JOE BONAMASSA
This month David Gerrish takes over from Phil Short while he’s away, and delves deep into the style of modern blues titan, Joe Bonamassa.
Joe Bonamassa is a guitarist that needs little introduction. A genuine guitar hero, Joe has secured his name in the succession of great artists that belong to the blues lineage. Picking up the guitar at the age of 4, it didn’t take long for him to begin attracting attention. He was taken under the wing of legendary tele-master, Danny Gatton, and by the time he was 12 he was opening shows for BB King. His first studio album, A New Day Yesterday, was released in 2000 and since then the New York native has released 15 studio albums and 18 live releases. Joe’s strong work ethic is undeniable, and along with his prolific production of albums he can also accurately claim to be on the road almost constantly, playing over 250 shows per year.
Bonamassa, somewhat surprisingly, credits his main inspiration for his love of the blues not so much to the traditional American artists that pioneered the genre (although he is clearly a fan of the likes of BB King and Muddy Waters), but to the guitarists synonymous with the British blues boom of the 1960s. His main influences were Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green and Rory Gallagher, and although purists would perhaps put these artists in the blues-rock camp, it’s the energy and excitement of these artists that tempted a young Bonamassa to pick up the electric guitar. He is an artist that wears these influences proudly on his sleeve and is not averse to taking a nod to the past, often collaborating with musical legends on his albums, which are frequently a mix of originals and covers.
As well as his status as the pre-eminent blues rock guitarist of the day, Bonamassa is known for his huge collection of vintage instruments. He is said to have around 400 guitars from the ’50s and ’60s and a similar number of amps from the same period. As you can imagine with a collection such as this, his tone is as important to him as his chops, and he carries the torch not just for a genre of music, but for a tradition of being uncompromising in the search for a heavenly, soaring, ever sustaining guitar tone, no matter the decibel level. In a world that sees an ever increasing use of digital technology. Joe is an ambassador for the wall of cranked up valve amps.
Bonamassa manages to combine the speed and precision of a modern rock player with the vocabulary and soul of an old bluesman. Joe often employs chord tones to sketch out the changes, and makes use of the epic sustain that his live rig affords him, holding long singing notes, punctuated with bursts of speedy Pentatonic runs in the vein of a more modern influence, Eric Johnson. He has a strong command of rhythmic groupings, often changing subdivisions within a line to create an exciting feeling and a sense of acceleration that will keep you on the edge of your seat.