BILLY GIBBONS AND THE BFG’S

At the Wilbur Theatre, Wednesday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $37-$50.

800-745-3000. www.ticketmaster.com

Like a lot of kids, Billy Gibbons took pleasure in banging on pots and pans around the house — “anything that would make noise,’’ says the ZZ Top frontman of his rudimentary attempts at laying down a beat. His bandleader father decided that if young Billy was interested in percussion, he should have formal instruction. Next thing the 12-year-old Gibbons knew, he was on a plane from his native Texas to New York City to get lessons from the Mambo King himself: Tito Puente.

“He opened the door and he thrust two timbale sticks at me and said, ‘Show me what you want to play,’?’’ Gibbons recalls, laughing, on the phone from an Atlanta tour stop. “Fortunately, I guess whatever it was I did was alright, and he said, ‘OK, we can take it from here.’ ’’

He ultimately left the drums for guitar, but his formative education came in handy when Gibbons, 66, decided to make his first album outside the confines of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-ensconced band he has led for nearly 50 years. Released in November, “Perfectamundo’’ revels in the estimably bearded singer, songwriter, and guitarist’s longstanding love of Afro-Cuban music with a clutch of originals, both in Spanish and English, bolstered by a handful of covers. Gibbons and his band, the BFG’s (his initials), come to the Wilbur Theatre Wednesday.

Q. Did Mr. Puente’s lessons come right back to you after all those years while you were recording “Perfectamundo’’?

A. Oh yeah, we dusted off the timbales and maracas. Early on in ZZ Top’s career, we performed with Bo Diddley, and he gave me a set of maracas that were signed by his maraca player, Jerome Green. He said, “If you can’t shake ’em, you better bake ’em — but I would recommend you learn how to shake ’em.’’ [Laughs]

Q. The album takes what you’ve done in the rock and blues arena and infuses it with a new groove. Was it important to you that it should rock in some way?

A. Yes, the challenge of shifting gears into an Afro-Cuban direction put us right in the middle of the big question mark: How do we do this? Which became a blues- and rock-infused interpretation of that which we had learned from listening to Tito Puente and Perez Prado. The first track was “Sal y Pimiento,’’ and we started thinking, Gee, how do we get into this Afro-Cuban thing? Which led us into Slim Harpo’s “Got Love If You Want It,’’ which is a straight cha cha right off the bat. What’s not talked about very often is that Latin influences have permeated through rock, blues, and popular music across the board.

Q. You even delve into hip-hop in places — and is that auto-tune I hear on your voice?

A. You know it’s right! [Laughs] I said, listen, we’ve got the freedom to be not ZZ Top. We went into this foray into uncharted madness with absolutely no rules, and I think it came off. Before going to Cuba, we took the tour to the West Coast, and it was the hip-hop sections that people were standing up and going, Yeah, all right! It was so unexpected, because drifting off into auto-tune, I would call it a fairly dramatic departure from what people would know.

Q. For this tour, do you feel comfortable doing just the new album and material in that vein, or were you obligated to rearrange a few ZZ Top songs to fit the format?

A. All the male members of the aggregation were cornered by the two girls playing drums, and they said, “Hey, we want to do a ZZ Top song.’’ And I said, “Well, what do you have in mind?’’ And they said, “How about ‘La Grange’ or ‘Waitin’ for the Bus’?’’ And I said, “How about ‘Ten Foot Pole’?’’ — that’s way, way down in the deep, deep depths of the deep tracks. But they learned it!

Q. The album was born out of an invitation to play a jazz festival in Havana that you ultimately turned down, correct?

A. We said we don’t want to crash the party just yet, but we do want to make Havana — if you’ll give us a moment, we’ll see what we can come up with.

Q. When you got there in 2015, were you nervous about playing this music in its birthplace?

A. We did have some trepidation about performing on borrowed and provided equipment: We’ve got two organ players, a DJ, and two girls on drums and the only thing we were allowed to take in was one guitar. However, they scrounged up the best that they had and we made do, because it’s all about having a good time. We delivered two performances in two different venues, and each delivery was over the top with the enthusiasm. And it’s the same worldwide. It doesn’t matter where you go, when the band is on fire it can ignite the audience, and then that starts the brushfire.

BILLY GIBBONS AND THE BFG’S

At the Wilbur Theatre, Wednesday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $37-$50. 800-745-3000. www.ticketmaster.com

Interview was edited and condensed. Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeRodman.