BASIC BLUES
Having spent a few years experimenting with the form,
JOE BONAMASSA has gone back to basics, and it’s paying off, as he tells SAMUEL
J. FELL
He strides on stage. Suited and tall, he casts a
shadow. Slim shades covering his eyes, hair slicked just so. He’s done it
countless times and people have seen it all before but he still strides to his
place at the front, always the front, and he commands attention, wielding his
guitar and the band begin to vamp and he looks around, surveys it all, drinks in
the noise, flaring his nostrils and smelling it too.
Lights flash and dim, bright again and he begins to
play, stabbing and wrangling – slick, shmick, swinging dick – the sound is
precise and it cuts, slice and dice, back and forward every which way and the
rolling thunderhead gathers momentum, the big sound (effortlessly agile for its
size) breaking over all who dare stand in its way.
***
Joe Bonamassa sits a little
hunched over. He’s wearing jeans and a non-descript jumper, sneakers. He’s
holding one of his many guitars, a Les Paul which he constantly strokes, leans
over it, it’s a part of his body. It’s not plugged in, but it’s easy to hear,
he runs licks whenever there’s a break in conversation, whenever I ask him a
question. Listening back to the tape, all my questions are soundtracked by the
fluid twang of his unplugged playing.
I’ve spoken to Bonamassa,
blues guitar prodigy, a number of times before but never in the flesh. He seems
smaller when not on stage. No less confident, more talkative in fact, but
smaller, a little more fragile like being on stage is some sort of a life
force. In an hour or so, he’ll get his fill, over on the Crossroads Stage at
the sprawling Byron Bay Bluesfest. His mindset is beginning to shift, and so
despite the fact he’s keen to talk, he’s shifting and beginning to think like a
man with something to do, something important. He changes direction
mid-sentence, his eyes flicker from his guitar to my face, to the darkening
sky, to the people milling about backstage. He’s getting ready.
At one point, he looks over
at the lagoon that encircles the artist area. He asks me if there are any
‘gators in there, which I find amusing because there are no ‘gators (or
crocodiles) this far south, and also because Graham Nash had asked me the same
question only 24 hours earlier. I tell him there definitely aren’t any, and he
looks up instead and sees a flock of bats passing low overhead in the gathering
gloom and he exclaims, and wonders where the hell he is. Then he laughs and
strokes his guitar again and we carry on.
“Oh my god, to hear my mental
conversation during a gig, Freud would have a field day,” he’s saying. I’ve
ventured that he’s somewhat of a perfectionist, something anyone who has seen
him play would have picked up on. “He’d be like, ‘Do you want to do this for a
living? Do you hate yourself that much?’ Yeah, it’s like a prize fight. You can
train for six months, you can spar with the best in the world, you can lay it
all out, and you know, when you’re backstage just about to go on, you know as
soon as the bell rings, it’s gonna be utter fucking chaos.
“How you win the day [though],
is just trust in the force, you know what I mean? It may not sound the way you
want it to sound, it may not feel the way it normally feels, but the pure
inertia and it worked yesterday, it’ll work today. It’s that kinda vibe.”
Since he was 12, when he
first opened for BB King, Joe Bonamassa has been in the spotlight. In the
ensuing 27 years, he’s built for himself this perfectionist persona, and even
if it is, as he says, utter fucking chaos, it still comes across as perfection,
as being in the right place at the right time, everything seemingly exactly
where it should be, even if that’s not the case.
He’s built for himself too, a
reputation as one of the finest interpreters of the blues form in the world.
He’s certainly not a purist, not musically, and indeed many critics cite the
whole style-over-substance argument when describing what he’s done over the
course of his 12 studio albums (along with a slew of live records,
collaborations and side-projects). But regardless of what you think of his
music, or how he plays the blues, he is certainly a perfectionist. And a very
good one, too.
Bonamassa is back in
Australia in September, only four or five months after our initial interview,
in order to properly promote his latest release, Blues Of Desperation, which was officially released in the US a
couple of days prior to Bluesfest. It’s an album which sees him coming back to
basics, in that after a number of years exploring other variations of the
blues, other styles inspired by the blues, he’s back to where he began, which
to pigeonhole, is pure blues/rock.
“The response to the
back-to-the-basics records, quite honestly feels better,” he muses. I ask him
if that bothers him, if he’s annoyed by the fact his more artistic endeavours
(for want of a better phrase) aren’t as lauded as his no-holds-barred, basic
blues/rock records. Although as his many fans will note, Joe Bonamassa’s
‘basics’ aren’t exactly basic.
“You know what, it tells me a
couple of things,” he says. “One, that I’m good at it, that’s probably what I’m
best at – straight ahead blues/rock, unapologetic. My fans have been nice
enough to go with me on many endeavours, many different styles, jazz/funk
records or instrumental where I’m a sideman with Beth Hart, or essentially a
sideman in a hard rock band. Ultimately, it does come down to the core, that
mid-tempo sludgy blues/rock is kinda where I find my voice, and I find my
calling. And that’s where the core fanbase really lies.
“There’s a little light and
shade thrown in, but it’s that playbook, and so I’m more than honoured. [And] anytime
anybody buys a record in 2016, I’m with you.”
“I wanted to do another
all-original record like we did with Different
Shades Of Blue (2014),” he then says on what his MO was with this new
album. “I wrote with most of the same songwriters, except we added Tom Hambridge,
and Tom and I came up ‘Mountain Climbing’ and ‘Distant Lonesome Train’, and it
was just high energy. And that’s what I wanted to do, higher energy, you know.
It’s easy to write ballads, well it’s not easy, but it’s easy to write strim,
strum mid-tempo crap, but it’s hard to write high energy stuff that doesn’t
sound clichéd.
“So that’s what I really
wanted to focus on, a more up-tempo higher energy kind of situation.” I ask him
about the songwriting process, going back to Nashville to work with the likes
of James House, Jerry Flowers, Jeffrey Steele and Gary Nicholson which he did
on Different Shades… a couple of
years ago. “Co-writing is great, because you have these guys whose sole
existence is dedicated to song-craft,” he explains. “And my existence is
dedicated to knowing what style that I like to play, but not exactly
song-craft. So it takes me a little bit longer to figure out what we need and
what we don’t need in a song.
“And ultimately, it does boil
down to significantly different lyric contexts, different structure, and a
little deeper writing process, which ultimately I think helps everybody.” This
it does – the album is robust and strong, definitely up-tempo for the most
part, lyrically on-point, sonically right in Bonamassa’s wheelhouse. It’s
up-tempo blues/rock, verging on hard rock in some instances, and that’s where
the man is most comfortable. As he says, it’s where he finds his voice.
***
This train don't stop for no one / This train got a mind
of its own / This train don't wait for no
one / This train, I'm gonna leave this town
This train don't show no mercy / This train doesn't have
a name / This train coming down from Memphis
/ This train like a hurricane
- ‘This Train’, Blues
Of Desperation
***
In the press that accompanies this new record
is all sorts of gumph about how Bonamassa is re-inventing blues/rock, and how
this album is an evolution for him as an artist. Yes, it’s an evolution, it’s
next level stuff, the man building on what he’s already proven he’s able to do
better than most others. As far as Bonamassa “re-inventing” blues/rock though, this
is merely publicity hot air designed to excite less adventurous members of the
working music press.
No, this is no reinvention. What it actually is,
is the mark of a man who has the genre so down pat, it’s so ingrained within
his very being, that he’s able to take this basic structure and just wield it
so well, to swing it around his head with reckless abandon, to squeeze it and
caress it and mold it to his every whim. It’s basic blues/rock, but it’s
really, really good blues/rock.
“You know, probably because I paid it no mind,
[it’s an evolution],” he laughs. “I’ve written songs where I go, ‘People are
gonna love this’, right? Crickets.
I’ve also written records where I think we’ve done a good job, I’m not sure how
people are gonna respond to it, and all of a sudden, people are… my barometer
is almost 180 degrees out from what actually occurs.
“A big step I guess, ultimately, I think my
surrounding cast in the last three to five years, musician-wise, since I’ve
started working with them fulltime, I think my surrounding cast has forced me
to either put up, or shut up. And I think that osmosis has just seeped into my
pores. And I think, if I had to lay it on anything, it would be that, just
keeping up with the brilliance in the room, I’ve gotta get my act together. Subtly
I think, more so than before, I’ve gotten my act together.”
That’s where Blues Of Desperation is also an evolution then, Bonamassa getting
his act together, in order to keep up with the musicianship he’s now
surrounding himself with – drummer Anton Fig (and on this album, second drummer
Greg Morrow); bassist Michael Rhodes; keys player Reece Wynans; horn players
Lee Thornburg, Paulie Cerra and Mark Douthit; and Australian backing vocalists
Jade McRae, Juanita Tippins and Mahalia Barnes. All have caused Bonamassa to up
his game, and so the evolution comes through in his matching of their
musicianship.
One might scratch their head here and wonder
how Joe Bonamassa could actually up his musicianship – anyone who’s seen or
heard him play will agree he’s a phenomenal guitarist, how could he step that
up? It’s not the playing he’s upped though, I get the impression on talking to
him, but his headspace and scope. Playing with these musicians has forced him
to take off his blinkers, set in place by a slew of records, and look further
outside the box. The results speak for themselves.
***
I fell into a burnin' ring of fire / I went down, down, down / And the
flames went higher / And it burns, burns, burns / The ring of fire, the ring of
fire
- ‘Ring Of Fire’, Johnny Cash, playing through the PA prior to Bonamassa
and band walking onstage at the Byron Bay Bluesfest
***
At various points throughout our interview,
Bonamassa refers to himself as a dweeb, a traveling salesman, a curmudgeon. His
self-effacive nature is actually refreshing – you see him on stage standing
tall in a suit, very little stage banter, completely intent on the musical task
at hand, and you think perhaps he’s a bit arrogant. He’s actually not. “I’m a curmudgeon,”
he confesses with a smile. “My girlfriend tries to get me out of that, but I’m
a real curmudgeon.”
He takes great pleasure in telling me a story
from the day before, where a band dressed “like they’re going to a 1967 Laurel
Canyon costume party” were put in their place, to his mind, when Mick Fleetwood
(also playing the festival) entered the room. “Mick fucking Fleetwood,” he
laughs. “He was there (in Laurel
Canyon). He invented the hipster beard, but he’s not playing that guy, he’s
just that guy. That authenticity is not lost on me. You’ve gotta be that guy.”
“I’m this
guy,” he goes on, waving a hand over his old jeans, his plain jumper. “The guy
in the suit comes out every time I have a gig, because I harken back to those
old blues guys like Muddy Waters… I’m not the first guy to put a suit on, I stole
the idea from Muddy Waters. You see those old pictures of him in the ‘60s and
he’s got this silk suit on, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, backstage somewhere
in London and you go, ‘That’s the coolest shit in the world’.
“And then I saw Clapton in ’89 when they used
to call him the Armani Bluesman, and I go, ‘I don’t think that’s a bad thing,
that’s awesome’. And then you see him during the day and he’s got a Fender
t-shirt on, and that’s the real cat. And it was my favourite moment of the
festival to see that go down, when Mick Fleetwood walks through the room, and
you go, ‘There’s the Laurel Canyon
guy’, because he actually invented it, you know? Ultimately, it’s not lost on
me.”
Something else which isn’t lost on the blues
guitar behemoth, is the fact he’s been so prolific since his 2000 debut, A New Day Yesterday. “In fifteen years,
I’ve put out 33 albums,” he says with a smile. “Between the live DVDs and all
the hoopla, three with Rock Candy Funk Party, four with Black Country Communion,
one with Mahalia, couple with Beth Hart and a DVD, all the DVDs I’ve done, it’s
been a ton of work. And we have two DVDs in the can, we have Live At The Greek Theatre in Los
Angeles, where we did the three Kings, and we have Live At Carnegie Hall. Thirty-five albums in 16 years, it’s nuts.”
“But in perspective, this album seems to have
a bit more legs than maybe the three or four records before that,” he then says
candidly. “The last time a record of mine has gotten this kind of response is
when we did a record called The Ballad Of
John Henry (2009), that was kinda my coming-out party. And we’ve
experimented with different feels and flavours along the way… I’ve been to
Greece a couple of times, a bit more Americana stuff, more horns, whereas this
is more back to the basics.”
Blues
Of Desperation is basics for Joe Bonamassa. Straight down
the line blues/rock, a little bit of jazz in there, a few harder tracks that
harken to his time with supergroup Black Country Communion. It’s an album which
doesn’t apologise for this, it makes no concessions, it’s the man doing what he
does best, and what his core fanbase loves most about him. And isn’t that all
he can do?
He seems happy, this much isn’t in doubt. We
finish up our interview as it’s drawing closer to show time. His mindset has
very much shifted now and it’s time for him to shed his dweeby persona, his
actual persona, and don the suit and move into the persona that most people
know him for – Joe Bonamassa, guitar prodigy, blues maestro, blues/rock
purveyor par excellence. This is what he brings on this new record, and even
though he has done it countless times and we’ve seen it all before, it’s
because it’s so real, that we’ll keep coming back.
Check out Joe Bonamassa's website here
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