Joe Bonamassa BBC Session Review from Blues In Britain

Hi Everyone,

I've transcribed this review about the Joe Bonamassa BBC session from

Blues In Britain - Volume 1/Issue 76 - April 2008

Joe Bonamassa

Studio 3, BBC Maida Vale 6th February, 2008

This live session was recorded for broadcast on Monday 11th February.  Our host, Paul Jones introduced the band, Bogie Bowles, on drums, Carmine Rojas, ace on bass, and Richard Melick, a fine keyboard player from Oz, and Joe Bonamassa on guitar and vocals.

Joe leapt up and the band went straight into the high impact number, "Bridge For Better Days", played loud, seventies style!  This was followed by "So Many Roads" a slower song, by Otis Rush, combining a beautiful vocal line and heavy rock treatment.

Then Paul interviewed Joe about his album, his work for the Blues Foundation's Blues In The Schools programme.  Joe revealed that he thinks Led Zeppelin is as much the blues as Robert Johnson.

"One of These Days" got the heavy rock treatment with excellent dynamics, change of volume and pace and spaces between the notes plus fills.  The introduction to "Sloe Gin" brought a change of pace.  This son (written by Bob Ezrin and Michael Kamen for Tim Curry's debut LP in 1978), is the title track from his current album.

A question and answer session was followed by tour dates which included the Cornbury Music Festival, in Oxfordshire, in July.

Joe then sang "Woke Up Dreaming", which he played solo on an acoustic guitar in a style reminiscent of Tommy Emmanuel.  He then called Paul Jones up to play some fine harmonica on "You Upset Me Baby?".  Joes's vocals on this were blues wailingly good.  The closer "Just Got Paid" had some screaming, loads of notes guitar, with a staggeringly good undercurrent of bass, followed by some controlled plyaing making use of light and shade and volume control.

Paul Jones came back for the outro, bringing the session to a close.  However, apparently a couple of tracks, which had seemed faultless to us, did not meet with approval, so we had a reprise.  No one was complaining.  It was a great evening of stadium rock by a master of the form.  - Fran Leslie

Fran Leslie is the editor of "Blues In Britain" magazine.  This is an extemely useful blues
publication, as it gives me lots of info about dates and artists etc.

This month the articles are about Otis Taylor, Guitar Shorty, Dani Wilde, The Malchicks and Bob Hall.  This is the magazines website http://www.blueprint-blues.co.uk/ 

The Joe Bonamass BBC Session is going to be repeated at 2 AM, on Sunday, 6th April and then will probably be on "Listen Again" all week.  If you, or any of your pals missed it then nows your second chance to catch up with it.

Catfish Jane