “It’s still coming —maybe this time.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and the Outlaws perform at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13 at Pine Knob Music Theatre, 33 Bob Seger Drive, Independence Township. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com. Members of Lynyrd Skynyrd will sign bottles of their Hell House whiskey at noon Friday at Total Wine & More, 1242 S. Rochester Road, Rochester Hills. 248-466-0662 or totalwine.com.