JOE BONAMASSA – BLUES IN BRITAIN

“The Blues is full of fire and brimstone!”

Joe is on press duties for his new album Royal Tea, which comes out at the end of October and I’ve been shuffled into a long line of telephone interviews by his record company. This is the way of things when you’re dealing with an artist of the magnitude of Joe Bonamassa: it’s all a bit pressurized and mildly successful. No bones about it, I’m talking to the biggest name currently playing the blues on the planet right now-blues-rock royalty no mistaking.

But, when he finally gets on the line, apologizing for the delay in establishing contact, Joe Bonamassa starts talking about his love of blues music and all the record company and PR waffle recedes in the background, leaving you with a guy just talking about his music and what it means to him. That’s it.

Let’s be honest, there are more than a few naysayers out there in bluesworld, some of whom might well be reading this now, who object to the huge commercial operation that surrounds Bonamassa: who dislike the sheer efficiency of the business operation that propels this one guy who, by persistence, hard work and God-given talent is arguably the best guitarist currently playing the blues you’re ever likely to hear.

Ticket Pricing, merchandising, a high-profile online presence, a stream of live albums recorded at the flashiest concert halls on earth and a guitar collection that must keep his insurers nicely overworked: yep, it’s easy to get a little cynical. But, no-one’s forcing you to listen to Joe Bonamassa or buy his records, or mortgage your house to see him play the Royal Albert Hall or Sydney Opera House, or Red Rocks and Carnegie Hall: You pay your money and you reap the rewards.

And as the needle hits the groove on “When One Door Opens’, the opening track on Royal Tea, is near impossible to sneer or moan. It’s just about everything we’ve come to expect from Joe Bonamassa. And it’s awesome.

Royal Tea is inspired by the principle players that shaped the British blues in the mid-60s: guitar heroes like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Peter Green, players for whom the blues was king. It was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studios in London. The ten original tracks were co-written by Joe and a cast of home-grown notables, including former Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden, ex-Cream lyricist Pete Brown and Jools Holland. Bonamassa’s long-standing producer Kevin Shirley and regular touring band flew in for the recording sessions: drummer Anton Fig, Michael Rhodes on bass and keyboard-player Reese Wynans. “The thing I that I love about this record is that it sounds British,” he exclaims enthusiastically. “That was the whole plan That was the whole plan: to do the thing at Abbey Road, working there and writing the songs there. A lot of my records are planned up to two years in advance and we were scheduled to do this one in July 2019.

“I’d written the songs with Bernie and Pete Brown and we were ready to go, and then Anton Breaks his foot! Next thing you know, everything gets pushed back to January this year and that’s when we ended up recording it. But you don’t know till you’re camping out and being there whether the whole thing is gonna be worth it, but once we started carving out the tracks, I knew it was going to work.”

It's pretty obvious why Bonamassa shelled out those extra bucks to record at Abbey Road. “Yeah, it’s the history, it’s the music recorded within those walls that you’ve admired your whole life. Abbey Road has an extensive mic locker, they know their history, they have the EMI console that “Let it Be’ was recorded on, and they’re happy to rent it to you. The John Lennon mic, the ‘Revolution’ mic, whatever! But you have to realize that that gear isn’t going to write the songs for you, so the better your songs are, the better the experience in the studio is going to be. So, we worked really hard to get those songs up and happening.”

Let’s talk about some of those songs. ‘When One Door Opens’ is practically a symphony on its own: an eight-minute tour de force with strings and a full blown Zeppelinesque middle eight.” Bonamassa describes it as “a song that encapsulates my entire career” and he’s obviously pleased as punch about it. “It’s bluesy, it’s got melody, then it goes off on a tangent, but then it comes back around again.

It’s the opening statement on the records and hopefully worth the price of admission!’ Another track that we discuss is ‘A Conversation With Alice,’ which like ‘When One Door Opens’ was dropped as a single ahead of the album release. It’s a song that will raise eyebrows a little; the alias of the therapist that Bonamassa consulted when faced with reoccurring difficulties and problems that he couldn’t shake.

For more of this article, stay tuned for the October issue of Blues in Britain!

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