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Joe Bonamassa’s blues guitarist with local roots still smokin’
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Yorkville native Joe Bonamassa, blues guitarist, has been playing professionally since he was 12. His latest tour will bring him to Rochester Nov. 16. Submitted photo.
By CHARLES FERRO
Posted Nov 7, 2010 at 12:01 AMUpdated Nov 7, 2010 at 7:04 AM
Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa stands on the stage of Vega in Copenhagen, Denmark, playing his guitar, but stops after he hears something. It’s three o’ clock in the afternoon and the band is running through the sound check to an audience of four. Three of the men are fiddling with the control panel or laptops; the fourth just listens.
Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa stands on the stage of Vega in Copenhagen, Denmark, playing his guitar, but stops after he hears something. It’s three o’ clock in the afternoon and the band is running through the sound check to an audience of four. Three of the men are fiddling with the control panel or laptops; the fourth just listens.
Dressed in jeans, a denim shirt over a T-shirt and sneaks, Bonamassa squats with a techie to figure out why one of the sound control gadgets is displaying a red light. He blasts a couple of riffs on his Gibson, adjusts an amp and goes back to figuring out why the red light is on.
They apparently solve the problem, and after a quick acoustic number, it’s interview time.
The first question: “What was The Devereux called before it was The Devereux?” tips Bonamassa off that this interview might be a bit different, and the talk turns to Utica for a while. (When it first opened it was called Manny’s Other Place).
Bonamassa now calls Los Angeles home, and says of the City of Angels, ”(It’s) superficial, but my kind of superficial. But I have to travel. I suppose I’m nomadic by nature.”
He’s been on the road for most of his 33 years, now playing around 200 gigs a year.
Like the 1,400-seat Copenhagen venue, all the stops on his current European tour have been sold out for a long time.
“I’m a lucky guy. Sold out in Copenhagen, Sweden, Israel, everywhere” he says. “And all I basically did was practice playing in my bedroom in Yorkville.”
From the stage he feels there is no difference between overseas or American audiences.
“The reaction is the same; the same in Israel as it is in Cleveland,” he says.
He does refer to being a little intimidated by a Finnish crowd that was unusually subdued.
“But we found out afterwards they loved the show,” he said.
Life on the road isn’t much different now than it was when he opened shows for B.B. King at the age of 13.
“It’s the same schedule, eating patterns and it becomes your home,” he says, “and you’re always dedicated to a couple of hours on stage.”
Life on the road has taken Bonamassa to many corners of the world; but getting a Gibson guitar named in his honor (the Inspired By Joe Bonamassa Aged Les Paul Goldtop), being included on the computer game Guitar Hero, playing with King and sharing the Royal Albert Hall stage with Eric Clapton and being consistently praised as one of the greatest guitarists in the world did not come overnight.
“It’s something like a small business and it took 17 years to get it off the ground,” Bonamassa said. “Only in the past three or four years has it really grown and paid off. I’m in the ticket business, playing live is how I got to this point. A record is just a means to an end, and that’s the stage.”
He says there’s always a tinge of fear that he’ll perform poorly onstage; a feeling that’s been with him since his days as a kid jamming with the big guys in places like The Devereux.
“But I got support then. I had good parents and I enjoyed the challenge of life,” he says. “Though, I still feel a tiny bit of trepidation now and again.”
Show time
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Six hours after the sound check, a familiar riff draws a roar from the crowd and the guitarist appears: Dressed up for the stage, hair slicked back and wearing his signature eyeglasses.
Bonamassa and his band deliver a blistering two-hour-long concert that wins raves.
“His fingers were like little flashes of lightning racing along the fingerboard. The treasure drove of fine detailing was so overpowering, all of the air guitarists in the audience had to give up trying to follow him and just glanced at each other with approving nods,” one reviewer wrote.
In the final encore, Bonamassa played around during a solo and made some references to Led Zeppelin with a sound that would make one of his heroes, Jimmy Page, proud – perhaps even envious.
That afternoon Bonamassa had spoken about the second wave of British blues-rock guitarists who inspired him, Jeff Beck, Page, Eric Clapton – whom he considers the best guitarist for his “lifetime at the top” – and others.
His father’s record collection provided good listening when Bonamassa was just knee high to an electric guitar.
“And WOUR was always playing Led Zeppelin,” he recalls. “I discovered blues through the British musicians. It’s funny, we embraced our own music via the English, and now the English are embracing me. It’s ironic.”
Though he calls B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” the best song ever, Bonamassa plays more than just blues and blues rock.
Playing with Black Country Communion – “That was fun,” he says – gave him the leeway to let go with full-blown rock music and recording an album in Greece that resulted in World music seasoning in his playing. The result was his March release “Black Rock.”
He admits, like other musicians, he sometimes feels a little stale every three or five years, and it’s good to experiment.
“But not like Peter Gabriel and his working with world, but rather something that’s fun and put into perspective,” Bonamassa said.
One question from the afternoon interview still had to be answered:
“Have you ever ridden on the Utica Club Trolley?”
Bonamassa thinks for a second and replies, “You know, I don’t think I ever have. We’ve got a real treasure there. The brewery is a cool place.”
Charles Ferro is now a free-lance writer living in Copenhagen. A Utica native, he drove the Utica Club Trolley a few decades ago.
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