FAYETTEVILLE — The way my dad tells the story, he was sitting close to the front row, about 15 feet from the stage. He was at the Paola (Kan.) Roots Festival, which takes place every year in a little town you’ve never heard of (it’s the one I grew up in) southwest of the Kansas City area.
It’s a communitywide festival, and the Roots Fest always attracts blues talent to go with the sauce-slathered barbecue they serve up in heaps there. Some guy with a guitar that Dad had never heard of, Joe Bonamassa, had taken the stage.
He ripped into his first blues song that night and made a lifelong fan of my dad, my mom and who knows how many others.
After that first tune, my dad turned to his friend.
“‘Man, that guy can play!’”
Half a dozen years later, I’m not sure there is a better summarization of Bonamassa, a New York-born bluesman who at 32 years of age is widely considered among the best guitarists of the neoblues movement. Simply put, the man can play.
That’s not a new reputation, however, and he’s since moved on to gigs that are a little more high-profile than a gazebo in a town square in middle-of-nowhere Kansas.
Like the show he’ll play Saturday at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, for instance.
B.B. King thought the prodigy could play 20 years ago, inviting a 12-year-old Bonamassa to serve as his opening act. No lesser authority than Guitarist Magazine declared him as “the new King of the Blues.”
Although his music still very much has a blues-rock feel, his sound has evolved over the years, incorporating elements of many different styles and genres.
“I think I’ve got a reputation for being an ADD (attentiondeficit disorder) artist,” Bonamassa says by phone before a tour stop in Phoenix.
For his 10th record - and eighth from a studio - Bonamassa traveled to and recorded from Greece, and a world music feel and the sounds of bouzouki are featured on the album “Black Rock” as a result.
Saying that “Black Rock,” which was released on Tuesday, is a world music album, however, is missing the point.
“It’s probably the most rock (oriented) record we’ve ever done. … The record is deep,” he says.
It most certainly includes the blues, too, specifically in the cut “Night Life,” which features B.B. King.
Bonamassa says he still gets excited about the debut of the record. With it, he knows, will come good responses, bad reviews and everything in between.
But it also allows him to close the chapter on that part of his life and explore new things. While he is not ending his career as a solo musician, he already knows one direction he is heading. He recently formed a supergroup with Glenn Hughes, formerly of Deep Purple, Jason Bonham, formerly of Foreigner (and also the son of the late Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham), and Derek Sherinian, who has performed with Dream Theater, Billy Idol and more.
That quartet is expected to release an album later this year.
It’s all part of the plan to keep playing, and keep showing off his amazing talent. He may not be the world’s greatest songwriter.
And he may not be the world’s greatest guitarist, although he’s probably a lot closer to capturing that title.
“The guitar is a big part, but that’s not the only reason people come (to myconcerts),” Bonamassa says.
But they come, and, as Bonamassa will tell you, they’ve been coming more and more frequently as he fills larger venues and gets high-profile guests like King and Eric Clapton to play with him.
Simply put, the man can play.
“Look, some of the ticketson the tour are 69 dollars,” he says with a sense of finality.
“But I’ve never had anyone complain that they’ve paid too much.”
Tickets to Bonamassa’s Saturday night concert are on sale through the Walton Arts Center at the venue’s box office, by calling 443-5600 or at www.waltonartscenter.org.
Tickets range from $39-$69.
Whats Up, Pages 13 on 03/26/2010