Street Team Stories: How has Joe's Music Affected You? (Page 3 of 3)

Ode to Joe                                       6 march /2015

   Hail Joe.
My burning question is
“How in Gods name did I arrive at age 77 and never hear the name JB. I’m an ageing blues singer also initial JB. I’ve played the Vienna acoustic concert about sixty times since I first heard it a month ago and the London Tour de Force and what an apt name for such a tour. It stuns my ageing senses and gives me so much joy because it reaches my soul. Its astonishing. its wonderful,
There are a few, very rare individuals whose creative actions go beyond definition Beyond our ability to measure or judge.
I need to go into third person here otherwise it sounds a bit too gushing.
Joe Bonamassa is, I believe, an utterly unique being who risked everything for his belief and eventually exploded into the realm of  what I would call.
  “The creative divinity of the blues”
and the perfect melding of the group driven and  inspired by his singular talent and humility. Every performance is a “one off “because he lives in the moment he is playing so its always original. 
He imbues his music so thoroughly with himself that it become perfect fusion, utterly transcending the norm.
If we the listener are very fortunate, we are drawn into this astonishing energy.
  It goes way outside the boundaries of critique
What I truly love is hearing so much spontaneous genuine applause because it means so many others are connected directly to the experience of feeling as well as hearing your music
How can one critique a musician who inhabits the stage with his entire being to such a degree that he transcends the norm and becomes the music and or the song and like a super powerful magnet ,draws us into this beautiful synergy. Surrounded by a band whose musical coherence springs directly from Joe’s unique genius and lack of negative ego,allowing them total integrity towards each other.

I was so impressed concerning  your words  about relearning rhythm guitar in order to allow the individual soloist complete freedom to perform. I have never ever seen a band with such a lack of ego where the leader has integrated and inspired his band just as they inspire him.
  There are other inspirational figures like you but so very very rare, such beings, phantasmagorical creatures who dwell in halls of  solitary singularity, Reflect on Al Pacino the actor
“Figure out how to get out of our own way, our own sick ego” says Pacino and he is of course right.
He dwells within  his roles with such a totality that he becomes that being.
The astonishing courage of Beethoven, finishing his symphonies by listening to his compositions through his feet.
Perhaps its like a completely rare and exotic foreign language with one creative genius in the arts showing up every twenty years or so who speaks and understands this singular and passionate tongue.
A writer, an actor, a painter, a musician
who create such a rich and singular reality.
  They enter their creative space and expand it to subsume the audience and inhabit us with their passion and that’s most assuredly what you’ve done Joe.
Michael Angelo said
“We need to free ourselves from ourselves in order to give pleasure to others.”
I believe we are our own biggest obstacles to free will and freedom of being, always assuming we live in a relatively free society.
Yet the one constant is the willingness to put oneself at risk because again I repeat if you can’t get outside yourself you can never truly get inside to know the true you. can’t embrace genuine phenomena. if you can’t take a risk you cant experience the depths of life,
When we open ourselves to the vagaries of the universe in all its majesty. richness, ecstasy, joy, misery, corruptions and agony we become alive to its rewards and can trust the process of being  and embrace the moment like a Rabelaisian Kazantzakis creation of Zorba.
“Its there for all of us but you need an open Heart and a fearless embrace of whatever comes to meet you.”
Needless to say Joe this is precisely what you’ve done and what a wonderful miracle that I did find you and your music and I can listen and feel the connection to my senses. Thank you for your courageous journey Joe and for standing firm with your honesty and genius.
May you continue to delight our souls and celebrate our spirits for many years to come. Bravo !!!
I was a blues rock singer back in the late fifties. Based in Paris and recording for Columbia
(see Les Travellers)and we had the distinct pleasure of headlining and I cannot tell a lie,(shared with Connie Francis) at The Olympia so a splendid bonus to have trod the same boards as you.
I play your music every single day and each time it’s a unique experience and I thank you for the joy it inspires. also reminds me of my brother Les who played lead for Lonny Donnegan in UK .in sixties. He had the same intuitive style you had.
Again I thank you for your gift.
Salutations
Jonathan bennetts

Ps. just discovered you are playing Victoria in May 2015 so if I can get my ageing bones over to Vancouver from Victoria  you will most assuredly hear my plaudits.

I am so inspired by reading all these posts that, well, I think I need to add my story.

A few years ago, I was running (I am an avid runner) listening to the radio on my old Blackberry. The guy on the radio mentioned Joe Bonamassa and his show that evening and I said: Joe, who? Another wannabe, singing whatever music?
I heard the announcements a several times before Joe's music finally started.
This was unbelievable. What a music!!!
I played occasionally guitar since the age of about eight. Kinda, a few weeks of trying, then months or years of not touching the instrument so most of my life (late 50's) I did not played.
I've always head excellent ears, less perfect fingers and very bad motivation. Since I've heard Joe, I started practicing at least three or four times a week. And these are probably the most exciting moments in my everyday life. I destress, I compose, I register my music and really enjoy it.
I always liked well defined tone e.g. David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, and Joe is in the same club. I don't have the rig like him, I don't have the fingers like him, I even don't try to play like him. But I listen his music almost every day at work and it makes me more efficient and certainly happier. Blues, in its essence, is a sad music. Joe's blues is moving, motivating.
I watched him live for the first time this past Friday and I quit the venue excited because what I've heard was perfection, at least as I imagine it. Although there were no many Joe's original songs, mostly covers, his playing was clean and soulful. Joe, you changed my life for better. I'll never play guitar outside of my bedroom, but Joe made a better guitarist of me. Something I wanted to be, but never really tried.