JOE BONAMASSA TALKS TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY CAREER STRUGGLES. THE LEAN-AND-MEAN BLUES-COVERS ALBUM THAT CHANGED HIS FATE IN 2003 - AND ITS BIGGER-BUDGET 2023 SEQUEL. BLUES DELUXE VOL. 2
by Jim Beaugez
THE PAST two decades, Joe Bonamassa has been a familiar face in these pages, as a widely appreciated, virtuosic blues guitarist, as well as an avid caretaker of the instrument’s legacy, who has collected and preserved not only hundreds of guitars, but also mountains of classic amplifiers and guitar ephemera.
As such, it might be difficult for readers today to imagine a time when he was just another struggling guitarist trying to make his mark in music. But after being ushered into the ranks of B.B. King and Danny Gatton before age 13, and forming the band Bloodline with Waylon Krieger, Erin Davis and Berry Oakley Jr. — the sons of Robby Krieger of the Doors, Miles Davis and the Allman Brothers Band bassist — Smokin’ Joe Bonamassa, as he was known then, tanked as a solo artist.
And what was his plan B when his high-profile 2000 debut, A New Day Yesterday, and its 2002 follow-up, So, It’s Like That, failed to meet expectations? “Uh, I don’t know, become a cop?” he says today, drolly. Instead of trading his love of the beat for a life on the beat, though, he took the experience as a call to follow his own instincts.
Now that he had some real blues to sing about, Bonamassa went back to his musical roots in search of the spark that lit him up years earlier. He found it, and in turn a rabid audience, with his 2003 covers record, Blues Deluxe, which featured a rejuvenated Bonamassa taking on songs by Robert Johnson, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and others.
“I’ve had a couple of breakouts,” he says. “I would say in 2003 [with Blues Deluxe], after we started getting some traction in Europe, and then in 2009 when we did the Royal Albert Hall for the first time — that was the real explosion. But everything had been leading up to that moment.”
Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, which was released in October, doesn’t cover the same old ground, though. Backed by his core band as well as a bright and blustery horn section and jump-blues piano, Bonamassa puts his spin on the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac roadhouse jam “Lazy Poker Blues,” Bobby Bland’s soul classic “Twenty-Four Hour Blues” and six other blues tunes.
