Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Zagreb / Dom sportova (small hall) / Croatia
Concert date: 02.10.2013
Attendance: 1600
Ticket price: 300,00HRK / 320,00HRK
Joe Bonamassa, the hot blues rocker of the new generation. He released his first studio album fifteen years ago, and to this day he’s got eleven of them in his pocket. If it’s true that the kid played the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix note for note at the age of seven, and progressed so fast that by twelve he was already opening a show for the ultimate blues giant B.B. King, then his meteoric rise comes as no surprise.
But it’s not just exceptional talent. Joe Bonamassa is a hell of a grafter. The bread he earns has to be honestly sweated for, otherwise he simply can’t stomach it! »Driving Towards The Dalyight« is Bonamassa’s new studio album, and it brought him back to the Croatian capital three years after his first show in Zagreb. Back then Bonamassa sold out the Boogaloo club; this time he sold out the small hall of Dom Sportova. Which means he’s gotten even more popular over the last three years than he already was.
As always, Joe stays meticulous. He’s all about a sense of refined aesthetics. Both in sticking to his daily work schedule and in the fact that the man regularly slips into a tight tuxedo and polished little shoes. The hairdo has to be smoothed down just right, too. Gelled and slicked back into a gentle part on the left side. The charm of Valentino-style seduction. Dark shades. Mandatory, on the nose. A look from under the brow. If you’re a bluesman, you shouldn’t smile too much. Blues is heartache, and it has to stay that way. And Joe knows it.
Joe Bonamassa has never been known as an especially insightful songwriter. In his own material you can usually feel the influence of other artists. On the flip side, he’s a top-class performer. Among his contemporaries who play the blues today, or at least make a living from it, hardly anyone his age can match him. So the new album is full of covers, too. New album? We can barely keep up with them. To refresh your memory on Joe Bonamassa’s latest activity: last year saw the compilation »No Hits, No Hype, Just Best«, this year a double live document called »An Acoustic Evening at The Vienna Opera House«. As the title makes clear, the man has recently fallen for acoustic playing. And that’s not all: at the end of October the official record of four concert nights in London comes out. Played at different venues, with completely different set lists, it’s called »Tour De Force – Live In London (J&R Adventures)«.
At exactly eight in the evening, Joe Bonamassa stepped out to the front of the stage. In acoustic mode. As the opening act for himself. He ran through part of the set list of the freshly released live document mentioned above, giving it a bit of promo along the way. A fun warm-up, from the opening Palm Trees Helicopters And Gasoline, Seagull (a cover of the Bad Company original), Jelly Roll, through Athens To Athens, closed out by Woke Up Dreaming. Then the switch to electric. Derek Sherinian (keyboards), Carmine Rojas (bass) and Tal Bergman (drums) join him on stage. The punchy Dust Bowl sent memory cells back to the previous studio album, and what stuck after it was mostly a muddy note at the end of the first solo flourish, which meant Joe hadn’t quite warmed up his fingers yet. The electrified atmosphere eased for a moment with Howlin Wolf’s traditional Who’s Been Talking, which also found a place on the new studio album in Bonamassa’s version. Of course far angrier in its arrangement and a lot closer to the sound of hard rock. Then a jump to the new album with Dislocated Boy, where the chunky riff-driven swagger swells up again, and Joe strapped on a double-neck Gibson for it. Both necks with six strings. It was only a matter of two different tunings. And then the title track of the new album. Built on just four chords. Strung one after another through the verse and through the chorus. A perfect sail into melodic waters. Another change of mood. Fragile and full of softness, sophistication.
Bonamassa won us over with his skill in Gary Moore’s Midnight Blues. A stretched-out version. In it he showed off his whole arsenal of six-string mastery, as demanded by the findings of modern blues. Insofar as we can even speculate about that, given that this is a genre that, in principle, no longer evolves. But as Greg Koch, with his outstanding show in front of just 30 people at the Bluesiana club, deeply disproved just 14 days ago, the same goes for Joe Bonamassa. Except that Bonamassa cultivates a completely different musical story. Far more accessible to the masses. He’s wound up, he knows how to slip in melodic lines and passages that, for all the wound-up chunkiness of his Gibson-style sound, bring the performer close to elements of bands like Free, Led Zeppelin and the like. Much closer than anything related to Delta blues, or the wave of white blues led by Cream or Ten Years After. That’s probably why Bonamassa is so broadly accessible to the masses. He’s close to listeners of every generation. But I believe the blues diehards must hate him to some extent, since in their eyes he »massacres« the unique elements of passion and emotion of the Mississippi Delta by playing so many covers…
Two hours that don’t let you breathe. Whether it’s Joe winning you over with a voice that crawls under your skin and understands how to dose out verses with more or less rasp, depending on the emotional state. The peak of the regular part of the show came at the end, when the quartet tackled a cover of the Black Country Communion original Song of Yesterday. You could say half of Black Country Communion took it on. Let’s not forget Bonamassa had Sherinian in the lineup. It’s an outstanding epic where the blues element crosses perfectly with elements of a neoclassical approach, and the song can stand next to similar epics from the cult days of the rock era, like Stairway to Heaven. The band gave the regular part of the show a theatrical upgrade by using the opening of The Who classic Won’t Get Fooled Again as an outro extension of Song For Yesterday. Bombast on the way out! Tried and true, it ignites every time!
After an hour and 45 minutes of the regular set, Joe and the crew left the packed small hall of Dom sportova emotionally stirred up and thoroughly steamed from excitement. We waited for the encore just one minute. It included two expected standards. First was Sloe Gin. A Tim Curry cover that Joe enjoys immensely every time he plays it on stage. But the highlight of the night, as expected, was once again the famous The Ballad Of John Henry, where the crowd completely lost it! It’s actually the song that, in miniature, perfectly presents everything that stands behind the name Joe Bonamassa. And of course the man didn’t forget the theremin bit in it, either!
Joe can be a brute in his moves, but also thoroughly refined and sensitive. He knows exactly how to tuck in soft tones with fingerpicking. The band, of course, killed it with outstanding jam acrobatics, and with that kind of intensity in the way things unfolded, you couldn’t catch your breath for a second. Carmine Rojas for president. A top-notch bass player. There’s no proper superlative for him. But here’s the thing. Joe Bonamassa is the employer and he sets the terms. So whose stage was it? Joe Bonamassa’s, full stop. Rojas had two square meters of space where he could move only forward and back, and even that without accidentally crossing the line parallel to Joe Bonamassa’s field of view. Heaven forbid he should end up in front of Bonamassa. Sherinian and Bergman, meanwhile, are planted on their chairs and can’t move anywhere during the show. At times the stage felt decidedly too spacious. The sound, though, was very nice throughout. Clean as a whistle.
Joe Bonamassa »killed it.« A master is a master. If we’re splitting hairs, we could find one only in a »syndrome of excessive technical polish«, which can take priority over building the moods that reflect a musician’s emotional state. And that slickness occasionally got in the way, even though Joe fully understands the point of arranging notes properly. Joe could also have said a word or two during the show and warmed up the crowd a bit. While he’s absorbed in his work, he’s very cold toward the audience. You could say the routine is, more or less, just slightly worse disguised with him. Whatever. After the show there wasn’t a single attendee who wasn’t melting with delight over the outstanding performance of Joe Bonamassa and his top-class backing crew. And the large number of women in the crowd is just proof that Bonamassa has been doing very, very well commercially for quite some time. The brilliant sound and performance also clearly answer why ticket prices were a bit higher than we’re used to. Joe Bonamassa delivers the best, but he charges a little more than everyone else for it. That’s how it goes. He can afford it. Because he’s got the real mojo, which ignites the masses. Greg Koch, cut from a different dough, a brilliant musical genius, is a guitarist who has to sweat it out in holes with 30 people each. And for a vastly lower price. There’s probably barely enough left for a crust of bread. And funnily enough, Joe Bonamassa himself guested on his latest studio record.
Setlist
1. Palm Trees Helicopters and Gasoline
2. Seagull
3. Jelly Roll
4. Athens To Athens
5. Woke Up Dreaming
—electric set—
6. Dust Bowl
7. Who’s Been Talking?
8. Story of a Quarryman
9. Dislocated Boy
10. Driving Towards The Daylight
11. Slow Train
12. Midnight Blues
13. Look Over Yonders Wall
14. Song of Yesterday / Won’t Get Fooled Again (outro)
—encore—
15. Sloe Gin
16. The Ballad of John Henry
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