Blues Bash Concert Review: Joe Bonamassa - Live At Blues Alley - Page 3

As it has been the highlight of many of his other shows, "Mountain Time" was the highlight of this show for me. One of his best originals, and the only song from his So, It's Like That album to make the set, this one starts of with a clean, acoustic, almost country-rock tone, and continues to build in intensity until an explosive climax brings it all home. Bonamassa also carries a powerful set of blues-rock pipes, and this song featured one of his most impressive vocal performances of the night. He turned the Ian Anderson-penned "New Day Yesterday" into a fiery, Cream-style jam on his debut album, and this night he even infused some tasty "Spoonful" passages to really put it over the top.

For "Miss You Hate You" and "Woke Up Dreaming", Joe took the stage alone, armed with only his Takamine acoustic guitar, and dazzled the crowd with his amazing acoustic touch. During "Dreaming," he just flat-out showed off, laying down some of the fastest, most precise, licks this side of Yngwie Malmsteen. I could have listened to the acoustic stuff all night, but when he eventually cut loose on his slide guitar masterpiece, "The River", all I could do was shake my head in awe. Joe uses his gorgeous Chandler Lectraslide guitar on this one, which emits a wonderful lap steel-like guitar tone, and when cranked up and played with a slide, it sounds like a frigging guitar orchestra.

With his Lectraslide still on, they segued directly into the final song of the set, John Lee Hooker's "Burning Hell", which he first covered on his 2003 album Blues Deluxe. "The River" and "Burning Hell" are performed as if they are two parts of the same long song, since they both feature gentle finger-picked sections, near gospel-like singing, and some of the most amazing slide-guitar playing I have ever seen.

Bonamassa played for about an hour and twenty minutes this set, which is about all this two-show-per-night gig would allow. How I wish I had bought tickets to both shows, like many others did. Joe is not only one of the world's best guitar players, but he is also one of the most charismatic and down to earth performers in the business. During the show, he commented about how just three years ago, "when he was a nobody," he actually used to live just down the street from Blues Alley. "My girlfriend, at the time, would have been really impressed had I been able to sell out this place back then."

Article Author: Paul Roy

Paul Roy is a network administrator by day and amateur music DVD critic by night. When not attending as many live concerts as he possibly can, Paul likes nothing more than to kick back with a good concert DVD and rattle some walls. …

Visit Paul Roy's author page — Paul Roy's Blog