Photo by Kit Wood
Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa
It has become a talking point, a question often asked when music fans gather. Do you recall the last concert you attended before the pandemic stopped live music?
Joe Bonamassa does. His March 10, 2020 show in Milwaukee was the last gig before the world shut down. “We played the Riverside Theater and then we went to Green Bay were we were told we were done,” Bonamassa said also recalling “wild gigs at Shank Hall back in the day.”
Joe Bonamassa returns to the Riverside for a February 18 concert pabsttheatergroup.com/events/detail/joe-bonamassa-2023
Bonamassa is calling from Los Angeles, “a sunny place for shady people.” The New York state native has spent decades on the road so whatever the weather for his upcoming performance is neither here nor there.
With 25 No. 1 albums on the Billboard Blues Album Chart, the guitar-slinging kid who stumbled across the best of British-blues in his dad’s vinyl collection,opened for B.B. King when he was only 12 years old and was mentored by the great unsung guitar hero Danny Gatton, continues to mine for creative sparks.
Bonamassa says he gets more inspiration from other instruments than he does from the guitar at this stage of his life. “I like all kinds of music and like taking blues-based music into the worldy kind of thing—the quarter tone sounds are very Zeppelin-y.” Notably he’s collaborated with percussionist Hassan Ramse, cellist Tina Guo, and utilized musical textures like bouzouki oud. There is no denying that music is the universal language he says.
With 15 studio albums and 18 live albums to his credit, Bonamassa sees each album as a kind of snapshot of a period of time in his life. His 2021 album Time Clocks serves as the centerpiece for his upcoming live album Tales of Time.
Life beyond the stage and Nerdville
Bonamassa also makes it a point to give back. He runs Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation, a non-profit that promotes music education and Blues music by funding scholarships and providing music education resources to schools in need. One of the foundation’s largest fundraisers is a bi-annual music festival cruise Keeping the Blues Alive At Sea.
During the lockdown he also created the Fueling Musicians Program to raise money for musicians affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that placed the entertainment industry on hold. The initiative started as an emergency relief plan designed to support musicians by providing immediate cash payments for essential living expenses.
Nerdville is the name attached to casa Bonamassa, the house where he keeps a museum-worthy collection of vintage guitars and amplifiers. The Welcome To Nerdville video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctx86V-GI8A demonstrates he is as intrigued with the stories behind the instruments and previous owners as he is in technical details. To his credit he’s not a true hoarder, believing in a catch and release philosophy when the time comes to move on.
Since 2020 Bonamassa has hosted the Live From Nerdville podcast https://bonamassa.podbean.com/ which features conversations with music legends and less well-known guests.
In November of ’22, Bonamassa stepped away from social media, choosing to take the high road regarding an Instagram exchange. What advice would he give to a young Joe Bonamassa coming up?
He realizes it is a part of the landscape these days and says he loves that social media “has evened out the playing field” to where a kid from Milwaukee can get noticed and market themselves to the world.
“What I don’t like about it,” he continues, “is when people come on your platform, and they act as if they are your peers and take a cheap shot. I know who my peers are!”
It boils down to manners as respect; until someone has spent the hours onstage and committed a lifetime to work they really don’t have the right to hijack a post and essentially act rudely in someone else’s house.
The future…
At 45 years old, Bonamassa realizes he has been fortunate to have carved out a lifetime career in music while still decades away from the day most folks consider retirement age.
“I have an expiration date in my mind,” he says. “And I have a couple more things I want to accomplish before that date… and then re-assess where I’m at in life. I’m not a lifer. There is going to be a second act for me that has nothing to do with guitar.”
He says he is excited about the possibilities. “I still play at a high level and sing as good as I ever sang, and the records are as good as ever. But eventually you have to ask, ‘When is enough, enough?’ That is a very personal thing for me. You want to be able to pivot when you are young and passionate enough to pivot. I’ve been playing guitar professionally for 35 years.”
He’s seen artists whose life is the road, and they can’t go home. If they retire—that inertia—they’ll die. And that is not a place he wants to be. “These are the lessons I’ve learned being in the business for 35 years.”
When the day eventually comes, he says he will get a pen inscribed: “To Joe—Thanks for the memories!” And what album will he be taking to that desert island? “B.B. King’s Live at the Regal. It’s him at the height of his powers.”
