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<\/p>\nWhen touring musicians were forced off the road in March 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, few thought the disruption would last more than a few months. More than 16 months later, life is only incrementally returning to something approximating normal. Ending an extended period during which its stage has gone dark, the San Jose Civic hosted Bay Area blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa on July 30.<\/p>\n
Bonamassa has an extensive album catalog; not even counting collaborative projects, the New York-born guitarist has released 15 studio albums since his debut, 2000\u2019s A New Day Yesterday<\/i>. His most recent studio album, 2020\u2019s Royal Tea<\/i> top-tenned the charts in five countries. Yet as well-received as those records have been, Bonamassa\u2019s reputation has been built and cultivated on the strength of his live performances.<\/p>\n
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His steady stream of live albums \u2013 18 and counting \u2013 splits the difference. Released in June, Bonamassa\u2019s Now Serving: Royal Tea Live from the Ryman<\/i> serves up an exciting and varied onstage performance for listeners who miss the concert experience. And the musician\u2019s plethora of live releases underscores an important quality of his music: it\u2019s always changing. With live and studio albums, \u201cYou\u2019re serving two different masters,\u201d Bonamassa says.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, you don’t want to make a studio record that’s full of eight-minute jams and meandering solos,\u201d Bonamassa says. Then he pauses and adds with a chuckle, \u201cObviously, you don’t want to do a live<\/i> show like that, either.\u201d He characterizes live performance as \u201ca conversation among the musicians, based on a conversation with the crowd.\u201d That real-time interactivity feeds the creative expression \u2013 and fulfillment \u2013 of everyone involved, on stage and off.<\/p>\n
Of course Bonamassa was sidelined by widespread venue closures just like most every other musician worldwide. Asked how he spent his time through the second half of 2020 and the early months of this year, he laughs heartily. \u201cNot playing guitar, I can tell you that!\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Yet he stayed quite busy, hosting his Live from Nerdville<\/i> podcast. He\u2019s hosted more than 60 episodes of the show, and its simple format \u2013 conversations with fellow musicians \u2013 is a winning one. Bonamassa has welcomed notables from the blues idiom; Selwyn Birchwood, Fantastic Negrito and Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer have all been recent guests.<\/p>\n
But as is the case with his own music, Bonamassa looks beyond the blues for his podcast. Alice Cooper, David Coverdale and Peter Frampton have all appeared on Live from Nerdville<\/i> this summer. And that genre-blurring mindset is highlighted on Bonamassa\u2019s new album, recorded at Nashville\u2019s famed Ryman Auditorium: the concert closes with a spirited reading of \u201cW\u00fcrm,\u201d the majestic three-chord coda to Yes\u2019 \u201cStarship Trooper,\u201d first heard 50 years ago.<\/p>\n
Bonamassa \u2013 whose early introduction to the blues was via Peter Green and Rory Gallagher, not Lightnin\u2019 Hopkins and Robert Johnson \u2013 isn\u2019t worried about the so-called blues police making a citizen\u2019s arrest at one of his shows. \u201cI look at my audience,\u201d he explains, \u201cand I assume that they’re just as familiar with Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Yes as they are with the blues. And a lot of times, I’m correct.\u201d He emphasizes that he and his four band mates (a lineup he likes to call an \u201cexpanded power trio\u201d) don\u2019t take themselves too seriously. He says that the prog classic is \u201cjust something fun to play as a de facto piss-take on everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Releasing a studio album, a live album and dozens of podcasts would be enough activity for two or three years in most musicians\u2019 lives. But in the last 12 months, Bonamassa says he has also co-produced five albums by other artists. He\u2019s also been busy with his Fueling Musicians initiative, a program administered by his nonprofit Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation.<\/p>\n
Prior to the pandemic, the foundation raised nearly $700,000, Bonamassa says, donating those funds to schools and music programs. But when the pandemic hit the livelihood of working musicians, the nonprofit channeled its efforts into the new initiative. \u201cWe\u2019ve raised a half a million dollars,\u201d he says.
\nThe foundation gave $1500 relief packages to bands hit hard by the loss of performance opportunities. \u201c$1500 isn’t life-changing money,\u201d Bonamassa admits. \u201cBut it helps. It can help pay the mortgage.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if all that wasn\u2019t enough, as Bonamassa and his band gear up for a run of live dates, the guitarist is delving into the new world of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. His \u201cOne Song Record Company\u201d NFT auction was set for July 31; the winning bidder would own an original master recording of a new and unheard song, \u201cBroken Record,\u201d along with publishing rights to the song, plus a 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar, a 1963 Fender Vibrolux amplifier and other valuable \u201ctokenized\u201d items.<\/p>\n
Bonamassa has charted his own path since the beginning, largely sidestepping the machinery of the music industry. And he characterizes his NFT as a \u201cproof of concept\u201d endeavor. A pilot project for a fan-funding model, his NFT means that \u201cwhoever buys the NFT gets something very unique that’s there\u2019s only one of in the world,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd if it works out, I hope it inspires other musicians to get involved in the NFT space so they become more independent and self-sustaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remarkably, against the backdrop of all this activity, Bonamassa insists that he takes life at a slower pace than he did a decade ago. He says that back then, he used to tell people, \u201cI’ve got this place in Laurel Canyon, and I hear it’s really nice!\u201d<\/p>\n
Come back tomorrow for more from my conversation with Joe. — bk<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n An edited version of this feature appeared in Metro Silicon Valley<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When touring musicians were forced off the road in March 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, few thought the disruption would last more than a few months. More than 16 months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,62],"tags":[4609],"class_list":["post-21390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-joe-bonamassa","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21390"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26076,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21390\/revisions\/26076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}