In several significant ways, ZZ Top is re-connecting with its storied, but rather distant past these days.

On the performance front, the band is embarking on its “In Your Face” tour, which takes the band into the far more intimate surroundings of American theaters after decades of shows in large arenas and outdoor amphitheaters.

The idea of returning to the theaters grew out of a concert ZZ Top played earlier this year. Looking to fill in an open date, the Houston-based band booked a show at a theater in Knoxville.

“What we came face to face with was an intimate surrounding that was quite reminiscent of exactly how we began,” ZZ Top singer/guitarist Billy Gibbons said in a mid-September phone interview. “And that experience alone was enough to just kind of ignite the excitement of getting up close, right in the center of the action zone, where the exchange between the audience on the deck becomes a real positive exchange.”

On a musical level, the tour will also re-connect fans — and band members Gibbons, Dusty Hill (bass) and Frank (Beard) themselves — with the music that was the soundtrack to ZZ Top’s theater shows of the early 1970s.

Gibbons said fans can expect to hear ZZ Top dust off a good number of songs from its first four albums — ZZ Top’s First Album (1970), Rio Grande Mud (1972), Tres Hombres (1973) and Fandango! (1975) — on these theater dates. It’s literally been decades since some of these songs have been played live by the band.

“It [the Knoxville show] reminded us so much of the start-up days that we became interested in revisiting a lot of the material that we haven’t even had an opportunity to perform for a long, long time,” Gibbons said. “And [we’ll] even draw upon some cover material from who knows when.”