Joe Bonamassa performs on March 2 at the Benedum Center.

By Scott Mervis / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Joe Bonamassa only spoke to the crowd once Thursday night — like he really needs to talk — saying that he remembers playing Moondog’s many moons ago.

“We played 14 sets a night for $15, good money back in those days,” he joked.

Guitarists still pass through the Blawnox club every week and less than 1 percent of them ever make it to where he is, selling millions of records and playing two-night stands in the Cultural District.

Bonamassa is a savvy marketer, no doubt, and it doesn’t hurt that he looks like he stepped out of “Men in Black,” but he's also one of the greatest living guitar players, especially in his field of blues-rock where so many have passed on or slowed down.

If radio still paid attention to people like him, the first two songs he played Thursday night, both from his latest album “Blues of Desperation,” would've been in heavy rotation. “This Train” and “Mountain Climbing” were a pair of bare-knuckled blues-rockers that evoked not only Stevie Ray Vaughan (RIP) but bands like Mountain and Led Zeppelin. The title track, which came third, had echoes of Bad Company, the Stones and “Sweet Emotion.”

But due to the indifference of radio, Bonamassa is robbed of having a signature song, and doesn’t have a signature sound, per se. You don't hear his guitar tone and say, “Oh that's Joe Bonamassa.” But, wow, can the man play.

He did 14 songs, give or take, and stepped up with a knock-down, drag-out killer solo, sometimes two or three, on every single one. If there had been beer and bourbon flowing in there, they would've ripped the place up. (Although, granted, his crowd is on the older side now.)

There were the full-blast, hard-driving solos on those songs, and “Sky is Crying”- style soaring ones on slow burners like “No Good Place for the Lonely” and “How Deep the River Runs.”

And then there were a few more experimental ones like on “Love Ain't a Love Song,” on which he flipped the tone switch all the way down on his Strat and took his time just tinkering with strings (to total silence in the crowd) like he was goofing around at home before ambushing us with a scorching return to the riff. His solo on the Texas roadhouse rocker “I Gave Up Everything for You, 'Cept the Blues” ended up somewhere between Dick Dale and Eddie Van Halen…