If the name Joe Bonamassa doesn't ring a bell, you're not alone. But somehow, even with a dozen albums, 134 recorded songs, and a big enough fanbase to sell out Ruth Eckerd Hall, this guy still flies under the radar; no radio hits, no late night talk show appearances, and zero attention from major local media outlets before, and even now, after his Friday night show. [Text by Andrew, photos by Tracy]
We could theorize why until our brains hurt. The music industry is a strange animal. But, even if a situation like this may be frustrating for an artist, it also has its perks. Mainly, performing to a sold-out hall of few thousand awkwardly rocking mid-lifers and others while blazing through an eardrum-splitting set that includes any one of your 100-plus songs you want to play.
On Friday night, Bonamassa and his small troupe (bassist, drummer, keyboardist) did just this, mastering an eclectic assortment of fret-blazing guitar rock in the vein of era legends like Page, Beck, and Clapton. Throughout the two-hour show, Bonamassa's repertoire jumped from stomp-y, crushing Zeppelin territory ("Ballad of John Henry") to empty barroom blues ("Sloe Gin"), rapid fire bluegrass, and seemingly everywhere between.
It's easy to hear the years he's put into mastering the six-string on any of his recordings, but in a live setting, it becomes glaringly apparent that Bonamassa is a walking encyclopedia of popular guitar styles through the ages. It's not so much that he can play crazy fast and technical (which he can), but that he can replicate the tenets of any guitar-driven genre with such precision and subtlety you'd think spirits are playing through him, like a Pentecostal with a guitar and bluesy howl instead of the snakes and tongue-speaking.
This characteristic is kind of a double-edged sword. Bonamassa's live show hearkens back to a time when pop music worshipped the riff, the extended guitar solo, epic tracks spanning almost the entire A-side of a record. Judging by a guess on the average age at Ruth Eckerd that night, his fanbase is composed largely of the people who lived through this bygone era. Yeah, maybe he'll never craft the elusive radio hit or turn into a marketable music darling, but he's got a gift worth, at least, 2,180 seats on a random Friday night in Clearwater.
This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2011.