Joe Bonamassa travels back to the blues roots
Time clocks
Berlin (AP) – As a twelve-year-old Joe Bonamassa played with the legendary BB King. in between, almost 32 years later, he himself has reached the Olympus of the blues.
While he had incorporated British themes into his music in his studio album “Royal Tea” last year, his latest work “Time Clocks” can be understood as a conscious return to old times. As a look back at his musical career, with fun and passion. For fans it is a musical journey through time – occasionally you feel as though you have been transported back to the past century.
Bonamassa himself describes the album as a “wandering of the soul”, above all he means the title song, which contains the entire musical range of its most expressive and most demanding phase. Add to this the rousing hymn “Notches” and the heartbreaking “The Heart That Never Waits”: The musician shows that his creativity has almost no limits.
The latter song pays homage to blues guitarist Robert Cray. “It’s my musical hero,” says Bonamassa. “And with the song I take my hat off to him.”
The recordings in New York City brought Bonamassa back to his early roots. He remembers the times as a young, aspiring musician, when he was hungry, “both for success and in the truest sense of the word”.
The pursuit of success has remained, even if in his case it is more of a pursuit of even more perfection, as fans and critics believe. For the album, Bonamassa went into the studio with his new longtime colleague Kevin Shirley as a producer. The band includes companions like Steve Mackey (bass), Lachy Doley (piano) and Anton Fig on drums.
After many months of seclusion due to the corona pandemic, Bonamassa will go on tour again in autumn. And here, too, fans can hope – the blues master will come to Germany at the end of April and beginning of May 2022.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211019-99-655032 / 4