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Blues before 30
Blues prodigy brings powerhouse guitar licks, vocals to Bloomington
By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph.com
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Though he's still less than 30 years old, Joe Bonamassa has been playing the blues for nearly a quarter of a century -- a sizable career load he'll be toting behind him when he turns up at Bloomington's New Lafayette Club next week (7:30 p.m. Feb. 1).

That quarter-century of dues-paying earns him the inalienable right to be called a grizzled veteran.

Well, OK, maybe not grizzled; his cheeks are way too smooth for that.

But he's definitely a veteran.

As an uncannily early achiever, Joe Bonamassa is practically a poster boy for child prodigies.

By age 4, little Joe was fingering a short-scale Chiquita guitar handed to him by dad, who, as a Utica, N.Y., guitar dealer/player himself, doubtless knew what was best for his son's tiny digits.

Those tiny digits responded in ways even dad probably couldn't have anticipated.

And they've never really stopped in the 25 years since.

Which is why, at age 12, he was on stage opening for B.B. King, and why, at age 14, he was fronting his own blues-rock group for a major record label.

Which is why, today, Joe Bonamassa is considered a legitimate heir to the thrones of such blues-rock guitar gods as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Jeff Beck and, yes, even that holiest-of-holies he opened for at age 12.

Meanwhile: He's the youngest member in the history of the Memphis-based Blues Foundation's national board of directors ... he's topped Billboard magazine's blues album chart multiple times, including a No. 1 debut with his current "You & Me" CD .. and he was voted BluesWax Magazines Blues Artist of the Year two years in a row (2005 and 2006).

Too much too soon?

Hardly.

"I really did enjoy playing when I was a kid," Bonamassa says, dispelling notions that his musical dad was shoving him in a direction he wasn't old enough to discern. "My parents didn't push me. It was the other way around: I pushed my parents! I knew this is what I wanted to do for a living, and I've kept that same goal since I was 10."

He adds: "I think having had such an early start allowed me to make all my mistakes at an early age and get them out of the way. When you make a business mistake at 10 you can recover from it; when you're 24 and make a business mistake, you may not. So you wind up on "E!'s True Hollywood Story," telling about how your house in Malibu got repossessed."

(For the record, Bonamassa is conducting this interview by phone while tooling down the Pacific Coast Highway to his un-repossessed home in Malibu.)

It was all in the family in the early going: Joe's dad was his manager and Joe's mom booked his gigs, a process that began when Joe was the ripe old age of 10 on the upstate New York club circuit.

That was the pathway to his encounter with B.B. King, who'd heard the tales of young Joe. When he encountered it first-hand, he termed the lad's potential "unbelievable."

When B.B. King calls you unbelievable, you don't turn the other way and run.

No, you do what Joe did at age 12: you begin playing with, and, eventually, going on tour with His Majesty.

As a testament to King's belief in the unbelievable, Bonamassa received a royal decree 15 years later to serve as the opening act for King's vaunted 80th birthday tour in 2005.

"The one thing I've learned through meeting all my heroes is that, with few exceptions, the bigger the celebrity, the bigger the person they are. They're more secure with themselves and, hence, have less of an ego. They're nicer. They really are."

King, he says, belongs atop that list.

And thanks to Joe's association with the old master, he soon found himself opening for and/or jamming with the likes of Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Stephen Stills, Joe Cocker, Greg Allman, Robert Cray, Peter Frampton and others.

By age 14, he was deep enough into the profession that he found his own blues-rock band, Bloodline, and stock it with the sons of musicians Miles Davis, Robby Krieger and Barry Oakley.

What did all of this early success do to his head?

"It taught me to have fun, to stay humble, to never let anything go to my head," he says. "And never to take yourself too seriously."

Though he will, in fact, turn 30 later this year, Bonamassa still sounds like an excited kid with a bit of attitude as he delivers a well-tooled sermon on why, if the blues are to survive, they'd better find a way to speak to the younger generation, which, in fact, is his generation.

"I love Robert Johnson," he begins. "I have the same birthday (May 8) as Robert Johnson. But can I listen to 13 Robert Johnson songs in a row? No. Can I listen to (Johnson's) 'Crossroads' a million times over as played by Creem? Yes."

Though he's somewhat exaggerating his case to make a point, Bonamassa says he's simply trying to perpetuate what B.B. King has been doing through younger bluesmen like himself and Kenny Wayne Shepherd: bringing some fresh blood and some new ideas to a heavily ingrained American musical tradition.

"He's very, very interested in making sure the young guys have the shot, which is why I'm so very passionate about and so very, very into preserving the blues for the young generation."

But not preserving it in the museum-exhibit sense of the word.

In fact, Bonamassa says he's constantly butting heads with "the enemy," that is, "purists who tend to rule the whole show and try to play this weird game of Whack-A-Mole with younger blues artists, and what happens is pretty simple -- the younger artist gets so discouraged, he says '(expletive deleted)-it' and quits. They're not being supported by anybody."

But Bonamassa says he'll be there to lend a helping hand with his savvy blues updates modeled after that list of guitar gods noted earlier.

"It's a simple situation: If we keep doing what we've been doing, the blues will go away in 10 years because the perception is that blues is old people's music. To me, it's just critical to have a new generation of fans, and I don't see why anyone would not want that to happen."



Doing the Bonamassa



Highs from the meteoric life and times of Joe Bonamassa:

• Joe is born: May 8, 1977

• Joe's a New Yawker: Hometown, Utica, N.Y.

• Joe the boy wonder, part 1 Starts playing guitar at age 4

• Joe the boy wonder, part 2: Starts riffing on the Utica club scene at age 10

• Joe the boy wonder, part 3: Opens for B.B. King, at B.B.'s request, at age 12; it's a gig that leads to opening for, among others, Buddy Guy, Stephen Stills, Joe Cocker, Greg Allman, Peter Frampton, Robert Cray

• Joe the teen wonder: At 14, founds blues-rock group, Bloodline, whose membership features the sons of famous musicians, including Berry Oakley Jr., spawn of Allman Brothers Band bassist Berry Oakley; Erin Davis, sire of Miles Davis; and Waylon Krieger, heir to Robby Krieger

• Joe the soloist: Just several years past the 20 marker, records his first solo album, "A New Day Yesterday," which contains his signature anthem, "Miss You/Hate You"

• Joe goes to the top: Sophomore solo album "So, It's Like That" hits No. 1 on Billboard's Blues "multiple times"; Joe is still under 30

• Joe the historian: His third album, "Blues Deluxe" (2003), covers nine classic blues tunes and also peaks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart; he's still under 30

• Joe the mountain climber: Refusing to leave the peak, Joe's sixth and latest album, "You & Me," released last year, hits No. 1 on the Billboard chart; he's STILL under 30

• Joe the King: Sixteen years after opening for B.B. King as a 12-year-old, King asks the 28-year-old Joe to open for his landmark 80th birthday celebration tour

• Joe the prodigy: When he takes to the New Lafayette Club stage Feb. 1, the fact remains -- he'll STILL be under 30

• Joe the aging veteran: He turns 30 in three months and 13 days



Second opinions



• The Washington Post: "(His) blues chops rival those of Stevie Ray Vaughan. Really."

• Billboard: "The fact that blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa is hitting the road with B.B. King this month is a testament to this guy's old-school, old-soul virtuosity. There's so much passion and sweat slung about his sophomore outing, 'So, It's Like That,' that just listening to it feels like an interactive outing ..."

• B.B. King: "This kid's potential is unbelievable. He hasn't even begun to scratch the surface. He's one of a kind."

• Guitar World: "Bonamassa's breathless 'So, It's Like That' proves that the idiomatic shackles of the blues can be broken by a strong musical personality. At 25, the Utica, N.Y., native has indisputably found himself as an artist. His pop-conscious arrangements build a gilded frame for his rich, throaty voice, blending acoustic and electric textures ..."

• The ToneQuest Report: "Joe Bonamassa is one of the greatest singer-guitarists fronting a 3-piece band that we have heard in decades. The fact that he had yet to be born when most of his heroes were at their peak simply underscores his brilliant, high-powered interpretation of rock and blues for what it is  -- fresh, original and utterly captivating in concept and execution."

• Amazon.com: "... indeed a certifiable fretboard phenom, consistently capable of startlingly effective solos, but he's also a strong singer, and that's what makes the collection of songs, a dozen of the 13 co-written by Bonamassa, successful ..."

• Simon Umlauf, CNN: "I first heard one of Joe Bonamassa's songs in Austin, Texas, while visiting family and hitting the city's music scene. I was in my grandmother's Buick station wagon when 'If Heartaches Were Nickels,' came on the radio. I almost caused a pile-up, pulling to the side of the road searching for something to write down the name of the band."

• Entertainment Weekly: "I'm telling you ... Bonamassa live is the shiznit!"



At a glance



What: Joe Bonamassa, with opening act David Berchtold and Steve "The Harp" Mehlberg

When: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1 (doors open at 6:30 p.m.; 18-and-older only)

Where: New Lafayette Club, 1602 S. Main St., Bloomington

Tickets: Advance, $20; at the door, $25

Box office number: (309) 828-1212

Take a look
Joe Bonamassa, with opening act David Berchtold and Steve "The Harp" Mehlberg will play at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1 at the New Lafayette Club, Bloomington.
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