Location: Zagreb / Dom sportova (small hall) / Croatia
Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2013
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 under his belt. If it’s true that the kid played the works 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 is no surprise.
But it’s not just exceptional talent. Joe Bonamassa is a hell of a grafter. Bread you’ve earned has to be honestly sweated for, otherwise it’s not edible to him at all! »Driving Towards The Dalyight« is Bonamassa’s new studio album, which brought him back to the Croatian capital three years after his first show in Zagreb. Back then Bonamassa sold out the Boogaloo club, and this time he sold out the small hall of Dom Sportova. Which means that over the past three years he’s become even more popular than he already was.
As always, Joe remains a stickler for detail. He’s got a sense for refined aesthetics. Both in sticking to his daily work schedule and in the fact that the man regularly squeezes into a tight tuxedo and polished shoes. The hairdo has to be sleek and proper, too. Gelled and slicked back with a gentle part on the left side. The charm of Valentino-style seduction. Dark glasses. Mandatory, right there on the nose. A gaze 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. With his own material you can usually feel the influence of other artists. On the flip side, he’s a top-notch performer. Among his contemporaries of the same vintage who play blues today, like Joe, or rather who make a living from it, few can match him. So the new album, too, is packed with covers. New album? We can barely keep up. To refresh the picture of Joe Bonamassa’s latest activity a bit: last year saw the release of the compilation »No Hits, No Hype, Just Best«, and this year a double live document called »An Acoustic Evening at The Vienna Opera House«. As the title makes clear, the man recently fell in love with acoustic. And that’s not all: at the end of October this year comes the official record of four concert nights in London. Played at different venues, with completely different setlists, it’s called »Tour De Force – Live In London (J&R Adventures)«.
Right at eight in the evening, Joe Bonamassa stepped onto the front of the stage. In acoustic mode. Playing the opening act for himself. He kicked off with part of the setlist of the freshly released live document quoted above, doing a bit of promo for it along the way. A fun warm-up, from the opening Palm Trees Helicopters And Gasoline, Seagull (a cover of the Bad Company original) and Jelly Roll, through Athens To Athens, closed out by a performance of 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 the memory cells back to the previous studio album, and what mostly stuck after it was a sloppily hit note at the end of the first solo flourish, which meant Joe hadn’t quite warmed up his fingers yet. The electrified mood eases off for a moment with Howlin Wolf’s traditional Who’s Been Talking, which found a spot in Bonamassa’s version on the new studio album too. Arranged far more bristly, of course, and brought pretty close to hard rock sound. Then a jump to the new album with Dislocated Boy, where the chunky, bristling riffage swells again, and for it Joe strapped on a double-neck Gibson guitar. Both necks six strings. It was just two different tunings on the two necks. And then the title track of the new album. Built on just four chords. Strung together through the verse and the chorus. A total sail into melodic waters. Another change of mood. Fragile and full of softness and sophistication.
Bonamassa won us over with his mastery in Gary Moore’s Midnight Blues. A stretched-out version. In it he showed off his whole arsenal of six-string know-how, just as the findings of modern blues demand. As far as we can even discuss that, given that it’s a genre that basically doesn’t evolve anymore. But as Greg Koch proved us deeply wrong on that front 14 days ago with his exceptional show in front of just 30 people at the Bluesiana club, the same goes for Joe Bonamassa. Except Bonamassa is cultivating a completely different musical story. Much more accessible to the masses. He’s cranked up, and he knows how to work in melodic lines and passages that, for all the crankiness and chunkiness of his Gibson sound, bring the performer close to elements of Free, Led Zeppelin and the like. Much closer than anything tied to delta blues, or to the white blues wave led by Cream or Ten Years After. That’s probably why Bonamassa is so universally accessible to the masses. He’s close to every generation of listeners. But I’m sure blues diehards must hate him to some extent, since in their eyes, by playing so many covers, he »massacres« the unique elements of passion and emotion of the Mississippi Delta…
Two hours that don’t let you breathe. Whether it’s Joe taking over with a vocal that can crawl under your skin and understands how to dose out the verses with more or less grit, depending on the emotional state. The peak of the regular set 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 tackled it. Let’s not forget Bonamassa had Sherinian in the lineup beside him. It’s an exceptional epic where a blues element crosses perfectly with neoclassical elements, and the song can hold its own next to similar epics from the cult days of the rock era, like Stairway to Heaven. The band gave the regular set a theatrical upgrade by using the intro of The Who classic Won’t Get Fooled Again as an outro extension of Song For Yesterday. Bombast on the way out! Proven to set things on fire!
After an hour and 45 minutes of the regular set, Joe and the crew left the jam-packed small hall of Dom sportova emotionally wound up and thoroughly steamed from elation. We waited just a minute for the encore. It included two expected standards. First came Sloe Gin. A Tim Curry cover that Joe enjoys immensely every time he plays it on stage. The peak of the night, as expected, was once again taken by the famous The Ballad Of John Henry, where the crowd totally lost it! It’s really a song that, in miniature, perfectly sums up everything the name Joe Bonamassa stands for. And of course the man didn’t forget the theremin bit in it!
Joe can be as much of a brute in his movements as he can be exceptionally refined and sensitive. He knows exactly how to slip in soft tones with fingerpicking too. The band, of course, killed it with outstanding jam acrobatics, and with that kind of intensity in how things unfolded, you couldn’t catch your breath for a second. Carmine Rojas for president. A top-class bassist. You can’t find the right superlative for him. But here’s the thing. Joe Bonamassa is the boss and he sets the terms. So whose stage was it? Joe Bonamassa’s, full stop. Rojas had two square meters of space in which he could only move forward and back, and even that without crossing the line parallel to Joe Bonamassa’s field of vision. So God forbid he’d accidentally wander into the front line ahead 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 really nice throughout. No muddy crap in the mix.
Joe Bonamassa »killed it.« A master is a master. If we’re nitpicking, the only hair to split would be a “syndrome of excessive technical polish,” which can take priority over building the kind of atmospheres that reflect the musician’s emotional state. And that slickness did occasionally get in the way, even though Joe totally understands the point of placing notes correctly. Joe could also say a word or two during the show and warm up the crowd a bit more. During the set he’s very cold toward the audience when he’s lost in his work. You could say the routine is just a touch less well disguised with him. Whatever. After the show there wasn’t a single person in the crowd who wasn’t melting from enjoying the exceptional performance by Joe Bonamassa and his top-notch crew. The large number of women is just proof that Bonamassa’s been doing very, very well commercially for quite a while now. 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 for it than everyone else. That’s how it goes. He can afford it. Because he’s got the real mojo that sets the masses on fire. Greg Koch, cut from a different cloth, a brilliant musical genius, is a guitarist who has to sweat it out in holes with 30 people. And for a much lower price. There’s probably barely enough left over for a loaf of bread. And it’s funny that on his latest studio record, the guest was none other than Joe Bonamassa.
words: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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
