He’s been called one of the best blues rock guitarists on the planet, but Joe Bonamassa’s feet are firmly on the ground. Marion McMullen finds out why the American star is happy to let his music do the talking as he heads to the Midlands.
Music reviewers cannot help but turn eloquent when they hear Joe Bonamassa play.
“Six-string’s new king of pyromania,” “movie music for the mind,” and “fiery symphonic playing” are just some of the lines that have been used to describe the music of the guitarist who regularly notches up around 200 concerts a year.
America’s Howard Stern Show even called him “the future of blues rock,” but Joe laughingly describes himself as “an average player and an average looking person.” He says: “I haven’t quite figured it out yet.”
He was just 12-years-old when he opened for the legendary BB King and knew then his future lay in music.
There’s been tough times along the way when it was a struggle to make ends meet and he lived on fast food and sandwiches and drove his own van.
But his fortunes changed when he started bringing out his music on his own record label and he’s now Billboard’s Number One blues artist while fans all over the world follow him online and snap up tickets for his concerts as soon as they go on sale.
More than 80,000 follow him on Twitter and many more catch him on his new weekly internet radio show The Pickup, which blends music history, songs and an encyclopedic knowledge of guitar facts.
New shows premiere online every Friday at www.thepicupradio.com and whether it’s unusual knowledge of a vintage Les Paul played on an obscure record from the 70s or a friendly debate on how to name your guitar, Joe offers banter, fun facts and tour stories.
“I can’t believe where it’s all come from in the last eight or nine years,” says Joe. “I put out a lot or records, I mean a lot, in the last two or thee years. A career’s worth of recording and touring in just a few years.
“Playing the songs associated with me that work building it brick by brick for almost 20 years. The kids you meet ask ‘How do you do it?’ How did you come out of nowhere?’ The truth is I didn’t. They just didn’t see the 17 years when I was going nowhere when I was driving my own van and surviving on M&S sandwiches for something like £2.”
He adds: “I made all my mistakes when I was young and there was no-one around to see. I got a free pass.”
Joe has certainly paid his music dues and his songwriting and guitar playing have brought him critical acclaim. “I never had to get a proper job and I still don’t believe I have a real job,” he says. “I work very hard and I am always on the road, but I just want to play my guitar.”
He appeared on the same stage once graced by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler and Haydn last year as part of a series of unplugged European dates and CD, DVD and Blu-ray recordings of ‘An Acoustic Evening At The Vienna Opera House’ later followed. Joe’s back in the UK this month and will be appearing at Birmingham NIA on September 27.
He celebrated his story so far in a major way earlier this year when he and his band headed to London to perform a concert at each of the four venues he’d previously played – from the 300 capacity Borderline to Shepherd’s Bush Empire, HMV Hammersmith Apollo and the Royal Albert Hall when Eric Clapton joined him on stage.
So what can people expect at this month’s concerts? “I let these kids smash it out in the music festivals and then I tour,” he chuckles.
“We are our own opening act so it will start with an acoustic set and then we go electric.”
All the touring means Joe has become something of an expert on dealing with jetlag.
He explains: “I used to stay up until midnight drinking as much scotch as I could.
“I don’t sleep well on planes, but the worst was a 30-hour flight starting in Australia and going via Kuala Lumpur to London. It was one of those flights that you end up landing the day you took off, a time machine thing. It was the worst jet-lag I had ever had.”
At one point Joe had 300 guitars, but said the collection had got out of hand and two years ago he sold a lot at auction.
“It was just getting overwhelming,” he sighs. “I kept the guitars that I love and a few that are worth about the cost of a house, but I give five or six a year away to friends and just tell them that if they don’t use they should pass it on to someone else.”
The guitars for the tour will be shipped to the UK – “Never give the airlines anything,” he advises, “if it’s got a fragile sticker on it it’s going to be broken” – and it will take three buses and a small army of people to get Joe and his band on stage each night.
“I’ll be employing about 45 people until the end of the year,” he reckons.
So how does a guitar hero with nearly 25 years in the music business under his belt like to unwind at the end of the day?
“Put Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on TV and I’m as happy as a lark,” smiles Joe.
The guitar hero has spoken.
* Go to www.jbonamassa.com for tour details. Box office 0844 478 0898/ www.thegigcartel.com.
