Joe Bonamassa won’t be forgetting about the first three nights of July 2025 in a hurry. The blues supremo performed a trio of shows to a 5000-strong sold-out crowd at Cork festival Live At The Marquee.

The setlists, however, weren’t your typical Bonamassa fare.

Instead of playing any originals, he was booked to pay tribute to late local hero Rory Gallagher, something which the American singer/guitarist described as “the biggest challenge of my musical life”.

On his latest live album and concert film, The Spirit Of Rory Live From Cork, Bonamassa can be seen doffing his cap to a Northern Irish legend – a man whose influence on the guitar world cannot be overstated.

For Bonamassa, it was a great honour to celebrate the music given how he’d been living with these songs since his very earliest years. It speaks volumes that Bonamassa’s debut album of 2000 opens with 1973 Gallagher cut Cradle Rock, the same song that opened the performances in Cork and kicks off this latest release.

“Cradle Rock has always been quite special to me,” he smiles, talking to MusicRadar in the weeks following his Spring 2026 European tour. “My introduction to Rory was the Irish Tour ’74 album. It’s interesting that when we went started working together, all of the musicians in this entirely new band ended up defaulting to those live versions. It was meant to be.”

The new line-up included Jeremy Stacey [King Crimson, Noel Gallagher, Sheryl Crow] on drums. “Someone I’ve always wanted to work with,” Bonamassa says. “He’s so good because he understands English music – there’s an English pocket that a lot of American drummers don’t get.”

Also in the band were local guitarist Conor Brady, bassist Aongus Ralston [The Waterboys] and Lachy Doley on keyboards.

Together the quintet sought to bring to life legendary songs like Bed Penny, A Million Miles Away and Tattoo'd Lady – which given Rory Gallagher’s distinct musical personality had to come from the heart.

Like other blues trailblazers including Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gallagher had the tendency to pull things out of thin air, approaching performances from a very human, off-the-cuff and spontaneous perspective, with very much his own sense of time and feel.

“Yeah, he was raw and honest,” agrees Bonamassa. “It became very clear to me that they took the razorblade to a lot of the Irish Tour ’74 tracks to fit them onto vinyl. Some of those versions went on for 10 or 12 minutes, but they’re not like that on the record.”

He continues: “So [producer] Kevin Shirley and I sat at Abbey Road for three days asking ourselves how deep we wanted to go. In the end we decided it would be better to have more songs than longer versions of less songs.”

The guitarist was also adamant this would be more of a loose and heartfelt celebration than a clinical note-for-note replication of timeless songs.

“Honestly, I didn’t replicate any of them,” he shrugs. “I was Joe Bonamassa playing Rory Gallagher. I wasn’t going to use an SG or a Les Paul. It had to be a Strat, plus a Vox and a Twin, which was basically the Rory 1974 rig.”

The details of the rig had been confirmed by Rory’s nephew Daniel Gallagher who, as MD of The Rory Gallagher Archives, has spent much of his adult life working through his uncle’s equipment and recordings.

“Daniel told me that – it was a Vox and a high-powered Twin,” nods Bonamassa. “I also used the Dumble as a gain boost for some parts.”

The hero worship went a step further, with Cork Public Museum loaning the guitarist Rory Gallagher’s very own 1930 National Triolian resonator to be used for the song As The Crow Flies, which Bonamassa describes as “a big deal”.

At one point he was even trying to loan out Gallagher’s iconic 1961 Fender Strat from the National Museum Of Ireland.

“Getting Rory’s Strat from the National Museum would have taken an act of government,” he shrugs. “The Irish Prime Minister would have had to intervene. I’m actually kinda relieved we didn’t do that because it would have felt a little cosplay. But having that resonator for one song was really good in the end.”

For Bonamassa a big part of the electric tone came from something else that also used to belong to Gallagher, though much smaller in size.

“The real trick was having Rory’s Number 1 Rangemaster,” he admits. “The Gallaghers were kind enough to gift it to me. When I plugged that Treble Booster into the AC30s, I was like, ‘Now I fucking understand where all this came from!’ You can’t really dial in anything pedestrian.”

He adds: “Plug a Strat into that pedal and those amps and it’s like ‘Holy shit!’ We got close tonally. But when I listen to the record, it just sounds like me.

“Maybe that was the point to begin with. There was no point doing an anorak sounds-alike thing. I just can’t. That’s not me. Rory is Rory and there’s only one of him. It’s like trying to be Stevie Ray Vaughan. You’ll never do it.”

Joe Bonamassa's new live album “The Spirit Of Rory Live From Cork” is released on CD + DVD, CD + Blu-ray, and red marble vinyl by J&R Adventures.
Order the album from the UK and Europe here – https://lnk.to/JoeBonamassa. Order the album from North America here – https://joeb.me/OrderTheSpiritOfRory

BB King’s influence on blues guitar is immeasurable but we could begin to count the ways in which he shaped the art form, in the players who sought out his tutelage and counsel, who absorbed his technique, his Mozart-esque command over vibrato and phrasing, his economy with the electric guitar.

He was the one to influence the greats, from O.G. Chicago blues phenoms such as Buddy Guy, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, the British blues boom – Clapton, Green, Beck et al – right on through to the present day and the players who readily signed up to the BB King’s Blues Summit 100 tribute album convened and produced by Joe Bonamassa, who was another top-tier player in thrall to BB King.

Indeed, in 2021, when MusicRadar asked Bonamassa for the 10 players who blew his mind, King was the first to come to mind; he was the “archetype”.

“Talk about a guy that was able to identify himself with just one single note,” said Bonamassa. “Those early live recordings from the early ‘60s, Live At The Regal, Blues Is King... when he had that reverb-drenched stereo Gibson sound? That was the archetype for electric blues for me.”

Bonamassa and BB King go way back. They first met in 1990, when Bonamassa’s band was opening for him at the Lilac Festival, in Rochester, New York.

This was Bonamassa the wunderkind, the 13-year-old guitar prodigy who’d be on local broadcast TV spots making his Fender Telecaster squeal. BB King had booked him to play and they had been friends ever since.

In a recent interview with Guitarist magazine, Bonamassa opened up about their friendship and offered fans an insight to the kind of man BB King was. First of all, just being in his presence was an eduction.

“You couldn’t help but watch him and learn,” says Bonamassa. “He was always very encouraging, like, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t change.’”

This was good advice. As Bonamassa notes, it served BB King so well. No one was more in touch with who they were as a player than King.

“I can’t think of another guitar player that with a single note is that identifiable, you know what I mean? Maybe Albert King, but Albert King really would require a two- or three-note phrase,” says Bonamassa. “But BB King could just play one note, and it’s like you know who he is, and those are the players you can’t help but pay attention to and understand and learn from.”

It wasn’t just the guitar. BB King was a renaissance man. Given that he was one of electric blues’ great pioneers, should we be surprised that he was good with technology? Bonamassa was. By the sounds of things, he was still in the analogue era of the Sony Walkman et al while King was au fait with mp3s.

“Well, he showed me how to drag songs from a computer into an iPod when he was 80 years old!” says Bonamassa. “I didn’t know how to do that and he’s like, ‘Here, son, this is how you do it.’ How sad is that? I was 28 or something and he was 80.”

But maybe the biggest lesson anyone could take from BB King as an artist was his work ethic. Bonamassa speaks of a man who was the definition of a road dog, and would not cancel a show for anyone.

“He was a consummate professional. I remember one time in Charleston, West Virginia, there was a big snowstorm, and the governor of West Virginia called specifically to ask B.B. King to postpone the show and he wouldn’t do it,” says Bonamassa. “He goes, ‘I told them I’m going to be here in March and I’m here.’ They’re like, ‘But Mr King, it’s unsafe.’ He said, ‘Well, I made it!’ So that was him, man.”

Bonamassa put together a formidable roster of musical talent for his tribute album. There were modern day players such as Marcus King, Larkin Poe, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, and Joanne Shaw Taylor.

The greatest living bluesman, Buddy Guy, is on the record, too. And a certain Eric Clapton stepped up for The Thrill Is Gone, playing alongside Chaka Khan (if ever there was a track that demanded the heavy hitters). Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks are on it, too.

Trucks is another who counts BB King among the 10 players who blew his mind. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2019, Trucks recalled his father having this look of wonder in his eye whenever he spoke about BB King playing live – and he would talk about it a lot. “He would always talk about it,” laughed Trucks.

The Tedeschi Trucks bandleader – who can play a bit of guitar himself, see above – says King was proof that you could sometimes meet your heroes and they exceed your expectations.

“He was a total sweetheart and a total badass,” said Trucks. “The way you feel when you hear him is the way you feel when you hang out with him. He was a special one.”

Trucks echoed Bonamassa’s sentiments about BB King, blues guitar, and the art of economical phrasing.

“People would get up and play with BB and play a million notes and BB would just hang one note out there and just wipe the stage clear!” said Trucks. “I’ve seen him do it. He was the greatest ambassador for that music that you could possibly find.”

BB King’s Blues Summit 100 is out now via KTBA Records.

Norman’s Rare Guitars has been sold. The legendary Los Angeles guitar store, founded and run by the equally legendary Norman Harris, has been bought by TNAG Global, the owners of Nashville-based heritage gear retail powerhouse Carter Vintage Guitars.

TNAG Global will take ownership of the store and its inventory of a thousand-plus guitars, plus Harris’ own personal collection. After over 50 years, there are bound to be a few holy grail electric guitars in there.

All of said gear will be onboarded to TNAG Global’s “instrument management system”, The Exchange, which is described as a “fully integrated environment to buy, sell and consign legacy instrument brands, in-store and online”.

In the store at 18969 Ventura Blvd, LA, there will be no discernible difference. The team at Norman’s Rare Guitars will remain unchanged. The vibe will be the same.

“Norman’s Rare Guitars is the most iconic guitar shop in the world, and we are honoured to help extend its story into the future,” says Ben Montague, founder and CEO of TNAG Global. “Our responsibility with this acquisition is simple: Protect what makes the shop special, ensure the business thrives beyond its founder and give Norman the freedom to step back whenever he chooses, knowing the legacy is secure.”

Harris will still remain onsite, “actively involved” in the business for as long as he wants. It is nigh-on impossible to imagine the store without him. His and the store’s story was the subject of a recent Netflix documentary.

Harris says the acquisition puts the legacy of the store in safe hands for generations to come, and says there was no one better to take the company forward than Montague and his team at TNAG Global.

“The goal has always been to share my love of great guitars with the community, and this partnership allows that community to grow, while protecting everything that makes the shop special,” says Harris. “I feel a deep sense of comfort knowing the shop, its history and its values will still be here for future generations of my family and for guitar lovers around the world.”

TNAG Global’s ambitions are to do with Norman’s Rare Guitars what it did for Carter Vintage Guitars, growing business globally without changing “the soul” the store. After the acquisition of Carter Vintage Guitars in 2022, sales have increased by 233 per cent. And Montague sees plenty of room for growth for Norman’s Rare Guitars.

“California is one of the most important guitar markets in the world, and we believe there is enormous opportunity to bring a truly dialled-in, trusted consignment model to the West Coast,” he says. “At TNAG Global, customer obsession is the driving force behind everything we build. We create environments where guitar lovers, collectors and musicians can walk into an iconic store – in Nashville or Los Angeles – and feel taken care of at the highest level, both in person and online.”

But what do the regulars at Norman’s Rare Guitars make of it? Like all great guitar stores, it is a hang-out spot, it’s a home from home, a place where fellow obsessives can talk gear, and buy gear come pay day.

One such regular knows all parties involved in this acquisition deal, and he gives his unqualified blessing to the deal.

“I am extremely excited to see my Uncle Norm enter into this new chapter in his life and career,” says Joe Bonamassa, blues guitar superstar and regular at Norm’s. “We all know that he will still be around, being the master of ceremonies and dealing the coolest guitars in the world.

“Congratulations to my friend Ben and the entire team at TNAG Global on securing the legacy of the greatest guitar store in the world.”

Joe Bonamassa and Fuchs Audio have just unveiled a signature tube amp that promises much of that holy grail Dumble amp tone without the astronomical price.

A 100-watt combo built by Andy Fuchs, numbered and signed by Fuchs and Bonamassa, the JB-ODS adds reverb to the classic Overdrive Special recipe, and shaves a whole lot off the price. A Dumble in the wild is a six-figure guitar amp. This is $3,999, a high-end guitar amp but sensibly so.

“It’s not $175,000, which is a big deal,” says Bonamassa. “Not everybody has $175,000 for an amplifier, so here we go.”

Bonamassa says he got the idea for the amp about two years ago. He wanted a bougie runaround amp he could throw in the back of a cab and take around New York. Nothing too heavy. But something with a bit of guts, too. Andy Fuchs of New Jersey-based amp brand Fuchs Audio Technology picked up the phone.

“I called Andy and I said, ‘Andy, I can you build me an amp? I’ll send you a speaker. I’ll send you a speaker – I’ll send you a Celestion speaker. Can you build me a 100-watt combo so I can drag it around in New York City if I have a sit in or something like that?’ And he built me one of these ODS models,” says Bonamassa. “And, to be honest with you, it blew me away. And everyone who hears it and is around it goes, ‘What is that amp?’”

What this is is a serious amp. It’s go two onboard boosts for a start. One bypasses the tone controls. The other keeps them in play and hits the front end harder. It has selectable mids.

There are all kinds of EQing options, such as the Deep switch for fattening up your single-coil tone, the 3-position Bright switch, and three-position EQ switch that offers two EQ settings plus the option to bypass them. It has an effects loop you can use in series or parallel. The 16-Bit Spin Semiconductor reverb is "the finest modern digital reverb available".

Under the hood, you'll find Ruby Tubes selected JJ's. The amp’s circuit has been engineered to maximise dynamics. And Bonamassa has road-tested it.

“Some of you have seen this amplifier onstage in California, maybe here in New York when I was sitting in last year with Oz Noy, with Will Lee and Steve Ferrone,” he says. “We’ve been beta testing them, and used it in a session with Marcus Miller.”

The speaker Bonamassa speaks of is one of his signature Celestion JB-85 12” drivers (the same speaker that’s in his Fender signature amp, the High Powered Tweed Twin), and it sits in a white pine cabinet, covered in black tolex.

“It really, really sounds great,” says Bonamassa. “And to be honest with you, it really does tick all the boxes. The great thing about it is it’s really a plug-in-and-play amp. There’s no real pedal needed. There’s nothing that you really need other than a cable and a good guitar, and there’s so many different settings.

“I mean, we just have settings set that you can play around with this thing. It’s very much like an ODS, like an Overdrive Special, in the sense that there’s so many different sounds that you can kind of elicit from it, but it’s really got a great combination of sounds, and it’s got reverb.”

The Fuchs JB-ODS is available now, priced £3,199/$3,999. Head over to Joe Bonamassa for more details.

Following the runaway success of his 1955 Copper Iridescent Les Paul Standard, Epiphone and Joe Bonamassa have put their heads together to come up with another signature guitar fashioned after one of the über-rare pieces in the blues guitar superstar’s collection, a dual-pickup 1959 Les Paul Custom.

As Bonamassa explains, a ’59 Les Paul Custom – all dressed up in its tux – with only two electric guitar pickups is a rare thing indeed. Speaking to the Gibson Gear Guide’s Dinesh Lekhraj, he tells us we are much more likely to see the three-pickup configuration, such as Eric Clapton’s 1958 Custom that Gibson recently made a Murphy Lab replica of.

“For those out there that don’t know, they made a lot of two-pickup Customs. Starting in 1968, they made thousands and thousands and thousands of them. They just never made ‘em in the ‘50s,” says Bonamassa. ‘There’s probably less than 20 original 1950s two-pickup Les Paul Customs. They are almost always three pickups. And for the exception of a short run in, I believe, ’59.”

Under 20? That’s rare. Of course, Bonamassa has one squirrelled away. But he’s not the only one in the Gibson/Epiphone extended universe to own one. Gibson brand president and CEO Cesar Gueikian has one, too.

“I believe our CEO has a two-pickup Custom I saw at his house,” says Bonamassa. “His guitar and my guitar are pretty close in serial numbers, 20 off, so there was a batch of them.”

The difference is that Bonamassa’s has a Bigsby B70, and that gives it a little secret sauce – a voice all of its own. Fender 2-point synchronized tremolos, Floyd Rose double-locking vibratos, all great and good; but each and individual Bigsby has a certain something…

A twang? Lekhraj makes the suggestion, and you can hear that here, too, a certain resonance atop the usual cream you get from the Epiphone Probucker Custom humbuckers.

“Given the fact that this is all-mahogany with an ebony fingerboard, and a Bigsby it’s a little more hi-fi, but it will rock, it will roll,” Bonamassa assures us.

As for the specs, Bonamassa has revealed some of the highlights here but what most excites us – besides the fact the 7-ply binding on the top of the body has been yellowed to age it – is the long neck tenon construction. Great to see at on an Epiphone guitar with a £949/$999 price tag.

The neck is mahogany, shaped into a 1960 rounded medium C profile. And those dimensions are as you would want, 12” fingerboard radius, 24.75” scale, medium jumbo frets. It’s a Custom so you have the pearloid block inlays, the split diamond inlays and 5-ply binding on the headstock. The Grover Imperial tuners are a touch of old-school class.

The hard-shell guitar case is included in the price, stencilled “BONAMASSA, NERDVILLE, CA” and “FRAGILE,” and it’s lined in yellow fur, that looks gold in a certain light. All the better to go with the hardware.

The Joe Bonamassa 1959 Les Paul Custom is available now – see Epiphone for more details. In other Bonamassa signature swag news, only last week Seymour Duncan expanded its signature collection with the Bolin Burst humbucker set – the aftermarket mod you need to make your Les Paul sound like the 1960 original.

Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan have unveiled a new signature humbucker set based on the very same electric guitar pickups that are in the blues guitar superstar’s 1960 Gibson ‘Bolin Burst’ Les Paul Standard.

The Bolin Burst is one of Bonamassa’s most legendary electric guitars in his collection, named for Tommy Bolin, famous for its Stars and Stripes pickguard, and kind of weird in the sense that Bolin never actually owned the instrument, and yet it was his go-to electric when playing in Zephyr, Deep Purple, James Gang, and so on.

It was Bolin’s tech, David Brown, who owned the guitar, lending it to Bolin, even going as far as to – and look away vintage purists – modify it, retrofitting a Bigbsy because, all things considered, Bolin liked vibratos on account of him favouring a Stratocaster.

What complicates this story even further is that Bolin only started borrowing this vintage doozy because his own Gold Top got stolen.

“One of the most distinctive things about this guitar is the pickguard, which was hand-painted by David in an American flag design,” explained Bonamassa in his Guitar World column. “There’s a little part of the paint that’s scratched off; when Tommy performed with Zephyr on the TV show American Bandstand, one of the producers went to Dick Clark and said, ‘Hey, that long-haired hippy guitarist has the word, Fuck on his guitar!’ So they made him scratch it off!”

Bolin passed away in 1976 following a drug overdose. The guitar returned to Moab, Utah, with Brown. It’s quite the tale; like Bonamassa says, he does not collect guitars, he collects stories.

He also takes good care of them, even if they’re on regular rotation in his stage show. When you see him playing the Bolin Burst on stage, he’s using a replica pickguard to preserve the original.

Anyway, that’s pretty cool, and because few of us can afford to enter the market for vintage electric guitars, nor do we have the connections that would help us sniff out a unicorn find such as this 1960 LP (it took Bonamassa the best part of a decade to find this one), Seymour Duncan’s Bolin Burst humbucker pairing is a good a workaround as you’ll find – and it might just be this year’s essential Les Paul mod.

As per the original Les Paul, these are modelled on Seth Lover’s PAF pickups. As per Seymour Duncan’s other PAF replicas – Billy Gibbons’ Pearly Gates pickup set springs to mind – we have Alnico II magnets for both the neck and bridge pickups. The pickups are left unpotted, using “long-leg” vintage-correct construction.

“The bridge pickup provides a dynamic and barky sound, while the neck pickup sings with warmth and clarity – especially through your favorite overdriven amp,” says Seymour Duncan.

“To be able to recreate pickups that can go into a replica that’s $500, that sound equally as good, if not somewhat better than a guitar that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can turn an Epiphone into the Tommy Bolin Burst!” says Bonamassa.

Sweet. Now, these are a custom shop deal. Bonamassa and Mr Seymour Duncan himself will sign the baseplates of the first 500 sets. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Tommy Bolin Endowment and Tommy Bolin Memorial Fund.

The Bolin Burst set is the latest in a long-standing collaboration between Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan. A non-exhaustive list of their signature pickup sets includes the Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster pickups, the “Greenburst” Stratocaster set, the Cradle Rock ’63 Strat set, the Bonnie Strat set, and the Blonde Dot 1960 PAF set, which is definitely a last but not least kind of deal because they might just be our favourites.

That right there is a lot of options for modders to soup-up the electric in their life, with these Bolin Burst humbuckers potentially giving the Epiphone guitar in your life a US Custom Shop power-up.

Priced $375, the Bolin Burst Humbucker Set is available now. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

BB King would have turned 100 today, and to mark the occasion, Joe Bonamassa has announced an all-star album celebrating the life and legacy of the King of the Blues.

Produced by Bonamassa with Josh Smith, BB King’s Blues Summit 100 will be released via KTBA Records on February 6, 2026, but Bonamassa will be sharing new tracks each month in advance of its release.

All in there will be 32 of King’s most-famous tracks, featuring guest appearances from the likes of Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Slash, Shemekia Copeland, Marcus King… Kirk Fletcher, Larkin Poe, the list goes on. Bonamassa really worked the contacts book for this one.

The greatest living bluesman, Buddy Guy, is also on the recording. There are so many stars. but as Bonamassa says BB King was the centre of the blues guitar universe. When he learned that there had been no centenary tribute planned to celebrate King’s legacy, he got the ball rolling.

“Very few people in music define the genre in which they flourish, and BB King is one of them,” says Bonamassa. “When BB was alive and active, he was the blues – he was the sun which all planets rotated around. Only a few artists are the true north guiding the genre in which they participated, but he was that shining star.”

Bonamassa told MusicRadar as much in 2021 when he listed the 10 guitarists who blew his mind.

“Talk about a guy that was able to identify himself with just one single note,” he said. “Those early live recordings from the early ‘60s: Live At The Regal, Blues Is King... when he had that reverb-drenched stereo Gibson sound? That was the archetype for electric blues for me. Coupled with the quality of the material and his singing, it was simply a tour de force. And just so amazingly powerful.”

The project has the blessing of the King estate, with its chairman, Vassal Gradington Benford III, noting that the late bluesman’s legacy was not just in the music itself, but in the message behind it, his “spirit of love” and gift for bringing people together.

“This collection carries his legacy forward – so that new audiences may continue to feel the heart, soul, and humanity of the King of the Blues,” he says.

Bonamassa can surely relate. He is living proof of BB King’s generational legacy. When he was a young buck, well, just 12 years old, he opened for King, who saw something in the young Bonamassa and took him under his wing.

“He mentored me,” says Bonamassa. “But I wasn't the only one. All the people in his orbit have the same story about how kind B.B. was, and how he embraced the younger generation.”

That next generation of blues players is present and correct on BB King’s Blues Summit 100. Here are some more names for you; Eric Gales, Gary Clark Jr, Warren Haynes, Chris Buck.

“BB’s only wish was, ‘Do what you can to keep the blues alive,’” says Bonamassa. “Well, hopefully this album gives a B12 shot to his legacy – and to the legacy of the blues.”

King would surely have approved.

The first five tracks from BB King’s Blues Summit 100 are available to stream now. The album is available to preorder on all formats via Joe Bonamassa.

• 5 songs guitarists need to hear by… BB King

Joe Bonamassa’s “amp shanty” is the stuff of legend – and many a YouTube video tour. You will no doubt be familiar with some of his heavy hitters, the venerable Marshall Silver Jubilee heads, pure unobtanium in the form of his Dumble tube amps.

But what about his fly rig, the amp he uses for those occasions when he is sitting in with a band for one night only? Bonamassa has shared his thoughts on this – and, helpfully, some advice for any player who is trying to choose a guitar amp for a gig.

Speaking to Guitarist magazine, for a recent YouTube segment [below], Bonamassa explains it is all a question of power. When it comes down to it he is not fussy; wattage and volume are his primary concerns. If there’s a Fender Super Reverb kicking around, that’ll do.

“If I’m just sitting in, I just prefer to play through whatever’s there,” he says. “The only thing that will make me bring my own amp is if they go, ‘Yeah, we’ve got a Princeton Reverb’ and it’s a live band. Well, you can’t really move the needle there; it’s not loud enough. You’re just peaked.

“In any situation, you just want to bring something that’s appropriate. You don’t bring a high-powered '[Fender] Tweed Twin to a small blues gig. It’s just too loud. You want something that is power appropriate but when you solo it has enough headroom to where you feel it.”

How do you know how much power is appropriate? Many players will argue that for small gigs, playing alongside a bass player and a drummer – especially one who is playing with brushes – then a medium-powered combo such as a Deluxe Reverb will be more than enough, especially once it’s mic’d up. But every situation is different.

“It really is dependent on the drummer,” says Bonamassa. “The drummer and the rhythm section eats up a lot of the bandwidth on guitar, so if you have a loud drummer, in a small place, you need to balance the band. You need to have the power equivalent.”

Bonamassa’s choices would be a modified Vibrolux. Fuchs OD-50, switchable between 50 and 100-watts. “It does a really, really wonderful approximation of a Dumble. It is not a specific one. It does that thing.”

But you also have to think of the practicalities.You have to think of the practicalities. Are there stairs where you are playing? That’s worth considering before you haul out the Fender Super Reverb – 65lbs is heavy enough going down the stairs, let alone getting back up. When Bonamassa plays a guest spot, he travels light. “I just scale accordingly,” he says. “It’s only one guitar, a gig bag, a protector case, and a cable.”

Check the pic at the top of the page. That’s Bonamassa playing a Guild DE-500 Duane Eddy signature guitar from 1963 at the Titan of Twang tribute show, hosted by the Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, last month.

“We were paying tribute to Duane Eddy so I brought an amp with a lot of reverb and tremolo, and from 1963 and tremmed away,” he says. “So it just depends on the type of thing you get called for. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a great sound, and it doesn’t have to be overly complex.

“My rig is large. It’s not complex. It’s just bigger stages requires more headroom. In this room, a Tweed Champ would sound super-loud. All we have to go is 100-feet from here and you will barely hear it.”

• Buying your first gigging amp

In other Bonamassa news, there has officially been white smoke above Nerdville. He has a new album, titled Breakthrough, out on 18 July through J&R Records.

Produced once more by Kevin ‘The Caveman’ Shirley, it is available for pre-order. Shirley describes it as a “round-the-world musical trip” so expect the unexpected.

“While there are plenty of guitar solos on this record, his emphasis has been on songs primarily,” says Shirley. “Each time Joe undertakes a new recording project, he seems to access a different part of his vast library of music genre from the jukebox-in-his-head! This album is a round-the-world musical trip – from Little Feat funkiness to Texas swing, from hard rock power to acoustic singer/songwriter-style songs.”

Joe Bonamassa is in the midst of a mammoth European tour right now but the blues guitar superstar isn’t one of the hardest-working cats in showbiz for nothing, with the Mayor of Nerdville today announcing his new studio album, Breakthrough, and sharing the title-track – and its lyrics – on YouTube.

Breakthrough, the song and the album, was produced by long-time JoBo collaborator, Kevin ‘The Caveman’ Shirley.

Bonamassa is best known as a bluesman but his style is all over the map, referencing classic rock, funk and old-time RnB, even prog, too – and that’s before we consider his exertions with the rock supergroup Black Country Communion, with whom he has a slew of summer dates booked in the summer.

But this time out Shirley promises us something different from Bonamassa. The über-producer had this to say.

“I think this album, Breakthrough, marks a shift in the styling of Joe Bonamassa’s recording output,” says Shirley. “While there are plenty of guitar solos on this record, his emphasis has been on songs primarily.

“Each time Joe undertakes a new recording project, he seems to access a different part of his vast library of music genre from the jukebox-in-his-head! This album is a round-the-world musical trip – from Little Feat funkiness to Texas swing, from hard rock power to acoustic singer/songwriter-style songs.”

Breakthrough follows Still Walking With Me and Shake This Ground and was written by another of Bonamassa’s go-to collaborators down the years, Tom Hambridge. The track is about “transformation, persistence, and letting go of the weight that holds us back”, and perhaps taking the opportunity to showcase what Shirley was talking about.

It has him working those spanky in-between tones, a strutting riff, all of which is liberally sauced with some gourmet overdrive. Those leads are particularly juicy. Bonamassa’s “amp shanty” has served him well. We'll need to find out after the jump whether he used Rory Gallagher's number one Dallas Rangemaster, which the Gallagher family gifted Bonamassa in February.

Breakthrough is out on 18 July through J&R Adventures and it is available to pre-order here. Bonamassa takes to the stage tonight in Liverpool, plays Nottingham tomorrow, and you can find all dates and ticket details at Joe Bonamassa. Check out Breakthrough above.

If you notice anything extra special about Joe Bonamassa’s electric guitar tone when he steps up onstage in Cork, Ireland, this coming July to honour the late Irish blues guitar icon Rory Gallagher, that’ll be the holy grail treble booster that blew a young Brian May’s mind back in 1969, and, you could argue, changed the face of rock history.

Bonamassa is now the owner of Rory’s number one Dallas Rangemaster treblebooster, one of the most iconic guitar effects units of all time.

It had been scheduled to go to auction alongside a trove of Gallagher’s gear, but, taking to Instagram, Bonamassa reveals that the Gallagher family surprised him with it before his show at the Beacon in New York City last night (27 February). To put it mildly, Bonamassa has some cool pieces in his collection, but this took him aback – and best of all, this old grey box is in fine working order.

“There are moments in my life when I need to step back pinch myself,” writes Bonamassa. “Tonight before our show [at the Beacon Theater] in New York my friend Daniel Gallagher, with his father Donal’s blessing, gifted me Rory’s number one Rangemaster. I had noticed it had gone missing from the auction a few months back and I am beyond blown away that this is now in my possession.”

This box, which was designed to sit on top of a guitar amp rather than on your pedalboard (there is no footswitch) was Gallagher’s secret sauce – except it wasn’t such a secret. Gallagher would tell people what was what, people such as Brian May. Tony Iommi would similarly use one to great effect with Black Sabbath.

Watching Gallagher use his Vox AC30 tube amp combo and discovering that it a Rangemaster was working its magic in the sound too was the great gear epiphany that would become the bedrock for May’s sound with Queen.

Speaking to Guitarist, May says he stayed behind after one of Gallagher’s London shows to ask him just how he got that sound. “Easy,” came the reply.

“[The AC30 and Dallas Rangemaster treble booster] was there from the moment I saw Rory Gallagher,” said May. “I managed to stay behind at [legendary London venue] The Marquee when everyone had gone home. “I asked him, ‘Rory, how do you get that sound?’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s easy, I have the AC30 and this little box, and I turn it up and it sings for me.’

“The next day, I went to a guitar shop and found two secondhand AC30s for £30 each. I found a treble booster. I plugged in with my guitar, turned all the way up and it just melted my stomach. That’s my sound.”

The ingredients might be similar but there is no mistaking Gallagher for May or vice versa. Some of that would have to go down to May’s use of a six-pence for a guitar pick – not to mention his, Red Special, the sui generis electric he made at home with his father. But also, as was often the case with vintage effects May’s Rangemaster sounded a little different. He describes Gallagher’s – now Bonamassa’s – as a little brighter?

If you’re looking for an idea of how that sounds on record, Bonamassa suggest you check out the live album that collects the highlights from Gallagher’s 1974 performances in Belfast, Dublin and Cork, which were captured using Ronnie Lane’s Mobile Studio.

“We plugged it in and it turned that tweed Vibrolux into Irish Tour 74,” writes Bonamassa. “I am so honoured you will see it onstage again in Cork! Humbled and blessed. Thank you so much.”

Joe Bonamassa will play three nights at The Marquee, Cork, from 1st July. The third date was added after the first two nights sold out. See Ticketmaster for ticket details.

Could you spot a fake Gibson Les Paul? We would all like to think so. But given that fakes bearing the Gibson logo on the headstock are still circulating, with some $18 million of fake Gibson electric guitars seized by US Customs and Border Protection officers only last November, clearly some can’t.

There is a market for this garbage. People can get hoodwinked – especially when many sales are online. A friend of YouTuber Robert Baker bought a fake Les Paul and Baker decided that this would be a good time to put together a PSA of what to look for.

“I bought this fake Les Paul from a friend of mine who was getting rid of it. I wanted to make you a video showcasing all the little, subtle things that are wrong with these that can help people hopefully not buy these fake Les Pauls balls,” says Baker. “A lot of us have friends who have unfortunately purchased some of these thinking they were real, and it’s just heartbreaking to see someone spend so much money on something that is fake.”

Baker says it took the best part of eight months to put this video together. When you consider the all-star pro team he assembled to pore over the design inconsistencies and tell-tale scenes that his single-cut was a fugazi, you’ll understand why.

There’s only the world’s highest-grossing blues guitar player and vintage guitar collector at large, Joe Bonamassa. Tom Bukovac is onboard to lend his expertise. Then we have the Gibson’s Tom Murphy with fellow Custom Shop alumnus Phil Jones. Joe Glaser and Nick Drushel of Glaser Intruments in Nashville. That’s a lot of expertise. But then, this is a lot of fake guitar to dissect.

The problem, of course, is not restricted to Gibson. That November seizure of counterfeit guitars in November also included Fender, PRS and Gretsch guitars. Knowing the brand is critical. And when Baker’s team get to grips with Exhibit A lying there on the examination table the tell-tale signs are there for all to see. You will no doubt spot some yourself.

Bonamassa doesn’t take a beat before he starts listing out the problems. Murphy is the same. The binding, the knobs, the headstock... None of it adds up.

“There are quality issues and design issues that tell you it’s not even a Gibson,” says Murphy. “I want to see that silkscreen [headstock logo]. That’s not even a silkscreen; that’s a decal. This white binding is glaring. I don’t know of any of our Gibson guitars possess that, or have even in the recent past, and these knobs, I don’t know what they are supposed to represent. They are a colour that doesn’t appear anywhere on a real Gibson.”

And that’s just the start. From the body shape to the hardware and the electronics, everything is off.

Spoiler warning: they cut up the guitar. But Baker says it is justified; they wanted to see what this guitar is made of. What are they making these things out of? Well, you can check it the segment above find out – and subscribe to Robert Baker Guitar on YouTube.

Joe Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan have unveiled the latest signature electric guitar pickup set for the blues superstar, and it is a Custom Shop replica of the ‘gray bottom’ single-coils from his “Greenburst” Stratocaster.

The competition is steep, but even so, the Greenburst is surely one of the coolest electric guitars in Bonamassa’s huge collection, even if it violates the established rules of vintage guitars – don’t have them refinished.

Well, all that stuff is for the vintage nerds, cork-sniffers and price watchers to argue over. Frankly, whoever had the idea to refinish this three-colour sunburst Strat from 1964 in Greenburst is a genius. It is beyond cool.

Bonamassa says he watched Michael Lemmo demo the Strat for Norman’s Rare Guitars and called the shop immediately. He was coming down. And it was love at first sight.

But it’s not just the finish that makes it special. This Strat was equipped with the hallowed ‘gray bottom’ pickups, and that made it a bona fide tone machine.

“The ‘gray bottoms’ have a little more high output – they have a punchier sound to them,” says Bonamassa. “[They] are indicative of the transitional logo ’64, ‘65s, and even into ’66, early ’67 Strats right before the Hendrix era.”

These Seymour Duncan replicas are wound to the exact same spec and, ceteris paribus, will sound exactly the same as Bonamassa’s Greenburst. They have period-correct wiring, staggered Alnico V magnets. There are of course some signature details.

The grey bottoms of these signature pickups are pad printed with Joe Bonamassa’s John Hancock. If you are among the first 500 to grab a set, you’ll find them in limited edition packaging, inside which will be a certificate of authenticity signed by Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan. And you might just have the hottest Strat mod of the year.

If you’ve got a Strat – or a Strat-style guitar – whose tone could use a gloss-up. The Seymour Duncan Greenburst set could be it. It’s priced $375 and available now. Bonamassa says you will hear the difference.

“When you play, you feel there’s a weight and a sustain underneath the strings, which doesn’t always happen, especially if you’re pretty clean,” he says. “Sometimes if they overwind a Strat pickup if they they lose the clarity, but you get the power. The ’64, ’65, ’66, those tend to have a nice combination [of clarity and power].”

For more details, head over to the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop.

It’s safe to say that music’s ability to uplift and bolster the human spirit is the reason why we’re all music lovers. However, in reality, there’s nothing that every real music fan loves more than a toe-curling tale of crushing defeat…

And the latest in a long and endless line of rock ‘n’ roll gone wrongs comes from an unexpected source. It seems that even the guitar greatness of Joe Bonamassa has strayed wide of its target in times gone by.

Speaking exclusively to Guitar Player, the guitar legend was quizzed for career highs though soon – perhaps inevitably – the conversation turned to the altogether much more enjoyable subject of career lows…

But first, let’s indulge the great man’s genius. Best gigs, then…

“The obvious one would be the Royal Albert Hall in 2009 with Eric Clapton,” Bonamassa begins. “That one was good – it was my bar mitzvah. But the absolute best performance I ever gave, in my humble opinion, was the first time we played Red Rocks in 2014. The weather was perfect – it was 80 degrees, and no wind. It was a golden era and a perfect storm. And luckily, we filmed it.

“Going back to the Albert Hall, I learned something very important during that first show in 2009: You’ve got to play the venue; you can’t let it play you. The first time I did the Albert Hall, it played me. I’ve now performed there 13 times, and I play it.

“So I walked into Red Rocks with a bit of bravado. You can’t walk out all flat-footed, like, ‘Oh, shucks, oh, my... ’ You’ve got to own the place. You’ve got to be like, ‘I belong here.’ We had done some great warm-up shows, so we went in with the wind at our backs.

“Those natural sidewalls sounded so good, and the whole thing just flew by. My left hand flowed. The inertia carried me along.

“It was one of those gigs that you want to bottle. Everything just worked – it was like an out-of-body experience… We’ve done 10 years in a row, and we’re going back this year.”

OK. Get to the good stuff. And the worst?

Following the release of Bonamassa's first solo record, A New Day Yesterday, he was booked onto a Jethro Tull summer tour, being encouraged to play the title track – a Tull cover – to packed houses by none other than the band's Ian Anderson and Martin Barre.

However, after the show's wrap-up, Bonamassa found himself rather left to his own devices…

"We had three weeks of shows booked on our own, which meant we went from playing full places to not-so-full places. We showed up at this place in Memphis called Beale Street Live…

“The ticket price was $12, but we were getting 100 percent of the door, so it was a good deal. Our showtime was 8:30, no opening act. I was backstage and I said, ‘It’s kind of quiet out there.’ Time to go on came around, and I swear, there were five people in the club: me, the bass player, the drummer, the bartender and the guy driving the van. We grossed zero dollars.

“There’s nothing more deflating and Spinal Tap than going to one of the epicenters of the blues and drawing zero people. Not a single person paid, no one came in.

“We ended up working on a couple of things arrangement-wise, so it was like a rehearsal. This went on for 45 minutes. Not even the bartender was watching us. It was ridiculous.

“I think I got a Diet Coke out of it, and that was it. It was the worst."

So remember. The next time your E-string snaps mid-solo and your van gets nicked mid-gig, Red Rocks and Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall are right around the corner.

Blues guitar superstar Joe Bonamassa and former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar have joined forces for a new single, Fortune Teller Blues.

The track was produced by Kevin ‘The Caveman’ Shirley and features Bonamassa’s playing an Ovation acoustic throughout. That’s right, no Principal Skinner, no Amos. And that acoustic? It was through an overdriven guitar amp.

Unorthodox, yes, but Shirley says that Bonamassa was in a particularly “gritty mood” during the recording, and maybe that’s just the kind of approach you need when you’ve got built up all that raw energy.

Fortune Teller Blues was the brainchild of Hagar. He sent the idea to Bonamassa and he and Shirley got to work.

“Sammy sent us this very rough idea of a blues song while Joe and I were in a studio in Greece, and we crafted a raw, edgy blues version to go with it,” says Shirley. “At times, it carries a haunting energy, and at others, it evokes the spirit of the New Orleans French Quarter.

“Joe was in a particularly gritty mood and played the entire track on an Ovation acoustic guitar plugged into an overdriven amplifier, producing a chaotic, heavy, and almost eerie sound.”

There was no sign this was coming. Hagar, Bonamassa and Shirley kept this one close to the chest. There is also no word whether this might be the start of a bigger collaboration or a one-off. “Holy shit, the thing came out good... the track is a monster!” says Hagar. Hagar sounds like he is up for it. Watch this space.

Bonamassa is, as ever, a busy man. He will perform at the Grammy Awards Ceremony on Sunday 2nd February, an event that will help raise funds for the relief effort following the Los Angeles wildfires. Bonamassa had to evacuate his Nerdville home in the Hollywood Hills, as the fires drew close, but was able to return soon after.

He has been spending his time holed up in Nashville’s Curb Studios as Eric Gales tracks his new album.

Bonamassa and Josh Smith produced Gales’ 2022 studio album, Crown. But he’ll be soon clocking up the road miles as he tours the US from 16 February, hitting Europe on 21 April. See Joe Bonamassa for full dates and ticket details.

You can check out the video for Fortune Teller Blues above and stream it here.

What is it?

The Joe Bonamassa 1955 Les Paul Standard is the latest collaboration between the bluesman/guitar obsessive and Epiphone, following the 1959 'Lazarus' Les Paul, three-pickup 1963 SG Custom, and 1962 ES-335. If you’re looking for a Les Paul that’s both affordable and slightly different, this new Epiphone –– at least on paper –– certainly ticks the right boxes.

It’s based on a custom-colour ‘brown’ mid-fifties spec ‘Paul that Joe Bonamassa came across back in 2016 and thanks to detective work by Gibson turns out to have been – possibly – one of five custom colour Les Pauls that were made for the 1955 NAMM show.

Gibson’s ledger gives the ‘brown’ a name: Copper Iridescent, that certainly on this Epiphone repro is a dark copper metallic, which almost flip-flops in different lighting. It’s certainly a welcome change from a typical Gold Top but it’s also about a lot more than just this unusual paint job.

Specs

Price: $849/£799
Made: China
Type: Single-cutaway, solidbody electric
Body: Mahogany with bound carved maple top
Neck: Mahogany, ‘Custom '59 Rounded C’ profile, glued-in
Fingerboard: Cream bound laurel, pearloid trapezoid inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
Scale length: 24.75”/629mm
Nut/width: Graph Tech/43.1mm
Frets: 22, medium jumbo
Hardware: Epiphone LockTone tune-o-matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece, Epiphone Deluxe vintage-style tuners w/ keystone buttons – chrome/nickel plated
String spacing at bridge: 51mm
Electrics: 2x Epiphone P-90 PRO soapbar single coils, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, volume and tone for each pickup
Weight (lb/kg): 8.71/3.96
Options: Epiphone Les Paul Special (£489), Gibson Les Paul Standard 50s P-90 Gold Top (£2,649)
Left-handed options: Not this model
Finish options: Copper Iridescent metallic (as reviewed) – all gloss
Case: Epiphone hard case
Contact: Epiphone

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Despite the 1955 aim, this all-gloss finish makes no attempt to look aged, and price-wise sits pretty much in the middle of the Epiphone range. Currently it’s the only carved-top Epi Les Paul with P-90s, too.

The build quality, however, is rather good - like the cleanly jointed two-piece back and the nicely scraped cream binding but above all, the fundamentals aren’t forgotten. At 8.71lb/3.95kg, it’s a great weight for an all-solid Les Paul and although the bridge sits a little high, and with it the bridge pickup, neither ruins the fun.

Unlike Gibson, the fretting is more conventional too with the wire sitting over the fingerboard binding and although the ‘board itself is laurel – which doesn’t always get the best rep – our sample is a very rosewood-like deep brown.

Hardware is standard Epiphone style, but both the tune-o-matic bridge and stud tailpiece stay in place when you go to re-string, hence their LockTone name, while the tuners are really quite vintage in style with push-in grommets on the headstock. Another nod to modernism is the Graph Tech – presumably Tusq – nut which is perfectly well shaped.

Yes, some rather sharp edges to the control knobs and the pickguard –– the latter a little ill-fitting around the bridge pickup – are a reminder of the origin and low cost. But even then those knobs appear to have been painted underneath to match the top colour which is another nice detail.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★★

The quoted ‘Custom '59 Rounded C’ neck profile falls into the ‘big’ category and dimensionally it’s very close to Gibson’s “50s Vintage” profile although comparing the two, the Epiphone is a little less deep in upper positions and has slightly less-full shoulders that many will prefer.

And while the fret tops could do with a little more smoothing, likewise the ends, the set-up is good; it ships with .10s and once the strings are stretched and everything's settled in, tuning stability is solid. No complaints here.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

As mentioned P-90s aren’t common on Epiphone (nor Gibson) Les Pauls but, like the finish, the P-90 PROs here prove to be another calling card - not least that although we have the standard individual volume and tone control setup, the circuit is actually wired vintage-style, as it would have been back in the day, not modern-style.

So what? Well with the four controls full up there’s no difference between the two and the Epiphone’s voice has a raw edge and pokey midrange at bridge with a full thicker voice at neck; combined there’s both depth and clarity: three strong sounds.

Compared to a contemporary Gibson Les Paul Classic and ‘50s Standard (both with Burstbucker 1 and 2 humbuckers) and even a real 1957 Les Paul Junior with its ferocious dog-ear P-90, the Epiphone holds its own.

The vintage wiring comes into its own as you pull back the controls: the volumes retain the single coil clarity as you pull them back while the tone controls thin the sound a little before the usual high-end roll-off. It might take a little adjustment over a modern-wired guitar but the usable tonal range is definitely increased.

Verdict

If you’re after full-fat creamy tones from your Les Paul then this might not be first choice.

Instead, these soapbar single coils – not least with the vintage wiring – create a much more nuanced instrument with sparkle and bite that’ll appeal to any player referencing the fifties and sixties in their sound choices: cool jazz to feisty garage rock, it’s got you covered.

Combine that sonic flexibility with a good weight, very good neck shape and stable tuning – and let’s not forget the unique colour! – and I’m wondering where the catch is. Forget the name on the headstock, at this price this Les Paul is a steal.

MusicRadar verdict: With its unique finish and rare-bird soapbar single coils this 1955-style Les Paul is a whole lotta vintage-style guitar for £1.8k less than the Gibson equivalent. ‘Nuff said.

Also try

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• Epiphone Joe Bonamassa ‘Lazarus’ 1959 Les Paul Standard review

Joe Bonamassa has returned to Nerdville West, his home in the Hollywood Hills, after being forced to evacuate as the LA wildfires closed in.

The blues guitar superstar posted an updated on his Instagram page, thanking fans for their support, and extending his sympathies to those who have lost their homes in the fire.

At least 10 people have died in the disaster. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed. Many of those left standing have no power and Bonamassa’s is one of them.

“As you can see, I am back here,” says Bonamassa. “There is still no power but we have survived, and thank you to the LA Fire Department for doing the due diligence. There was fires in Studio City, Runyon [Canyon], everything. That’s very close and could easily have made it here and in not a long period of time.”

Nerdville has been threatened by fire before. In a 2024 Reverb documentary, Bonamassa said he had a call in the early hours of the morning informing him that his home escaped a close call.

“I was up in Oakland, we’d just started a tour,” said Bonamassa. “That night I get a call at 2am from my neighbour. He [sent] a video going, ‘Don’t worry, I got you, the fire department’s here.’ “It was during the windy season and the dry season, where that shit could’ve swept right up the side and took the whole thing out.”

Nerdville is home to some of the rarest vintage acoustic and electric guitars and guitar amps in the world. It is filled with vintage guitar ephemera.

This gear obsessive’s Xanadu has become a fixture of guitar culture, and in sharing the stories behind some of the most prized instruments in his collection, Bonamassa has taught us all a lot about the history of electric guitar and its evolution.

Furthermore, his Nerdville collection has influenced the design of the guitars we play today. It has become a launching pad for new vintage-inspired guitars. His long-standing collaboration with Epiphone in particular bringing us affordable versions of holy grail Gibson guitars such as his Lazarus 1959 Les Paul Standard and a replica of his 1955 Copper Iridescent Les Paul Standard – a super-rare finish that was originally produced for the 1955 NAMM show.

Most recently, Bonamassa and the luthiers at Martin’s Nazareth facility joined forces for an exacting replica of his 1941 000-45, with a Brazilian rosewood version of the pre-War acoustic guitar in the works.

That is a special guitar in Bonamassa’s collection. His purchase of it helped a woman keep her home.

“I don’t collect guitars, I collect stories,” said Bonamassa. “I don’t collect instruments because I want a deal on them. I want to collect instruments because I want to help a family out of financial trouble, and they have this one item that could be sold for lots of money... It was the last thing of value that she had, so it saved her house, and I got a wonderful guitar and a hell of a story.”

It is a measure of how fast-moving the situation is in LA that it was only yesterday that Bonamassa posted that the evacuation of Nerdville was underway, admitting that the fate of his home and collection was out of his hands.

“A very hard place to be as a curator,” he wrote. “It’s my lifetime of work. I knew this day would come eventually but just not today. So far so good tonight but the situation is very fluid. A major thanks to the firefighters and first responders for giving it their all these past few days. Stay safe Los Angeles.”

Bonamassa describes the past 48 hours as “unprecedented and unbelievable” and said his sympathies lie with those who have been less fortunate and have lost everything overnight.

“It’s important to know that, as very grateful as I am to be here there is a lot of people, thousands of people right now that have lost their homes and perspective is everything in life,” continued Bonamassa. “My heart really goes out to the people that have lost everything in the past two days – because this has an been unprecedented and unbelievable 48 hours. But thank you for the support. I will keep you updated. We are on 24-hour watch here at Nerdville. No looters. No nothing. Don’t even try.”

Joe Bonamassa and Martin are working on another super high-end acoustic guitar, and this one really is a holy grail, with the blues guitar superstar teasing a 000-45 prototype built with Brazilian rosewood.

Bonamassa was sparing with the details. He didn’t give us much to work with, except a couple of photos on his Instagram account, including a peek inside the soundhole to confirm the model name. “Look out!! Coming in hot! What an honour of a lifetime!!” writes Bonamassa.

From this vantage point, it looks a lot like his latest signature guitar with the Nazareth, PA brand, the replica of his 1941 000-45 that was unveiled in November. Again, that looks like Adirondack spruce on the top. There is the faux tortoiseshell pickguard, and a generous splash of abalone detail on the purfling, rosette and the “Style 45” snowflake inlays on the fingerboard. The fingerboard and bridge are ebony.

That, too, was what you would call a unicorn. It still had the original ticket on it when Bonamassa handed it to Martin’s luthiers for reference. It also had quite the story behind it, with the sale of this pre-War rarity allowing a woman to keep her home.

“I don’t collect guitars, I collect stories,” said Bonamassa. “I don’t collect instruments because I want a deal on them. I want to collect instruments because I want to help a family out of financial trouble, and they have this one item that could be sold for lots of money... It was the last thing of value that she had, so it saved her house, and I got a wonderful guitar and a hell of a story.”

That 1941 reproduction retailed at a cool $19,999, but collectors will surely have to dig a bit deeper on this forthcoming model. You will find Guatemalan rosewood on Bonamassa's 1941 000-45; swapping that out for Brazilian rosewood – which for many players it is the ultimate acoustic guitar tonewood – is a not going to come cheap. Brazilian rosewood has all but been consigned to the history books, only rarely popping up when a company has found existing stocks of it.

Once upon a time that’s what you found on Martin acoustics, pre-CBS era Fender, and on Gibson fingerboards – both electric guitars and acoustics. Owing to its scarcity, Martin stopped using it in 1969.

In 1992, it was added to CITES and was only allowed to be used if it had already been harvested before then or proven that it had fallen naturally. A lot of paperwork was and is needed to prove it, and players need to be extra careful if considering touring with an instrument with Brazilian rosewood on it.

Will we see this Joe Bonamassa Martin at NAMM 2025? It might be too early for an official launch but if you are visiting Anaheim in January, check out the Martin stand. The prototype might be on show. For more details on Joe Bonamassa’s 1941 000-45, see Martin.

When it was confirmed this week that Rory Gallagher’s famous 1961 Fender Stratocaster will remain in his native Ireland - after being sold at auction for £889,400 - nobody was happier than Joe Bonamassa.

The American guitarist is playing three shows in the Irish city of Cork in July 2025, billed as Rory Gallagher Celebration starring Joe Bonamassa, in which he will be performing Rory’s classic material.

And after it was revealed that Rory’s iconic Strat had been purchased by Live Nation Gaiety Ltd, with the intention of donating it to the National Museum of Ireland, Bonamassa commented: “The best news I have heard all year. Bless them for keeping this guitar in Ireland. Congratulations to the Gallagher family for such an incredible auction. I know it was a heavy and emotional day.”

It is fitting that Bonamassa’s tribute shows are being staged in Cork, which was one of three cities in Ireland where Rory’s performances were recorded for the live album that many consider to be his masterpiece: Irish Tour ’74.

The other two locations where the album was recorded were Dublin and Belfast. And at a time when Northern Ireland was embroiled in The Troubles, it was hugely significant that Rory played in Belfast, when few if any major stars would risk it.

In 1974, an eye-witness report from Melody Maker writer Roy Hollingworth stated: “Belfast got a rock ’n’ roll concert on New Year’s Day in the City’s notorious Ulster Hall. Heading the bill was Rory Gallagher. It was the first public rock concert there since early last summer. The show was sold out weeks before. Sources close to the underground promised the IRA would 'leave it alone.’ Two thousand people were overjoyed as Gallagher took the stage, just 24 hours after the city had witnessed its biggest bomb blast during a night of at least 10 explosions.”

Hollingworth described the concert as a life-affirming experience.

“I’ve never seen anything quite so wonderful, so stirring, so uplifting, so joyous as when Gallagher and the band walked on stage. The whole place erupted, they all stood and they cheered and they yelled, and screamed, and they put their arms up, and they embraced. Then as one unit they put their arms into the air and gave peace signs. It all meant something, it meant more than just rock n’ roll, it was something bigger, something more valid than just that.”

Rory himself had this to say. “I see no reason for not playing Belfast. Kids still live here.”

He downplayed the significance of the location. “Gigs are A, B, and C on a sheet, Belfast may be a B. I saw no reason to think it any different than from A or C.”

But he did acknowledge that this show was of huge importance to the young people of Belfast. “Once it got over the feeling that they were thanking me for coming - once they’d got over that, they were into just the music,” he said. “Then it was darned marvellous. They’re wonderful kids you know.”

It was on stage that Rory Gallagher made his reputation, and Irish Tour ’74 captured him at his peak, backed by Gerry McAvoy on bass, Rod De’Ath on drums and Lou Martin on keyboards.

Irish Tour ’74 includes a titanic, 11-minute version of Walk On Hot Coals, a swinging Tattoo’d Lady, a masterful interpretation of Muddy Waters’ I Wonder Who and a stunning version of Rory’s greatest blues number, A Million Miles Away.

With two million copies sold, Irish Tour ’74 stands as Rory Gallagher’s defining statement.

Ask any touring pro and they’ll tell you the same thing; the road is tough on tube amps, and it is not just the constant moving around and hot and cold environments they are exposed to.

Not all mains power is created equal, and so when travelling across borders – or even from venue to venue in the same city – the power your amp is receiving is not always going to be the same. And if the amps are not receiving the same power each night, they won’t sound the same.

What is a touring guitarist to do? Joe Bonamassa has the answer. He uses a power conditioner made by the Japanese electronics specialist Kikusui to keep his amps running at a consistent 120V, at 60Hz. No more, no less. And he got this idea from the crown prince of high-voltage rock ’n’ roll, AC/DC's Angus Young.

“I watched Angus Young’s rig rundown, and he said, ‘Angus prefers his Marshalls, and he has nine stacks, at 240, at 50 Hz, worldwide. And I said, ‘You know what? That makes so much sense,’” says Bonamassa, himself speaking in a rig rundown, offering American Musical Supply a guided tour of his stage setup. “Because when I would bring this stuff over to Europe, we’d be running at 115, 120, but 50 Hz – such a huge difference in harmonic [content]. And so I bought one, and now we have two because we’ve got to split the rig because we were flaming out a couple of times.”

Before you head over to Electronics-R-Us, take a moment. These Kikusui power conditioners are serious pieces of kit.

“They are also $6,000/$7,000 apiece,” says Bonamassa. “They’re heavy. But when you have something of this magnitude you want to just go to Walgreens and get a power strip.”

And they were not designed for the touring musician. Bonamassa and his team have become acquainted with the people at Kikosui and they were taken aback that their tech was being used onstage. Kikusui had the operating theatre in mind when they made these.

“They’re like, ‘Joe, we’ve heard about guys like yourself and Angus Young, and people like that using them,’” says Bonamassa. “‘You realise these things are designed for hospitals, and MRI machines? We never thought they were going to tour.’”

When you consider that they were designed for clinical settings it is little wonder they are so reliable, capable of generating power and making up a shortfall to ensure the amps get the juice they need to keep JoBo's electric guitar tone on point. “I want 120. I like 120,” says Bonamassa. “It keeps it at 60Hz, at 120. If it is seeing 110 it makes it 120.”

Check out the full rig tour above. There is some great insight into the practicalities of a touring rig, and why he won’t be shelling out mega-bucks for NOS Mullard tubes when a good set of JJ tubes gets the job done. You can subscribe to the American Musical Supply YouTube channel for more.

In other Joe Bonamassa news, the blues guitar superstar has announced a third date to his Rory Gallagher Celebration concerts at the Marquee, in Cork, Ireland. Bonamassa will now play on the 3rd July 2025. He will be playing Gallagher covers all night. You can get your tickets here.

Seymour Duncan and Joe Bonamassa’s collaboration has expanded with the launch of his signature Broadcaster pickups, a pair of single-coils to take the Telecaster in your life back to the 1950 and the birth of the mass-produced electric.

The Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster Collection is modelled on the original pickups from the blues guitar superstar’s vintage original, presenting players – and their guitars – with a time machine tone boost.

Having already developed the Bonnie Stratocaster pickup set, “The Blonde Dot” 1960 PAF humbucker set, the Amos humbucker, Bonamassa and Seymour Duncan has taken it back to the start, to 1950, and a huge evolutionary leap for the guitar.

“The Broadcaster will be turning 75 years old next year and it is just an incredible invention of electric guitar,” he says. “We’re still using it. It’s the same as it’s been for 75 years.”

When he says “we” he really means we. The Broadcaster might have had a name change after clashing with a Gretsch drum set, rebranding as the Telecaster and soon establishing itself as guitar’s most indefatigable workhorse, but the design is still largely unchanged. It’s an archetype, a design that’s sired a million copycats and yet has never been bettered on its own terms.

This copyright row meant that real Broadcasters are thin on the ground.

Fender only managed to ship some 250 of them off the production line before they had to pivot. Initially they improvised, snipping the “Broadcaster” decal off the headstock and selling the guitars anyway, the so-called Nocasters – of which Bonamassa is a huge fan of, even if, or especially because his Nocaster fights back. He has gone as far as to say his '51 Nocaster his is favourite guitar, and that is saying something because has a lot of them.

But finding a real, vintage Broadcaster in the wild? There’s no chance. Souping up your Tele with these might be the next best thing

And as a measure of Bonamassa’s confidence in these 21st-century replica pickups, he demos them in a budget-friendly Squier Telecaster, proving that you can make a cheap electric guitar sound like a great guitar with a relatively cost-effective upgrade (and, let’s be honest, a healthy degree of talent).

Seymour Duncan has used an Alnico II magnet for the neck pickup and Alnico IV at the bridge. In keeping with the spirit of the original Broadcaster’s abandoned release, the first 250 of these will have their steel baseplates signed by Seymour Duncan and Bonamassa, with said baseplates aged to match the look of the originals. They will also be numbered.

Once they are sold out, the Joe Bonamassa 1950 Broadcaster Collection will be built to order by the custom shop and are priced $160 a piece or $310 for a set. For more details, head over to Seymour Duncan.

Joe Bonamassa's release record for signature guitars with Epiphone is the mark of a player who knows great gear – they frequently sell out and punch way about their price points – still wish I'd bought the Lazarus Les Paul I reviewed. But was the best still yet to come? The new Joe Bonamassa 1955 Les Paul Standard that the Gibson Gazette has just showcased suggests that might be the case.

This is based on a rare Les Paul finish, but it's also about the pickups – many of you will already know that early Les Paul's predate the PAF humbucker pickups Gibson would go on to debut. Instead, they featured P-90s. And for some, that's when Gibson's pickups peaked.

"Most people who are real dyed-in-the-wool Gibson people, they'll say behind closed doors, when the internet's not watching, that their favourite pickup is a P-90," he tells the Gibson Gear Guide's Dinesh Lekhraj in a new video above announcing his 12th Epiphone signature model since 2013.

"This year's model is based on two guitars that I own from 1955," adds Joe. "And they just found a third in Copper Iridescent. If you start twisting it, it's like one of those new cars that change colour – it looks brown and then it looks copper. They did a really good job tracking down the original paint colour… they're based on two Copper Iridescent 1955 Les Pauls that I own."

It was a standard Gibson colour at one point, but as Joe has only tracked down three so far, it's certainly not a common one to find in the vintage market nowadays. Though Joe notes he's known as a humbucker player but he owns a lot of P-90 guitars, and often sings their praises Vs PAF examples.

"They clean up really well, " notes Joe as he demonstrates on the new model. "Leslie West did well with them, Charlie Starr does really well with them – Jared James Nichols does really well with them."

"I can already tell you this one sounds better than one of my original '55s," Joe observes after giving the new Epiphone a run-through. That one still has its original flat-wound strings on, admittedly, but as ever he's clearly all-in on this signature guitar.

"It's got the same brown knobs, the brown ones that came with the originals, and the build quality with Epiphone has always impressed me. Because I know this guitar, which is just a random one that happens to be here, feels exactly the same as the prototype and will also feel the same as the thousandth one that comes off the line."

It's also coming in at $849 with a hard case. "I wanted to go back to doing guitars that are under 900 bucks," says Joe. "These are ready to rock and you can rule the world with them. I'm just happy we did a P-90 guitar as it was long overdue."

But it's not the only new Epiphone model he's showcasing – there's a Murphy Lab aged recreation of his famed 1958 Amos Flying V unveiled in the video. It's been 18 months in the making and Joe reveals he's been playing a replica on tour for that time.

"It's every bit as great as something old, except you don't have the liability of bringing out literally a unicorn guitar."

Check out the full video above and find out more at the Gibson Gazette. You can also order the new Epiphone Les Paul at Thomann.

Tom Morello and Joe Bonamassa - two modern-day masters of the guitar. What they have to say about the instrument is usually worth listening to and indeed they’ve each been dispensing some sage advice this week.

First up Tom Morello has been talking about his acoustic folk rock project The Nightwatchman on an edition of the Poltrocast podcast and how singer songwriter-style material can be just as forceful as metal.

"I was always drawn to hard music,” he said. “And first, that was metal, and then it was punk, and then it was hip hop. And it wasn't until, really, my 30s where I discovered those first couple Bob Dylan records and (Bruce) Springsteen's 'Nebraska,' and digging back into Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill and Phil Ocks."

"And I was just like, 'This music is hard as anything, man.' Like, you don't need a wall of Marshall stacks in order to really be dark."

Meanwhile Joe Bonamassa was a guest on the Zak Kuhn Show. The blues maestro was reflecting on the urge that many guitarists have incorporate larger and more elaborate rigs. In his eyes you don’t need tonnes of gear to find the right tone.

"You're gonna sound like you,” he told Kuhn. "You don't have to spend a lot of money. A Peavey Classic 30 will get you home. It doesn't have to be bourgeois."

“I'm the king cork sniffer, I'm telling you that. And I've seen Robben Ford play rented Twins and sound like Robben Ford. You're gonna sound like you. I've also seen him use the Dumble and it sounded amazing. But he also sounds amazing to a rented Twin. He's Robben Ford. And that's really the bottom line."

He then went on to talk about the abundance of online advice when it comes to gear and how for many newer players it may be confusing. "My thing is, don't read…” he insisted. 

“You could read, but don't take as gospel internet information written by people that don't have gigs to play. In my experience, those are the loudest voices and also the most uninformed because the people that don't chime in are actually too busy gigging and figuring it out.”

"And there's no right and wrong," he added. "You do whatever you want, however you want it, when you want. That's the beauty of this all. And it's all subjective."

"If you're happy with your sound, you're happy with your playing, and you're inspired, and you're making music and you're playing - what more to life is then at this point?"

In other words, block out the noise and just listen. To yourself... and your guitar.

Joe Bonamassa recently put Rory Gallagher’s 1959 Esquire through its paces and paid tribute to the late blues guitar icon, calling Gallagher a “working class hero” who whose global appeal was in part down to his authenticity.  

Gallagher, said Bonamassa, looked though he had just clocked off his shift before stepping up onstage. In an interview for Guitarist magazine’s YouTube channel, in which he demoes Gallagher’s 1959 Tele-modded Fender Esquire, Bonamassa explained why Gallagher in particular was a hero to him as a kid growing up in a blue-collar enclave of Long Island. 

“Here was this guy with long hair and a flannel shirt, and looked as if he just came out of an auto factory, and playing some some of the most gutbucket blues and rock you’d ever heard,” says Bonamassa. “I go, ‘Well, I can relate to that, because people around here look like that.’ 

“Everybody can relate to a working class hero, and that’s what he was until the day he died. He was that guy. And that kind of honesty and authenticity, you hear it in the music.”

A consignment of Gallagher’s electric guitars and tube amps is headed to auction in October. One of which will be the black Esquire Bonamassa plays in this video. As he explains, it would not have started of black. It would have originally only have been fitted with one pickup. And if it had, there is a chance that it might have been more valuable on the vintage market.

But no one knew then that an Esquire – ostensibly a Fender Telecaster with a single bridge pickup, though with a body routed for a second pickup at the neck position – would end up being worth a fortune in 2024, least of all Gallagher and his fellow pros who saw these guitars for what they were – for what they are, namely tools for doing a job.

“If everybody in the ‘70s knew these guitars were going to be five figures or more, if you had a straight ’59 Esquire, you’d be looking at $20,000, $25,000 guitar,” says Bonamassa. “If everybody knew that when people were buying them in the ‘70s for $100 or £200, whatever he bought this for, nobody would modify them. These were tools. I wanna black guitar? Okay, paint it black. I want a pickup in front? Put a pickup in the front. These weren’t valuable collectibles.”

Gallagher’s Esquire most likely started out blonde, was refinished in black, with a single-coil pickup added to the neck position. That might make it player-grade but the fact it was owned and played by Gallagher adds a certain artist provenance that would inflate its value.

It certainly makes it cooler. Bonamassa is so reverential with it that he is playing slide. Why slide? Well, Bonamassa doesn’t want to tread too heavily on this; it is still strung with Gallagher’s original electric guitar strings. “I don’t want want to mess with the DNA before the sale,” he says.

Gallagher might be most famous for his ’61 Stratocaster, a guitar that has been his number one since he acquired it in 1963. That, too, is up for auction. That similarly has been modified. It wears the scars of a decades of use. As for the Esquire, it’s in decent condition. The new owner will have a big decision to make. Do they restring it? Bonamassa says its bridge pickup might do with being rewound.

“It’s up to the buyer if they want to keep Rory’s strings on it, or get [the pickup] rewound, or get it back up and playing,” he says. “I think the worst case scenario is just hang it on the wall and brag to your rich buddies that you bought it. Y’know, these things are tools and they should make music again, and I think a good part of this collection you’ll see back out there making music.”

Joe Bonamassa has criticised the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame’s belated acknowledgement of John Mayall.

The so-called godfather of the British blues passed away two weeks ago at the age of 90. But the Hall Of Fame only got around to inducted him just months before he died and only then via the ‘Musical Influence Award’, rather than the main (and more prestigious) ‘Performer’ category.

In an interview on the Artists On Record podcast, JoBo said that whilst he was glad to see Mayall finally receive recognition for his huge contribution, it was a case of too little, too late."I have been screaming about this for as long as people are willing to listen,” he said. “One of the biggest snubs at the Rock N’ Hall of Fame is that John Mayall is not a member... I am sad and slightly pissed off that he didn't live to see it because he deserved to go in decades ago. Same with Alexis Korner – these are first, second ballot people.”

"There's a lot of omissions that I think they need to start reconciling quickly, because you cannot wait for them all to die to then go, 'Well, we're gonna put you in posthumously.' It means something. It would have meant something to John to get that statue." 

He added that: "There's a lot of people that are now ageing out or becoming in their late '70s and '80s that really should have been in decades ago. They need to get them in because it's the right thing to do for the artist."

It’s not the first time the Hall Of Fame has been criticised in recent months. Back in May Metallica’s James Hetfield called Lemmy’s absence from the Hall a “disrespect to rock”. 

Last year Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden – who have been eligible for 20 years and still haven’t been inducted – said he didn’t want the honour any more: “Because we're not dead yet! Some people feel almost actively threatened by metal. Not by the nature of the music. But by the fact that it doesn't conform to their worldview of what pop music should be, which is: pop music is disposable, darling. Well, we don't make disposable pop music."

It must be said that some of this year’s inductees do somewhat stretch the definition of the word ‘rock’. Yes, there’s Ozzy Osbourne and Peter Frampton. But also on the list are Kool And The Gang, A Tribe Called Quest and, er, Cher.

We enjoy living vicariously through Joe Bonamassa – and we appreciate how he shares the history and details of the vintage gear he buys with fans. It's not gear most of us will ever be able to afford anyway, but it seems there are some potential customers out there who think Joe is buying guitars and amps at the expense of their access. 

"There’s a contingent of people who somehow think I’m depriving the world and other players of gear," he told Total Guitar in an interview in support of his excellent fifth album with Black Country Communion, noting how he also sees his posts on 

vintage purchases as celebrating the history of gears too. "I always use the logic, ‘Do I get advantages that other collectors don’t because people want to sell sh*t to me? Absolutely!’ But I also just bought a 1959 Les Paul from a f*ckin’ music store in Boston. Anybody could have walked in and bought it.

“There are thousands and thousands of guitars out there. Anything in my collection, with the exception of maybe 20 pieces, you could source from somewhere else. You want a Blackguard? There’s plenty of them. You want a sunburst Les Paul? There’s plenty of them. You want a 335 in a blonde finish. There’s not so many of those, but if you want them in sunburst, there’s a lot out there.”

Joe doesn't even hoard every guitar we thought was exclusively in his collection anyway – he's happy to share ownership of some with his friend Charlie Daughty, the man who runs the popular Les Paul and Fender forums. Including recently aquistion; a 1954 Telecaster with a factory-installed Paul Bigsby pickup. 

“I haven’t even seen that guitar in person at this stage," Joe reveals. "It’s at my friend Charlie Daughty’s house in Houston. He just picked it up and said it’s f*ckin’ great! Charlie and I split a few guitars here and there. It eases the pain and suffering slightly, we own them jointly.

These include some notable instruments we've seen in Joe's hands. 

“He’s got the green Strat now, plus ['59 Les Paul] Lazarus and a few other things. It’s usually like, ‘I’ll send you this, I’ll send you that, blah blah!’"

Joe recently purchased another '59 Les Paul too, bringing his total to eight. But that doesn't include examples from the years either side.

“They shipped 536 or 539 in 1959," explains Joe regarding the total Gibson made that could be in circulation still. "Les Paul Standards from 1958 were split between Goldtops and Bursts. So the rarest variant is the ’58 Burst, because they were only made for half the year. I have a 1960 SG Les Paul Standard and the serial number is lower than one of my late-’60s sunbursts one.

“They were shipping them tangentially as they would roll out," adds Joe. "There are approximately 1,700 guitars shipping between 1958 and 1960. So they’re not incredibly rare, just incredibly sought-after. I own 16 ’bursts in total, from 1958 to 1960, and I own eight 1959s.”

And if he's adding any more during his regular 'guitar safaris', we'll be happy to virtually go along for the ride. 

Read the full interview at Guitar World. Black Country Communion V is out now. 

We all know that the market for vintage guitar gear has been running hot for some time now. It is nigh-on impossible for new entrants to the market to find an affordable electric guitar from Fender or Gibson’s golden era, but Joe Bonamassa says it could get tougher, and it would only takes a couple of people to drive up the prices on any given model to the region of “crazy” money.

When it comes to the vintage holy grail of holy grails, a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, Bonamassa says it is quite possible that someone with “unlimited money and unlimited ego” could spend more than a million dollars an a Burst. 

Conversely, if he were to have a brainwave, and suddenly decide to purge his collection of Fender Tweed guitar amps – of which he owns some 130 – it could “tank” the market

Bonamassa was speaking to online gear retail giant Reverb, whom he recently welcomed into his Nerdville home, in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, for a video interview and a tour of his extensive gear collection. 

It is essential viewing for many reasons, not least of which is that Bonamassa’s compulsion to collect in the first place is driven by a desire to preserve these instruments – and to tell their story – and the blues guitar superstar is an excellent storyteller. As he sees it, he collects stories; that’s his gear collecting philosophy, and he shared some of the tales about his career and the instruments he has collected on the way. 

“I find stuff from the original owners,” he says. “That’s really what I’ve been doing, waiting around, and these families. Picks up Gold Top] This came to me recently, from Massachusetts. The father inherited it, and it was the father and the two grandsons, Grandpa Bob’s Les Paul. That’s the kind of stuff I’m into, buying uncirculated things.”

These kinds of guitars don’t come up for sale everyday, and that is part of the attraction. Bonamassa can at least promise sellers that they’ll be going to a good home. They might even see it onstage at the Royal Albert Hall on in Red Rocks Colorado, something that would have surely tickled the original owners.

“People want to know that their family heirloom is going into a house where it will be appreciated, loved and played,” he says. “I tick those boxes. I appreciate it, I love it, and I play it. And they want to know that it is not just going to go [to] some dealer’s booth, sold 15 times. It has always been about the stories for me. I’ve always bought the story.”

Case in point: the Bosco ‘Burst, a ‘1959 Les Paul Standard which Bonamassa picked up in Melbourne, FL. It hadn’t been played in 40 years. He draws our attention to the pickguard. It had been retro-fitted with a pickholder some 60 years ago. “I’m not going to be the one to take it off,” says Bonamassa. Al Bosco, its original owner, left quite the impression, putting the squeeze on Bonamassa for a few more bucks, then relenting and spending the afternoon telling him stories. 

It’s like the guitar was just the excuse for a conversation. Bosco, however, was disappointed. He thought it was a million dollar guitar. Not yet it isn’t, said Bonamassa. That day could be coming.

“Probably,” says Bonamassa. “Because when you have unlimited money and unlimited ego, that makes for a dangerous combination. The problem starts if somebody pops on something big like that – are all of these worth a million dollars!? Is that the new baseline? No. It’s only worth what someone’s willing to pay for it, and it only takes a couple of drivers to drive up the market to the point where, ‘Oh, stuff is crazy now.’”

That is where the vintage market is now, and Bonamassa recognises that he, too, could distort it – especially if he decided to unload his amp collection. He has 130 of them. Should he set up a store on Reverb, he wouldn’t be able to shift them all the and the price of them would bomb

“I know, if I decided one day, I got mad, pissed off, and thought, ‘Fuck it! All these got to go.’ Call you up at Reverb, ‘Jim, I want my own store, concierge service, with Prosecco not Champagne, cheap shit at the front, we’ll do a big unveiling and I’m going to sell 130 Tweed amps,” he says. “That’s all my position in New York, Nashville, here, it’s about 130… Okay, we’ll sell 25 per cent in a day, and then they’ll sit. I know, what I’m holding at this stage in my life, at any point I could tank that market, or I could [significantly] affect it.”

It is a similar story with the Les Pauls, and it tells us a lot about the dynamics shaping the market for vintage instruments. Bonamassa could put 15 on them on the market, all at the same time. “We’ll sell five of them and then, the next thing you know, it becomes a non-event,” he says. “It’s the perception of scarcity that drives the market, not the actual scarcity.”

Bonamassa has not had much difficulty in finding vintage Fender Tweed amps in good condition. Not until recently. What does this tell us about the market? Well, perhaps there are fewer for sale right now. What it definitely tells Bonamassa is that he has to reinsure his stockpile of vintage Deluxes and Vibroluxes. 

“I have them insured for five grand, which at the time was all the money,” he says, “especially a mint one. Now they’re 12-and-a-half.”

One thing Bonamassa won’t be selling any time soon, maybe ever, is his house. Even if he wanted to, Nerdville would be a hard sell for anyone but a guitar nut. 

“It’s a lesson in what not to do with homes,” Bonamassa says. “I mean this place is unsellable. Imagine if you were a real estate person representing this house… Imagine walking in here with your wife, going, ‘Honey, there’s this cool house on the hill in Laurel Canyon. We should go looking at it.’ And the first thing you see, cemented into the ground, is ‘Driveway to Nerdville.’ It’a non-starter! No one is buying this house.”

Check out the full video above. Joe Bonamassa is of course on the road, presently in Brasil, because if he is not on the road he is in the studio, and if he can’t be found there he’ll be somewhere buying a guitar. Where does he find the time? 

You can find his upcoming dates at Joe Bonamassa, His new album with all-star rock supergroup Black Country Communion is titled V and it is out now. His new live album, Live At The Hollywood Bowl With Orchestra, is out today via J&R Adventures.

By the time his Sloe Gin album was released in the summer of 2007, Joe Bonamassa was already well on his way to becoming the undisputed master of 21st century blues rock and heir to the '60s blues boom throne. With five solo studio albums already tucked neatly under his belt – including a smattering of No.1s on the Billboard Blues chart – the NYC-born bluesman's talents were being heralded the world over.

Sloe Gin’s 11 tracks are a heady mix of out-and-out blues-rock stompers and folk-tinged acoustic cuts. Sitting at the record’s epicentre is the title track: eight-plus minutes of down-and-out angst, haunting organ and some of the greatest heartfelt soloing you’ll hear this side of ol’ ‘Slowhand’ Clapton himself.

While the album has gone on to be one of Bonamassa’s best-loved and best-selling platters, Sloe Gin as a song has taken on a life of its own and is still the highlight of his jaw-dropping live sets. “It’s a close call between that one, The Ballad Of John Henry and a few other songs,” pondered Joe when writer Matt Frost caught up with him for Total Guitar back in 2011 on a rare day off, “but I think Sloe Gin is probably my biggest song!”

In the 11 years since then, he's notched up even more contenders in his ever-expanding discography. But Slow Gin has some curious origins; the track was penned by Bob Ezrin and Michael Kamen and first recorded in 1978 by Rocky Horror Picture Show star and English actor extraordinaire Tim Curry, who was dabbling with a semi-successful musical career at the time. It was Bonamassa’s producer, Kevin Shirley, who first played the song to Joe.

“[Kevin] was like, ‘If we do this correctly, I think this could be one of the best blues songs ever!’” Bonamassa revealed. “I listened to it and thought it was great. Tim’s playing that role of this destitute, down-on-his-luck, I’m-down-to-my- last-swig-of-sloe-gin kind of character. When I first heard it, I was really stricken by the guitar playing, and I was really taken by the whole vibe of it.”

Sloe Gin was recorded at the Document Room Studios in Malibu, and the first version featured vocalist Doug Henthorn, the singer on Joe’s version of Tea For One. This early cut remained faithful to the lyrical expletives present in Curry’s original.

“The original words to the original song were: ‘I’m so fucking lonely!’” explained Joe. “And we played [the Henthorn version] to a few people and the two comments were: (a), ‘You know, you’re a nice guy… I dunno if you can get away with that!’ and (b), ‘This seems well within your range – why don’t you sing it?’ So I was like, ‘OK’. We went back into the studio and I just changed the lyric to: ‘I’m so damn lonely’.”

Guitar-wise, Bonamassa was using a ’59 reissue Les Paul. A guitar he would later own more than one original example of. As he explained: “It predates my signature model, but it’s the one we based it on. It’s got a Bigsby on it and we used all the contours and neck shape for the signature, although it’s an Iced Tea Sunburst. 

Then I used my Two-Rock Custom Signature Reverb, the Marshall Silver Jubilee and a small pedalboard with, like, a DD-3 delay, a wah and maybe a TC chorus box, and EV [Electro-Voice] speakers. The real magic, that really big tone where it sounds like it’s distorted but it’s really clean and clear? That’s the EVs… The EVs give you that feeling.”

Joe and co were able to lay down the track in just a couple of days as well. “The first section with the first solo, the verses and the bridge section were all done on a single day,” explained Joe. “Then, on the second day, we went in and decided to make this long, big solo at the end after the siren. ”

When it came to the solos on the track, Bonamassa was his usual improvisational self. “I very rarely work out parts in advance,” he told Total Guitar. “My very first take on things is usually the best and I’ve always kind of stuck to that. And the solos were done live… But the sort of Jimmy Page bits, those were overdubbed. I had the hardest time doing those. For some reason, I couldn’t get the timing. I was hearing it the way Jimmy Page would play them and I couldn’t get it, but finally I got there.”

Joe first played Sloe Gin to an audience back in early 2007 and it’s formed the key part of his live shows ever since. “The first time we played it was in Amarillo, Texas, and it got a standing ovation!” explains Bonamassa. “The record hadn’t been released and only a very few people had heard it. But when Rick [Melick], my keyboard player, went into it, we got applause like they’d heard the song! It’s just one of those familiar-sounding riffs.”

So did Mr Bonamassa have any tips for players eager to tackle his killer take on Sloe Gin? “The key is in the tone,” he advised. “The sound has to be clear. You need to resist that temptation to make it more distorted, especially on the end solo. If you play it cleaner, it’ll come across a lot better. The other thing is that I switch positions a lot from low positions to high positions and back… So it really teaches you how to find the octaves pretty quick. But man, it’s pretty simple; it’s not rocket science or anything!” 

Yeah, whatever you say, Joe!

• Joe Bonamassa: the 10 guitarists that blew my mind

Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom: What is it?

Epiphone's long-running collaboration with blues virtuoso Joe Bonamassa has proved to be one of the most popular and lucrative in the company's history, and it doesn't look like they'll be stopping anytime soon – and let's face it, Joe isn't going to run out of guitars to give an affordable Epi makeover. The team's latest project is a faithful recreation of Joe's beloved – and rather rare – 1963 Gibson SG Custom, and it might just be the best-looking model to date. 

When you think of SG Customs, especially models from this era, you'll typically think of the brilliant white finish made famous by the likes of Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Jimi Hendrix, but Joe's '63 model is a little different. Specially ordered by the original owner in factory cherry red, this guitar is truly unique and was used throughout the decade with his band, The Casuals. Joe has the receipts and photos to prove it. 

Dressed in the unusual dark cherry red finish, this brand-new Epiphone stays pretty true to the original vintage guitar while managing to keep the price down. Featuring a beautifully contoured mahogany body, smooth mahogany neck, a trio of humbuckers, gold Maestro Vibrola and waffleback tuners, and even a unique neck heel joint, this guitar is as close as you'll get to Joe's actual guitar without parting with a colossal $50,000. 

Like other Bonamassa models, this SG comes with a custom hardshell case with a goldenrod plush interior and Joe's exterior graphics. You'll also find a certificate of authenticity in the case's pocket.

Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom: Performance and verdict

Design and playability

Okay, we need to first address just how good this guitar looks in person. Yes, it's pretty impressive in photographs, but lifting the guitar out of its appropriately retro case, we were struck by its beauty. 

The dark hue of the body's red finish is less cherry and more oxblood, which really makes the contours of the devilish SG pop. The gilded Epiphone-branded Maestro Vibrola and stack of humbuckers, the stark white pickguard, and vintage top hat controls with gold reflectors all add up to one of the best-looking Epiphone guitars we've ever seen. 

If we were to have one critic of Epiphone's aesthetic choices, it would be the mismatched binding of the headstock and neck. Joe's original model is over 60 years old, and therefore, the nitrocellulose lacquer has yellowed, turning the binding around the headstock a lovely shade of amber. To emulate this, Epiphone has opted for two different binding colours – piercing white on the neck and orange for the headstock.

Now, don't get us wrong, we totally understand this decision, but as the rest of the guitar hasn't been artificially aged, it comes off looking a little out of place, in our opinion. 

Moving on to the playability, and boy, does this SG feel good! Billed as a Slim Taper C profile, the neck here is immensely comfortable. Comparing it to our Gibson SG Standard and Gibson '61 Special, we'd say this Epiphone variant is actually slimmer than both – especially at the nut – and is more uniform as you progress to the dusty end. 

The nut width is ever so slightly narrower, coming in at 1.692", while the Standard is marginally wider at 1.694" and the Special at 1.695". Of course, this isn't exactly a massive difference on paper, but you can certainly feel the discrepancy in your hand. 

The fretwork is spot on, too. We've complained in the past that Epiphone guitars are leaving the factory with dull and scratchy frets, but in the case of this SG Custom, the frets are brilliantly polished and very well-dressed. We encountered absolutely no set-up problems at all. In fact, the guitar was perfectly playable straight out of the box – as you'd expect when you are paying £1,499 for an electric guitar. 

We are aware that some players aren't fans of the three-pickup design, claiming it makes the 

guitar too difficult to play. We'd have to agree that the placement of the pickups does make picking a little awkward, but after half an hour of playing, we naturally adjusted our technique, and it really wasn't a problem. 

Tones

With three pickups taking up so much real estate at the centre of this guitar, you'd expect this SG to produce a rather impressive noise – and we're happy to announce it does not disappoint. 

Loaded with a combination of Epiphone's ProBucker 2 in the neck and middle and the hotter ProBucker 3 in the bridge, this guitar sounds exactly as you'd expect. The Alnico II humbuckers are warm, open and emotive. We particularly liked the output of the bridge pickup, which pushed our Vox AC30 nicely into a bluesy breakup. 

It's worth noting that this SG Custom isn't wired like a true vintage example. Cycling through the options on the three-way toggle and you'll instantly notice that this setup is way more usable and fiercely versatile. 

With the selector down, you have the bridge pickup on its own, which is sharp, bright and assertive. In the middle, you gain access to the bridge and middle combined in phase. This tone has a little more body and mids, sounding fuller and rounder. As you'd expect, with the selector up, you get just neck on its own, which sounds mellow and fat. 

Final thoughts

There's no two ways about it, Epiphone are killing it at the moment. From the recently reviewed Kirk Hammett Greeny 1959 Les Paul Standard to the new Dave Grohl DG-335 and now this epic Joe Bonamassa SG Custom, Epiphone are proving that they have what it takes to make a premium guitar that a world-renowned artist would happily play on stage night after night. 

From its impeccable finishing to its stellar range of tones and drop-dead gorgeous styling, this is an absolutely brilliant guitar - there's no question about it. 

Now, we understand the price may put some players off. Yes, it's true, you can buy a Gibson SG – albeit a Special – for around this price. But, while it will have Gibson on the headstock, you won't be getting these specs – you certainly won't get three pickups or a Maestro Vibrola. 

So, if you find yourself pining after a retro-inspired SG Custom that's dripping with vintage mojo and that has some of that Bonamassa magic sprinkled in for good measure, then this is the guitar for you. 

MusicRadar verdict: The Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom is another in a long list of wins for Epiphone – proving they are at the top of their game right now. This guitar is stunning to look at, a joy to play and has the tone to boot. Whether you are a Bonamassa fan or not, we highly urge you to check this guitar out, as it is simply stunning.  

Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom: The web says

"Whether or not you think the price is on the high side, we have to concede that between them Epiphone and Bonamassa have created a stunning-looking guitar that not only makes a powerful visual statement but also covers pretty much any musical base you can think of."
Guitar World

"Epiphone’s Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom is a great guitar that plays and sounds wonderful and looks like a million bucks. Tones are full ”with a cool twanginess” and it richly deserves an Editors' Pick Award"
Guitar Player

Epiphone Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom: Hands-on demos

OfficialEpiphone

Guitar Center

• Origin: China
• Body: 2-piece mahogany with chamfered edges 
• Neck: 1-piece slim-taper mahogany with unusual smooth neck-to-body joint, glued-in
• Scale Length: 629mm (24.75")
• Nut: Graph Tech/43.022mm
• Fingerboard: Single-bound ebony, mother-of-pearl block inlays, 305mm (12") radius
• Frets: 22, medium jumbo
• Hardware: Epiphone LockTone tune-o-matic bridge and Maestro Vibrola vibrato/tailpiece, Kluson waffleback tuners w/'tulip' buttons – gold plated
• Electrics: 2 covered Epiphone ProBuckers (neck and middle), covered Epiphone ProBucker 3 (bridge), 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, volume and tone for each pickup
• Weight (kg/lb): 3.54/7.8
• Finish: Gloss dark Wine Red Polyester
• Contact: Epiphone

Joe Bonamassa might be the hardest working blues guitar player on the planet but he can still make time to satisfy his – and our – scientific curiosity, hosting the ultimate demo video from the comfort of his living room in Nerdville to find out whether a $1,000 rig could be as effective as an all-vintage rig for recreating Jimi Hendrix’s Band Of Gypsys electric guitar tones.

The video segment was shot for the online gear retail giant Reverb, and makes for fascinating viewing. Many of us have put tother a budget Hendrix rig, but the opportunity to hear it side by side with its genuine vintage equivalent is a rare treat. Doubly so when you’ve got Bonamassa playing them.

It wasn’t so long ago that JoBo was pointing the business end of a Dumble Overdrive Special in the general direction of his noisy neighbours. This vintage Band Of Gypsys rig could come in handy should that battle of wits escalate – Bonamassa broke out his 1969 Marshall Super Lead for this Hendrix test run, and it has 100-watts to take your head off.

“This is just a half-stack because, again, we are in my living room and I’d like to hear people post-this video,” he says. “This is a a 1969 Super Lead that I bought from the original owner who went and saw Hendrix at Woodstock, in 1969… I went to his house, and he had one of those Italian bottles of wine and was claiming that Eddie Van Halen stole all of his riffs – it was one of those crazy guitar stories but I got the amps.”

With a little help from guitar effects pedal guru Jeorge Tripps of Way Huge, Bonamassa’s Hendrix signal chain includes a ‘60s Vox wah pedal, a super Tycobrahe Octavia octave-fuzz pedal, an original 1979 Fuzz Face and a Uni-Vibe of similar vintage. Expensive, rare, unicorn stuff. 

“Uni-Vibes, I would buy them as a kid for 400 bucks. Now, they probably add a zero,” says Bonamassa. The wah (which Reverb estimates at $1,500 to $4,500 on the used market) was borrowed. 

The Fender Stratocaster is the model’s own, and it’s a peach. “This guitar, is a 1969, maple-cap, in Blonde,” says Bonamassa. “Hendrix’s was Olympic White, same damn thing, so this a $35,000 to $45,000 guitar.”

The budget version of the Hendrix rig has a more accessible signal chain. This is something you could easily set up on a pedalboard, with all pedals from the Jim Dunlop catalogue, all readily available from most guitar shops. 

There is a Dunlop Jimi Hendrix signature Cry Baby, a Dunlop Octavio octave fuzz in the wedge-style enclosure, Dunlop Jimi Hendrix Fuzz Face (“which is basically the Woodstock one), and an MXR Uni-Vibe clone to round things out and provide that chewy sea-sick modulation that made it sound as though Hendrix was bending air, light and time itself. Accessible, sure, but heady, powerful stuff nonetheless.

Completing the rig we’ve got a Squier Strat, on loan from Bonamassa’s local guitar store, Norman’s Rare Guitars, and a Peavey Classic 30 tube combo – a “great amp,” and also more practical for today’s use, certainly more practical than the Super Lead, which Bonamassa clearly loves but is compelled to warn us against using them in most situations. 

“You would be kicked out of the venue and told not to come back, and your career would be over if you used that,” he says, only half-joking. And with that it was time to play some licks and work the sound level meter. “It’s noisy, it’s wild, and I’m by no means Jimi Hendrix, but we’ll get the gist of it, so check it out.”

Which rig sounds better? Well, that’s almost besides the point. The real takeaway here is that with a budget rig, comprising items available anywhere, you could take it, mike it up and use it on record or in the studio. 

“There is no such thing as a bad guitar, or a bad amp, or a bad pedal, or a bad cable,” says Bonamassa. “Well, maybe the cable’s bad. It doesn’t matter. It’s how you drive it.”

In other Bonamassa news, the Mayor of Nerdville has just announced Live At The Hollywood Bowl, with is available to preorder and will be released on all formats on 17 May via J&R Adventures. The album documents his career-high performance at the storied Los Angeles venue, on audio and video, with DVD and Blu-ray bundles available. Check out the first single from it, Twenty-Four Hour Blues, above.

We recently talked about Joe Bonamassa's career trajectory, and how he pushed through with 20 years of hard work to get to where he is now. So Joe knows about what it takes, and when Creative Loafing Tampa Bay asked him to share what advice he wished he'd been given when starting out, his response was enlightening.

"There are no guarantees that any kind of success will happen by a certain time, OK?" said Joe. "The worst thing you can do is say, when you’re like 18—or in my case, 12—“Well if I'm not a success by 30. I'm just gonna quit and do something else.” 

"Well, my biggest moment that launched my entire modern career for the last 15, 16 years was May 4, 2009, which was four days before my 32nd birthday," Joe said, referring to the moment Eric Clapton joined him onstage at the Albert Hall. "Now, we’d had some success when I was in my early-30s, but not to the point where we are now, [I was] still struggling to pay the bills."

Now, the rest of us can't call Slowhand in for a career boost but that's not Joe's point here. He had to get to that position in the first place for that opportunity to present itself, and instead of winding down his efforts in his 30s thinking his best years were behind him, Joe ramped up and pushed on. "If you put those time limits on things, you're never gonna get to where you want to be, especially if you bail too soon, because you're just gonna spend the rest of your life going 'What if?', he added. 

"There's a lot of soul-searching internally when it feels like nothing's transpiring, or nothing's going to transpire, and you either get really, really down on yourself and never recover from that, or you go “Fuck it, I’m gonna make something that kills me,” and that’s kinda what I did."

Becoming an excellent player often isn't enough to guarantee success, and Joe Bonamassa's focus on his stagecraft, the band sound him and generally giving people a live experience they'll want to return to has certainly been a key to his career. Back in 2021, he reflected with us on how much he is driven by performing onstage and even during the lockdown, he wasn't tempted to gravitate too far towards the realms of becoming a guitar influencer on Instagram – despite his playing videos proving consistently popular.

“I didn’t start playing guitar 40 years ago to go, ‘Hey, I hope I wake up one day and be an Instagram influencer!’ I didn’t start for that,” he told us. 

“I started playing guitar because I saw people playing in front of people. My Dad was playing in front of an audience. And then I would go see James Cotton or Danny Gatton, or somebody. ‘Oh, God! This is cool! There’s a crowd.’ Then you go, ‘Well, okay, if I play this then people will cheer? Ah, okay, I’m starting to see how this thing works.’ But without an audience, I am relegated into the also-rans and whatevers. 

“I am not a teacher. I am not really an influencer," Joe reiterated. "I don’t really do those kind of things. Nor am I interested in making that kind of content because that is just not who I am. It would be disingenuous of me to do so. It would be a pivot, an unnecessary pivot.”

Read the full interview with Joe Bonamassa at cltampa.com

Joe Bonamassa did not get here by accident. Looking back on his landmark Blues Deluxe album over two decades ago, he was looking at his last roll of the dice. "It was the first album I think people started to take notice, also I think it was the first album that I just did what the fuck I wanted," the guitarist told Jordi Pinyol in a recent interview. 

"This was the last shot - 20 years ago was the last shot for me. I was 25, looking down the barrel of extinction, but to be honest with you, when you're back is against the brick wall you have no other option to look forwards, so that's what I did."

It was 20 years of gradually rising trajectory, as Bonamassa's reputation spread through relentless touring in Europe and the US. More and more people took notice of the young blues-rock player's chops, and songwriting with his constantly growing stature as an entertainer. "It was the beginning of the hardest 20 fucking years of my life, but here I am, nine times platinum and whatever."

It was also a path that could hit frustrating plateaus - the guitarist was frequently snubbed by parts of the mainstream music press despite his creative achievements. But when Bonamassa played the Albert Hall on 4 May, 2009 he had a career-shifting experience; the patronage of a guitar legend who would become a friend. 

By his own admission, Bonamassa came to the blues via the UK; Paul Kossoff, Peter Green and the towering influence that is Eric Clapton. When Slowhand stepped out with Bonamassa at the Albert Hall that night he was gifting a patronage that even Gary Moore never received from him during his lifetime. And its significance isn't been lost on Bonamassa. 

"He's very, very influential to me and has been a friend for a long time," Bonamassa reflected to Pinyol. "I can never repay him for what he did because he came out and did something that turned my career around. 

"That was the biggest B12 shot I could have ever asked for, because it meant something to me and everybody saw that. It meant something, it wasn't like, what celebrity can we get to show up at this thing? No, I'm at the Albert Hall because I want to be like him, and he came. That was a big fucking deal.

The prestigious London venue is like a second home for Clapton as a performer to some degree; he's played there over 200 times. Making his appearance with Bonamassa as his guest there even more symbolic.  

The unforgettable moment the two duetted on Bobby Bland's Texas shuffle Further On Up The Road would be immortalised on the release Live From The Albert Hall and can also be seen above. Bonamassa (Les Paul) and Clapton (Strat) confidently traded licks and vocals before joining each other for a crescendo where Slowhand's smile of recognition said it all. But for Joe Bonamassa the pressure beforehand was immense.  

“For me it was either the beginning of the beginning or the beginning of the end," Bonamassa reflected with Guitarist magazine in a 2017 interview. "There was no middle ground. Either fail or succeed or just play and nobody would care, but somehow that gig turned into something that people would remember and we recorded it and that was really the beginning of this modern time in my career. It was incredibly moving and I don’t remember much about the experience because I was nervous.”

It didn't show. And for the guitarist it was not only childhood wish fulfillment, but a full circle moment; to be honoured and to honour the musician that helped set his journey as a musician in motion.

"I learned to play blues guitar just from playing along to the Beano album," he told us in 2021. "More so than even BB King, Freddie or Albert, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf or Robert Johnson.

“Eric Clapton was the conduit for me to get into all of those guys. And, of course, having him play with me at the Royal Albert Hall was amazing."

• Joe Bonamassa will return to the Royal Albert Hall on 4 and 5 April 2024. More info at royalalberthall.com

Here’s a little something for the weekend for rock fans and the incendiary guitar playing of Mr Joseph Leonard Bonamassa: the supergroup Black Country Communion have officially announced their return with a new album, V, and a new single, Stay Free, which you can check out now.

And if you’re a fan of those funky hard-rock grooves where electric guitar, bass and keys are joined together in unison in what comes across a little like a 21st-century update of Trampled Under Foot – featuring a truly bruising drum beat – then the chances are you will enjoy Stay Free.

It’s been a minute since the last time we heard new music from Black Country Communion – seven long years in fact – so let’s remind ourselves of the personnel. The HR roll call pretty much tells you what BCC is going to sound like, and how this album is going to play out. 

On guitar and vocals, we’ve got Joe Bonamassa, doing a Gary Moore in adapting his muscular blues guitar style for hard rock. On bass guitar and vocals, we’ve got Deep Purple MkIII alumnus Glenn Hughes. Derek Sherinian of Dream Theater, Alice Cooper and Sons Of Apollo fame is on keys, while Jason Bonham plays drums. 

V, which is the band’s fifth album, is scheduled for release on 14 June, and was once more produced by Kevin ‘The Caveman’ Shirley, and he promises more riffs, more hooks.

“For a band that started out as a collection of the best practitioners of their instruments, they very quickly found a unique sound,” he says. “This time around, it has more purpose, the riffs are tougher, and there are hooks! Yes, hooks! It’s the most cohesive record, full of soul and grit, and I think this is the one that’s going to be the benchmark for Black Country Communion.”

The English-American supergroup will play their first live show in 11 years on 17 March when they take to the stage at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The gig was put on by Bonamassa’s Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation, with proceeds from the show going to supper music education and “musicians in need”.

It will also serve as a nice little warm-up before the band take to the high seas as they join the Keeping The Blues Alive At Sea Cruise, which sails from Miami on 18 March, and terminates in Cozumel, Mexico on 22 March. Tough gig.

V is available to pre-order now, via J&R Adventures. It is the second album from Bonamassa (and the second to be helmed by Shirley) within a week. Last Friday, 23 March, the blues guitar superstar announced Live At The Hollywood Bowl (With Orchestra), a deluxe double album and DVD/Blu-ray that captured Bonamassa’s career-high set at the legendary Californian venue, where he was joined on the evening by a 40-string orchestra. 

Bonamassa shared the first single from that, his cover of Bobby Bland’s Twenty-Four Hour Blues, and you can check out the video of that – and the new BCC track Stay Free – above.

Joe Bonamassa, Billy Gibbons and Zakk Wylde swear by it, so did Jimmy Page (in the early days of Zeppelin), Jeff Beck and Duane Allman. Some dismiss it and recently the Gibson Gazette has been digging into whether top-wrapping a Stop Bar tailpiece is actually better than the traditional method of stringing straight through it on an electric guitar. So, are we closer to getting a defining answer?

It's important to define both what top-wrapping is and who it's going to apply to. If you own a Les Paul, SG or ES-335 it's likely to apply to you because those guitars tend to feature Stop Bar tailpieces, in combination with a tune-o-matic bridge. The Stop Bar anchors your guitar strings with two posts holding it in position, and these can be raised and lowered.

Plenty of other brands use the Stop Bar design (I top wrap a Gordon Smith GS-1 myself) so this can apply to them too. Top-wrapping involves threading the string from the front bridge side of the Stop Bar instead of the traditional way from behind it, the string then passes back over the bar.

To top-wrap you'll need a longer length of string than the traditional method so it's best to try it when fitting a fresh set. As well as physical contact between the string and the top of the bridge, it also reduces the break angle over the saddle. This can be accounted for slightly by dropping the Stop Bar down low to touch the body, but the break angle is still reduced in comparison to the traditional method. 

You can also do this with a wraparound bridge that doesn't have a tailpiece – such as a Les Paul jr and we have a step-by-step wraparound bridge setup guide here. 

The 'decking' of the tailpiece by dropping it right down is said to help increase sustain because it provides closer contact between string vibration and body wood through the tailpiece. 

"In order to make the guitar feel a little bit slinkier and not so difficult to play, we borrow the technique invented by Jimmy Page and Billy Gibbons; you top-wrap over the stud, which lessens the angle over the bridge," explains Bonamassa in the video above - illustrating with the late Bernie Marsden's '59 'Beast' Les Paul Standard he was borrowing at the time.

"So it's a much nicer, slinkier feel. But it also retains the big heaviness of the string so when you hit hard you're not playing out of tune."

The idea your top-wrapped guitar – especially one with heavier gauge strings – will feel slinkier to play (from a longer string length) suggests less tension, but as the Gibson Gazette points out, the YouTuber Dylan Talks Tone actually measured the effects scientifically and contrary to previous perceptions, he found top-wrapping actually creates more tension for string bends. Gah! 

Feel is subjective, but the perceived negative effects of top-wrapping can vary from guitar to guitar too. You may experience intonation issues without a guitar setup to account for the switch to top-wrapping. Physically the strings are rubbing on the Stop Bar too, increasing the chance of physical wear.

Cardinal Black guitarist Chris Buck waded into the debate on his excellent Friday Fretworks YouTube series below, touching on the way the debate has raged across Les Paul forums for some time. The fact is there's no definitive answer – a common theme in the guitar world – and experience will differ from player to player and their guitars. 

Even Gibson won't give us a definitive answer: Chris found a top-wrapped a Les Paul in the company's own early 1956 product catalogue but the Les Paul on the next page was strung the other way!  

"All I can do is speak from personal experience," says Chris. "And in the last two years I've been top-wrapping some of my Les Paul-style guitars, for me at least – whether it's psychosomatic or not, who knows, strings do feel a little bit more pliable. As though there is a little bit less tension in the strings."

For what it's worth, I found the same with my Gordon Smith GS1. And that was enough for me to stick with it for that guitar – I just like that slinkier feel. The only way for you to find out for yourself is to try it. It will only cost you the price of a set of strings. 

You could take the measurements of your pre-top-wrapping Stop Bar height on the bass and treble sides before making the change so if you decide to go back to the traditional method, you can so easier.

• 10 of the best Les Paul tones of all time

Joe Bonamassa exacted high-volume revenge on some of Nerdville’s noisy neighbours on Sunday night, with the blues-rock superstar ripping some Deep Purple on a Les Paul and a Dumble guitar amp in retaliation to some over-zealous partying.

Picture the scene. You’re at home on the Hollywood Hills, California, on a cool Sunday evening, when the peace and quiet is disturbed by a party from a neighbouring estate. A most terrible noise is issuing forth from The Houdini Estate. 

Now, the Hollywood Hills is a respectable neighbourhood. The Houdini Estate is a desirable location – a £20 million property, five-acres for hire, tended by a legion of landscape gardeners. It's perfect for a private party. 

But this being Sunday, when the property is available at a cheaper rate of $6,529 for up to 25 people, and in January, when there is a 20 per cent discount, you just never know what sort of riff-raff are going to rock up. And on Sunday 21 January, this lot were making all kinds of noise at too-late o’clock. What do you do?

Well, Bonamassa, blues guitar superstar, Mayor of Nerdville, denizen of the Hollywood Hills and concerned neighbour mustered a response. What’s that old expression about never picking a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel? This is more a case of never starting a loudness war with a man who stockpiles tube amplifiers. 

Bonamassa met fire with fire, setting up an improvised rig of “Principal Skinner” – one of JoBo’s favourite 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standards, serial # 9-1951 – and a Dumble Overdrive Special combo. No effects. None needed. 

Bonamassa was going to open the amp up a bit and move some air with a quick solo performance of Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water, captured for posterity on Instagram. Check it out above. It’s wonderful. Bonamassa’s chuckle at the insanity of it all… Glenn Hughes, The Voice of Rock, piping up in the comments and offering to pop round and join in. Fantastic.

And to think that in 2022 Bonamassa was going to retire from social media. What a loss that would have been, and not just for the occasional moment of light comedy but for the vintage gear education, too. 

Just hours before his retaliatory Deep Purple performance, Bonamassa shared one of the latest additions to the Nerdville collection; a 1961 Fender Telecaster Custom that was once owned by Ernie Ball and John 5, and which by Bonamassa's reckoning has never left the Los Angeles area. As he wrote, "I don't buy guitars. I buy good stories and history."

Having recently demonstrated the tonal potential of a 1954 Blackguard Tele, Joe Bonamassa has now turned his attention to another two electric guitars from his collection at Nerdville, with the blues-rock superstar sitting down with Guitarist magazine to showcase a pair of Hendrix-era guitars – one a very cool Flying V, the other a holy grail Stratocaster named after a chest infection

More on the latter shortly. First up we have a 1967 Gibson Flying V in Sparkling Burgundy, mahogany bodied, making it “a little thicker sounding” than the korina Vs that preceded it. “Hendrix had one. Wishbone Ash made the ’67 very famous. It’s a real rock guitar,” says Bonamassa. 

Intriguingly, there is an unfinished neck on the Sparkling Burgundy models, which sounds good by us. They also have a stinger and, weirdly, the serial numbers are upside down. “It’s a very, very cool guitar, and they all came with tremolos. There’s not a stop-tail version of this; it’s all just Maestro tailpiece.”

Everything else is as you would expect, with each humbucker having its own independent volume and tone controls. To Bonamassa’s ear, there is a Fender quality owing to the V-shaped body. 

It sounds pretty good in this video shoot from Nerdville. It sounds even better on You Sure Drive A Hard Bargain, the Albert King cover on Bonamassa’s new studio album, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2. King “allegedly” used a Cherry ’67 V on Born Under A Bad Sign.

“I mean, Albert could play a 2X4 and with strings and it would be fine,” says Bonamassa. “He was one of the greatest of all time, and one of the most immaculate players.” 

Now for the Strat. It looks just like the Strat from the archive footage of Hendrix at Woodstock but it is mint. It's beautiful. And yet it surely has the least flattering nickname of any guitar in his collection.

“I call this 'The Bronchitiscaster' because when I bought it I should have postponed the gig,” he says. “I has bronchitis so bad on the road, 2017, really one of the hardest tours of my life. I almost pulled the plug. It was enough. But my tech at the time, Mike Hickey, sent me a photo of this... The thought of missing out on this guitar gave me the strength to do the gig.”

By the sounds of things it was all worth the effort. As Bonamassa notes, you could go two lifetimes and not see a ’69 Strat in this condition, and with the tags. And he has a message for the cork sniffers who let the hallowed spec lists and received wisdom of vintage guitar shopping cloud their judgement over an instrument’s musical worth; you have to listen to them and play them.

The humbuckers on the V do the job. They don’t need to be PAFs. The Strat is a CBS era, a dark time for the Fender brand, so the prevailing wisdom goes. But it's a great Strat nonetheless

“A lot of the narrative is like, ‘Oh, too bad it’s a CBS guitar,’” says Bonamassa. “It’s like, ‘Listen. Good enough for Hendrix, good enough for me.’”

And don’t even think about making Bonamassa an offer for it; you can’t put a price on that Hendrix at Woodstock mojo. “I will never sell this guitar,” he promises. “It’s too damn rare and too damn cool.”

But maybe Fender should give Bonamassa a call. There would be something very cool about making 'The Bronchitiscaster' a signature guitar. 

We can see it now: the replica spec, certificate of authenticity, the JB guitar strap, and a bottle of Robitusson cough syrup in the case.

• Joe Bonamassa: “It’s a fight. My ’51 Nocaster brings out things in you as a player that, if it was too easy to play, I think it shaves a little of the intensity off”

We already know Joe Bonamassa can showcase the versatility of the Les Paul for days, but he's showing the Telecaster plenty of love in Guitarist magazine's new video from his LA Nerdville base that looks like it's built from vintage Fender combos. And there's good news and bad news…

We say bad, it's just a mod you might need to unlock the full potential Joe is illustrating in this video with a 1954 Blackguard Tele. You don't need an uber-valuable vintage Tele like Joe, just vintage Tele wiring – something you can buy as a prewired loom from Stewmac in the US and Monty's in the UK, then install yourself or get a pro to solder a couple of connections for you. 

Joe illustrates the three main tones of a vintage Tele – and he notes that the neck [front] pickup is in the middle position in the selector on his vintage guitar. Then Joe illustrates a fourth sound by 'wedging' the Switchcraft control. But he's just getting started.

He talks through the playing and tone effects of the bridge cover on '50s Teles (that anyone can buy for their ashtray bridge) and showcases Danny Gatton-style volume swells. 

"They're really the most expressive instruments," says Joe. "Leo got it right the very first time. There's something magical about a flat-pole Tele pickup – they'll sting you, they can be as sweet as you want it to be."

And Joe also points out, they're accessible.

"You don't have to spend a lot of money – you can get a Squier Tele, you can put a flat pole reissue [pickup] in it and you can rule the world with it. It really is absolutely the go-to guitar for a lot of players.

"There's a video of Jeff Beck saying you can do anything with it – and he was right."

But the '50s wiring mod does make a big difference too. It changes the way the tone capacitor is wired. The concept of '50s wiring can be applied to Les Pauls, Strats, 335s and most other electric guitars too; changing the interaction between the volume and tone pots to unlock a lot more scope. 

The guitar will sound brighter even as you dial back the volume control to reduce gain through an overdriven amp. The tone control itself also becomes much more responsive and doesn't drop off after a set point in the sweep. I upgraded a Les Paul Junior-style guitar with a 50s wiring harness from James' Home Of Tone and the difference was huge. And oddly, I have a Mexican Fender Duo-Sonic HS that came wired in the '50s style as stock – which is certainly unusual, especially as it's not a vintage reissue. 

• Joe Bonamassa: “It’s a fight. My ’51 Nocaster brings out things in you as a player that, if it was too easy to play, I think it shaves a little of the intensity off”

"A lot of people just leave everything all the way up," says Joe Bonamassa of Les Pauls in a new interview with Guitarist magazine as they visit him in his LA Nerdville HQ. "And that's one way to do it, a lot of times I'm all the way up too, but you bring the tone down to five, bring the volume up to ten and then minus one – so you're adding a little capacitance to the guitar, and it will definitely shave off some of the harsher 2k frequencies."

He demonstrates the difference on his spectacular Principal Skinner '59 Les Paul. His favourite of all the Les Pauls he owns. " Obviously, exact settings depend on your pots and caps so Joe advises players "season to taste". And the idea of not playing on 10 all the time is something he's spoken about elsewhere recently. 

In the video above Joe also illustrates volume swells using his little finger and picking near the bridge, woman tone and the advantage of "weighing' the pickups differently in the middle position. 

All great stuff – and no overdrive pedals required. 

It's difficult to relate to the level of success and touring scale Joe Bonamassa plays at, but his new approach to warming up, or more not doing it, before shows is something maybe all gigging players can try. But it's linked to him actively questioning his methods to improvising solos live, and reaping the benefits of changes he's made. 

"I've tried a new approach at the shows," he tells Dinesh Lekhraj in a new interview for the Gibson Guitar Guide. "We soundtrack [before] every show and maybe do one or two songs… as soon as I get the thumbs up from out the front, we're good. I save it for the show."

"It used to be where I used to warm up with a bunch of nonsense, just to get the hands moving," Joe explains, playing a fast run as an example."I stopped doing that. I'll soundcheck and I'll [play] a song that has a decent solo and I'll dig in a little bit and then I'll just shut down until the show. I found that my lyrical approach to soloing is better than if I spent a half hour [playing fast scales] because you're kind of programming yourself that it's your default."

The warming up was actually part of a bigger picture – it was Joe's whole approach to live improvisational solos that has shifted. And it was rooted in some self-doubt.

"If I go in kind of cold, I'm much more lyrical as a soloist – I tell a story," Joe continued. I find I'm speaking more with the guitar and making better note choices. Playing some stuff I don't normally play – without warming up. And I know that's a completely converse and diametrically opposed to what people say to do, but I found myself last year just saying [to myself] when I'm up there on stage, 'You suck, you're terrible' –this is the internal conversation." Joe also explains how he'd start drifting off during his own solos, wondering where he'd go for lunch the next day.

"I just kind of zend out, and I took a different approach," he admitted. "I calmed myself with the help of a couple of my close friends, and I said, 'I need to reapproach the way I look at this thing because I'm seeing it in too much of a linear way and I'm seeing too many boxes. I'm also overthinking it, going, 'I've got to do this and I've got to do that, I've got to get to that… ' this musical ADD thing that's happening internally. You've got just slow down and enjoy the moment. Don't dwell on the past and fret about the future. I found that approach, and not warming up, has improved my phrasing and my approach to the instrument because I'm coming in a much less affected and [more] clear-minded way.

"And I know it sounds weird – and again, it's my opinion and my approach – but if you're ever stuck in a rut I always say, stop playing. Don't power out of it because you're gonna frustrate yourself and all the demons that lie in your head and gonna start creeping up into reality."

Check out the full interview above. 

Joe Bonamassa continues to illustrate what a potent force Gibson Les Paul, SG, ES-335, Flying Vs and Explorers guitars can be – but hugely versatile ones too. Indeed, he's appeared in videos breaking down the sheer wealth of sounds available via the pickup and control combinations at your fingertips from an electric guitar. And it means that to realise that potential he's constantly manipulating them onstage too.

“A lot of times, if I want to solo on a bridge pickup sound in a bright room, I don’t go to the bridge pickup,” Bonamassa tells Dinesh Lekhraj in a new interview for the Gibson Gear Guide you can watch at the bottom. “I keep it in the middle [position] and roll the bass pickup down. You can roll the tone down to five, but I actually like keeping the capacitance all the way up and just blending. To the listener, it doesn’t sound a lot different, but what I feel under my hands and on the pick? It feels weightier."

But there are times that the audience will notice, and Joe stresses the need for sensitivity on when to unleash the guitar beast.

“Conversely, if you’re a bass pickup guy, you can roll your treble pickup down," he adds. "You have to read the room. Part of your gig is to know when to use [the guitar] as a weapon and to know when to use it as something that creates a very vocal type of sound. When I play live, I probably use the volume and tone pots 100 times in an evening. It’s just a subconscious, natural thing that I do.”

In related news, Epiphone recently revealed its latest collaboration with Joe in the form of the signature 1963 Gibson SG Custom.

Check out the Gibson Gear Guide YouTube channel for more videos. 

Epiphone and Joe Bonamassa have teamed up once more for the launch of a new signature guitar based on the Mayor of Nerdville’s very own 1963 Gibson SG Custom.

This is a special electric guitar. They didn’t make many like this in the first place. Originally a custom order, it would be a rare find on the vintage market, presenting a triple-humbucker version of the SG all dressed up and doing the town with MOP block inlays, gold hardware, and multi-ply binding on the headstock. 

You would typically see these in white – “99 times out of 100,” says Bonamassa. But this was Cherry Red by request. The original owner, who played guitar in the Casuals back in the day, had different ideas. Bonamassa says the similarities between the Epiphone and its Gibson forebear are remarkable. Though there is quite a big price differential.

“It is something that looks aesthetically the same but it’s not the $50,000 version,” says Bonamassa. “It’s a much lower, affordable price. It does exactly the same thing.”

What it does is present you with a lot of tone options from a trio of ProBuckers, with ProBucker 2s at the middle and neck positions, and a ProBucker 3 at the bridge. 

The middle position of the three-way pickup switch selects the bridge and middle pickups in unison, and when Bonamassa demoes this, it’s as though this is the signature voice of this guitar – hot but balanced, the quintessential blues guitar that can eat up some overdrive for all manner of rock applications.

“It’s wired in phase like the original guitar,” he says. “It’s got the smooth neck heel. It is kind of a unicorn for SGs back in this era. It has a nice feel. It’s a nice feeling neck.”

That smooth neck contour is something a little bit different, too, and as per the high-end Epiphone models we have an ebony fingerboard opposed to the more commonly found Indian laurel.

The 24.74” scale length and 12” fingerboard radius will be familiar, and so to the build, which pairs a solid mahogany body with a glued-in mahogany neck that’s carved in an amenable ‘60s profile SlimTaper C.

There’s single-ply binding on the fingerboard, five-play on the headstock, which wears its split-diamond inlay nicely, and Epiphone has ponied up for a set of Kluson ‘Waffleback’ tuners, which is something you don’t ordinarily see at this price. Why? Well, Bonamassa says they’re expensive nowadays but were a non-negotiable when putting this SG Custom together.

“You’ve got to do it right,” he says. “If you’re going to recreate a guitar you’ve got to do it right and I think everyone is really gonna enjoy this. And it’s at a price point where it doesn’t break the bank.”

Another noteworthy feature is the Epiphone-branded Maestro Vibrola, which is joined by a LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge that’s fitted with nylon saddles – and this, says, Bonamassa, is another factor that makes this SG sound a little bit different from its siblings. Epiphone has used high-quality Switchcraft output jacks and switches, and wired those pickups up to CTS pots and Mallory capacitors.

There is one thing missing, however. There is no mention of Joe Bonamassa’s name anywhere on the instrument – “probably a good thing for a lot of people,” says Bonamassa. But that’s in keeping of his previous collaborations with Epiphone, such as the superlative ‘Lazarus’ 1959 Les Paul Standard and 1962 ES-335, which hew closely to their brief of vintage reproduction at budget-friendly price points. 

Speaking of which, the Joe Bonamassa 1963 SG Custom is priced £1,499 / $1,399, and the price includes a custom hard-shell guitar case and certificate of authenticity. You will find Joe Bonamassa’s name stencilled on the case – and yellow plush within. 

For more details, head over to Epiphone. To hear Bonamassa put it through its paces, check out the demo video above. In other Joe Bonamassa news, the bluesman has just announced two dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He will play the legendary venue on 4 and 5 April 2024. Tickets go on general sale on Friday 29 September.

Joe Bonamassa might still have the blues, now and forever, but he has also got the funk, as new single Hope You Realize It (Goodbye Again) can attest to – the latest track to be shared from the blues guitar superstar’s forthcoming album, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2.

It’s an all original composition, one Bonamassa said had been kicking around in search of a home. When he needed a party starter for the new record, it was time to get down to business.

Hope You Realize It… is Bonamassa as you’ve never heard him, or rather we don’t often hear him. In a more topsy-turvy time line this could be him sitting in with ‘70s Bay Area funk and R&B institution Tower Of Power, demonstrating just how a simply adjustment in his blues phrasing can make the electric guitar sit proud over a strutting funk rhythm a la What Is Hip?

Is Joe Bonamassa hip? Well, just last night he was posing in Uggs with his Tommy Bolin ‘Burst in an Instagram post, but when you are at home prepping your gear for a three-night stint in Los Angeles, it is comfort that matters. Besides, they go with the rug. You do you, Joe. He sure has shown some form for funk, recently sitting in with Scary Pockets for a funk cover of AC/DC's Back In Black.

But Hope You Realize It… is an arrangement more dressed up for a Friday night. It’s not a risk from Bonamassa. He has cultivated an audience that expects him to though some curveballs, to reference his ‘70s prog influences, as he did on the expansive Time Clocks, or to go full-on funk as on this. 

Bonamassa says the Tower Of Power influence is upfront and right there in front of us. There’s no point in denying it.

“This is a song that I wrote with Tom Hambridge, and we did a real Tower Of Power treatment on it,” says Bonamassa. “Now, the whole thing about Blues Deluxe Vol 2,’ we tried to keep the same ratio of covers to originals as on Blues Deluxe Vol 1., so we needed an upbeat song and I had this song kind of laying around for over a year. Calvin Turner wrote a killer funky horn part, and we just did like a Tower Of Power take on it and made no apologies about it. It’s just the nature of the groove and everything else – you have to tip the hat.”

Blues Deluxe Vol. 2 is a sequel of sorts to the album that saved Bonamassa’s career. Bonamassa is now, by most metrics, the world’s highest-grossing blues player, and relentlessly prolific onstage and on both sides of the control room in the studio. 

If he’s not making a record with his name above the door he is co-producing someone else’s alongside Josh Smith – who also plays guitar on his latest album. Twenty years ago, the future didn’t look that bright.

“Blues Deluxe was my last shot after being dropped by two major record labels and my booking agent,” said Bonamassa in June. “It was then that my manager, Roy Weisman, had his first ‘all in’ moment. We would go back into the studio and record. A record that would hopefully define the direction of whatever future career I might have.”

Blues Deluxe Vol. 2 features covers of Fleetwood Mac, Guitar Slim, Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters, Albert King and more. Kirk Fletcher guests on it. It is out in record stores 6 October via J&R Adventures, and available to preorder now. Order here if you are in the UK. Fans in the US should head to Joe Bonamassa.

Joe Bonamassa’s mission to keep blues guitar alive and kicking continues apace with the release of the latest single from his forthcoming studio album, Blues Deluxe Vol 2. This time out, Bonamassa is putting a quintessentially British blues spin on Guitar Slim’s Well, Well, I Done Got Over It.

The track is the third to be shared ahead of the 6 October release of Blues Deluxe Vol 2, following covers of Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters’ I Want To Shout About It and Bobby Bland’s Twenty-Four Hours Blues. 

Blues Deluxe Vol 2 is produced by Bonamassa’s good friend and production partner Josh Smith, and comprises eight covers and two original tracks.

Bonamassa credits his old man for turning him onto Guitar Slim. But it also didn’t hurt matters that Slim was holding a Gold Top on the front cover of the album – another vintage electric guitar we can credit for giving Bonamassa the bug in a big way.

“My father introduced me to Guitar Slim a long time ago, back when I was a kid,” says Bonamassa. “There was a compilation album called Best of Guitar Slim and it was him on the cover and he was cradling one of these Gold Top Les Pauls and I was a fan ever since.  He has such a velvety smooth voice, and he had such a way of delivering a song.”

By the sounds of it, Bonamassa turned the clock back to 1962 for his tone and consulted the Nerdville archive for dig out an Bluesbreaker tube amp. 

“We did a very British take on this Guitar Slim song, it’s like the Blues Breakers meets Guitar Slim meets Joe Bonamassa, Josh Smith and company,” he says.

Slim was born Eddie Jones on 10 December 1926, in Greenwood, Mississippi, and did not have it easy. His mother died when he was five. He was raised by his grandmother, working cotton fields before finding his calling on the guitar. That look he had on the cover Bonamassa references is one that could only be described as deep affection; he was cradling that Gold Top, all right, and he knew just how to make it sing.

Slim's most famous tune was The Things That I Used to Do, which he tracked in New Orleans in the company of Ray Charles. The next generation of players where paying close attention. Jimi Hendrix was paying attention. And with the generation after that, so too was Bonamassa. 

Bonamassa’s Blues Deluxe Vol 2 also features covers of Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, Albert King and more. It is available to preorder now and is out on all formats on 6 October through J&R Adventures. You can stream the new single here. See Joe Bonamassa for more details.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have blue smoke over Nerdville: Joe Bonamassa has officially announced a new studio album. It’s titled Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, it is out on 6 October, and the blues guitar maestro has shared the video for the album’s second single, Twenty-Four Hour Blues.

The announcement comes as some little surprise. Just last month, Bonamassa shared the video for his cover of the Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters standard I Want To Shout About It – a track that demonstrated the world’s biggest blues star’s voice, and indeed his Fender Stratocaster, are in fine fettle.

Now today, we have another cover, with Twenty-Four Hour Blues originally recorded by the Tennessee blues legend Bobby Bland for his 1974 studio album Dreamer – an album that found Bland joined by the great Larry Carlton on guitar. 

As the title suggests, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2 is a companion piece or sequel to mark 20 years of the first album. It features eight covers, with Bonamassa taking on tracks by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and Albert King among others, plus two original compositions, and you can be sure there will a cornucopia of vintage electric guitars and tube amps on there too. 

The tones on this cover of Twenty-Four Hour Blues are super premium. But again, has Bonamassa’s voice sounded better? The stage and these years of constant performance have been well spent. Perhaps this is to the vocalist what careful cellaring and the passage of time is to a fine Burgundy.

Bonamassa admits he is a little tickled that he himself has had all this time to playing the blues. The first Blues Deluxe was something of a Hail Mary.

“I you had told me 20 years ago my career would last long enough to see the 20th anniversary of this little record called ‘Blues Deluxe,’ I’m sure I would have laughed,” he said. “Blues Deluxe was my last shot after being dropped by two major record labels and my booking agent. It was then that my manager, Roy Weisman, had his first ‘all in’ moment. We would go back into the studio and record. A record that would hopefully define the direction of whatever future career I might have.”

Well, the rest is history. The blues has been good to Bonamassa, and Bonamassa has been good to the blues. Once more, Bonamassa’s good pal and production partner Josh Smith joins him in the studio. Long-time fans can now play the records back to back and compare and contrast a coltish Bonamassa at the start of this journey and, well, at 46, he is just hitting his stride.

“The contrast between a cocky 26-year-old and an established 46-year-old is considerable,” said Bonamassa. “Does the fire still burn like it did? Am I still playing hungry? Am I even good enough to pay tribute to my heroes all over again? The answer lies somewhere in this album.”

Umm, well, if the solo that sees this version of Twenty-Four Hour Blues out is anything to go by, we all have the answer. Elsewhere on the record, you’ll hear Bonamassa put his stamp on on Guitar Slim’s Well, I Done Got Over It and Bobby Parker’s It’s Hard But It’s Fair. Josh Smith wrote a track, too, titled Is It Safe To Go Home. Smith says he pushed Bonamassa to bring those vocals to the fore.

“I’d heard him sing things just messing around or when we’d be producing for other artists that I’d never heard him do on record,” said Smith. “So the songs were both chosen and written with that in mind.”

Blues Deluxe Vol. 2 is now available to preorder on all formats. Order here if you are in the UK. Fans in the US should head to Joe Bonamassa.

Few world-renowned guitarists have worked as hard as Joe Bonamassa in the last 30 years; whether you are listening to his music or not, he's earned it and doesn't take his success for granted. But it's come without wider mainstream media acceptance. He knows this, and he's ok with it. 

In an appearance on drummer Kenny Aronoff's Sessions podcast, Joe reflects on his journey so far and shares a lot of credit for his success so far with the team around him. But there's no doubt he's been tireless in his own work ethic, despite being a critical darling in certain media circles eluding him.

"I will say this about relevancy in terms of my career; I never have been and never will be," said Joe. "I do a very specific thing. I know exactly what the fans want to hear and the question is, would you rather please the critics at Rolling Stone or please the fans that put you there? My answer unequivocally is; please the fans that put you there.

"So if that means there's a big sludgy blues rock song with an overblown solo at the end, I'm doing it," he added. "Because that's what people seem to enjoy. I'm not the one who's going to come out and drastically change the show; 'I'm not feeling playing guitar so I'm just going to stand up here and sing for you.' What, are you crazy? This is what these people paid for. This is the experience that you're selling."

But Joe isn't insulated from what he sees as a period of transition in guitar music right now; where people are making a living from playing the instrument without gigs or songs. 

"I find now, looking at the guitar world in general in 2023, I find it in a state of crossroads," he began. "People have learned how to make real money by sitting in from of a camera and putting it on Instagram on YouTube and becoming an influencer. Which is great. I encourage anyone with a business model to do it like that. How long you can stay inspired doing one-minute videos is up to the individual. And I find that if I feel the need to stay relevant because I haven't posted something in a minute and I just go, 'I haven't played guitar today but let me tune this Les Paul up and do a one-minute video'. 

"I've been guilty of this in the past where that one minute where it took me to film something in one take and just throw on Instagram was the only minute of music I had made that entire day. And that's not for me. That's crossing a line where your inspiration is the dopamine you're going to get from the comment sections of your social media. So for me personally, that's not the lifestyle I want to live."

Even though Joe is focussed on pleasing his fans, he's quick to remind us that he never claimed to be just a bluesman – as his forthcoming fifth album with Black Country Communion will remind people.

"I always say, when the arrows start coming my way of, 'He's not a real blues guitar player' – I never said I was one. I love Yes songs. I love Selling England By The Pound – I'm a Steve Hackett guy. I'm a Michael Schenker guy and a Ritchie Blackmore guy. I think life would be boring if I only played one style of music all the time. That's not to slight anyone who does it that way because everyone has their process but I'm ADHD in life and I'm ADHD in music.

"Mick Ralphs, Paul Kossoff – those were my guys because they were rock but they had a blues edge to them," added Joe. "And they had great songs and a big Les Paul tone that I always wanted to get. So in my career, we've done all kinds of records, not just blues – we've done trad blues but I've also done records with Glenn Hughes, Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian… that's straight up '70s British rock. I like to know that I can speak all the languages and you have to exercise [that]. If you speak French and you haven't spoken French for 20 years, you're rusty. So I like to keep my thing fresh." 

• Joe Bonamassa: the 10 guitarists that blew my mind

As much as we admire Joe Bonamassa's solo work, there's just something special about the way he plays in Black Country Communion; this is rock Bonamassa and the spirit seems to guide him to magical places as a guitarist as he steps back from the vocal spotlight for more of a supporting role to Glenn Hughes. And we can now see glimpses of what's to come as he's back in the legendary Sunset Sound studio in LA with producer Kevin Shirley and his BCC bandmates. And Joe's on fire. 

First up is this slide solo footage shot by keyboardist Derek Sherinian in the control room with Shirley. Joe's playing what we believe is his 1961 TV Yellow SG with P-90s on day 6 of what will become their fifth album. 

And then there's this extended solo that Sherinian posted with glowing praise … and it is masterful stuff on his 'Burst Les Paul. Wonderful phrasing and feel here from Mr B, and a real workout. No wonder he looks tired afterwards!  

It's interesting to see the process in this way as this is the same solo, with a different approach here. 

Sherinian is really spoiling us now. Here's Joe again, getting tasty with a wah on the Les Paul. This time he's matched his cap to the finish – always good to see. Take notes, Slash. 

Another post reveals Joe brought six electric guitars into the studio for BCC V – two LPs, two Teles, the SG Special and a Strat. All fitted with gauge 11 guitar strings. 

The Les Paul on the far right of the pic above is Tommy Bolin's old 1960 Les Paul. And Joe shot a pic of Bolin's old Deep Purple bandmate Glenn Hughes with it. 

Joe has confirmed on Instagram that the Strat is his 1959 slab 'board model. And there's the curveball of a two-humbucker Tele in the mix alongside what we think is his favoured 1951 Nocaster aka The Bludgeon.  

Amp-wise it's a vintage tour de force too including a Fender Bandmaster, Marshall JTM-45, Vox AC30, Dumble Overdrive Special, what could be a Dumble-modded Ultra-Phonix Vibrolux and Robin Trower's old 1973 Marshall Tremolo Joe acquired in 2022.  

Joe doesn't do anything in half measures. By day four of the recording Joe later noted that the JTM-45 was proving to be the "star" of his amp arsenal. And he also went for a vintage classic effect moment too with the Boss Chorus Ensemble and an "Andy Summers" moment. 

It sounds like this album is shaping up very nicely – we believe recording is now done so now we've just got to to wait for mixing, mastering and a release date. Hopefully some live dates will follow too. 

Joe Bonamassa has more than enough electric guitars for any occasion but he knows as well as anyone it's about the player first. So when Guitarist asked him to try out two of the late Peter Green's guitars – including a 1968 Gretsch White Falcon and a 1931 National Duolian – they asked him if he thought it was  slightly unusual that the bluesman chose the former.

"You can play the blues on anything," replied Joe in the video above. "Son Seals played blues on a Guild. Muddy Waters played blues on a Guild. Bobby Parker, the legendary blues guys who has since passed away… he was this stone cold bluesman. And he showed up with a Dimebag Darrell [guitar] by Dean with the headstock modified. He ripped into the blues and he didn't care."

"That's the cool thing about the blues - you can play it on anything," added Joe. "That's why I love the fact Kirk Hammett has the [Greeny] Les Paul, he's playing his music on that guitar. The Les Paul shouldn't just be a blues guitar, and the Gretsch shouldn't just be a rockabilly guitar. You can play anything on any guitar – as long as it works and it's loud.

Amen to that! Though we can't imagine our neighbours agreeing with the last part. 

But the special Greeny issue of Guitarist magazine featuring Joe Bopnamassa and Kirk Hammett here. Both the guitars Joe plays in the video are part of a Bonhams auction of Peter Green guitars taking place 16-18 June in London. More info at Bonhams and check out our preview of the lots here. 

• "When he felt the spirit, he was untouchable" – the story of Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton and Peter Green

Joe Bonamassa has released a new studio recording of the old Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters standard I Want To Shout About It. A soulful work-out for his Fender Stratocaster, the track is taken from the blues guitar superstar’s forthcoming studio album.

There are as yet precious few details besides about this album besides the fact it exists, it’s coming, and Bonamassa’s close friend and collaborator Josh Smith is involved on the production side of things.

Some might well recognise it from Bonamassa’s recent run of shows in the UK and Europe, where the song made a regular appearance on the setlist. It was an excuse, if needed, to bring out the Strat and show the audience that the Bonamassa pipes are in good working order. 

He has scarcely sounded better on the mic, and as Smith notes in the statement accompanying the single’s release, wrapping your vocals around a track like this is not easy.

“Shout About It is a song originally by the great Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters with Darrell Nullisch on vocals,” said Smith. “It's a tough/high song to sing and Joe really pushed himself and nailed it. It’s a real rave up, a party song. Joe has been playing it live lately and the crowds are really digging it.”

Joe Bonamassa is always on tour, and if he is not on tour you might find him in the guitar store eyeing up an electric guitar that’s old enough to be his grandfather, but every now and then he will check himself into a high-class recording facility and get down to business. This forthcoming album will be out later in the year through J&R Adventures. 

I Want To Shout About It features Reese Wynans on organ, Paulie Cerra on sax, with DanniellDeAndrea and Charles Jones backing JoBo up with some stellar vocals.

Bonamassa’s calendar is packed. The next leg of his tour picks up in the US on 26 May at the Capitol Theater in Yakima, WA. After a few shows there and a month’s respite it is back on the long-haul back to Europe, no doubt sharing a G&T en route with a 1959 Les Paul Standard shackled in the seat next to him, with a full schedule of dates in July. On 9 August he is playing the Hollywood Bowl with an orchestral accompaniment. 

See Joe Bonamassa for full dates. In other Bonamassa news, the blues titan has released his long-awaited signature Fender '48 Dual Professional, which is available exclusively through his website. Bonamassa and Fender spend five years developing the long out of production tube amp.

Santana has covered it. Living Colour have covered it. Six Feet Under reimagined it as a death metal anthem and Hayseed Dixie turned it all different shades of bluegrass. Even Shakira has had a go. AC/DC’s Back In Black is one of those songs that everyone has taken a pass at, and now Joe Bonamassa has joined the club.

We are not actually sure what is the bigger story here, Bonamassa covering AC/DC, or just how the track turned out, because the world’s highest-grossing blues guitar star recently sat in with Scary Pockets to take the tempo – and the volume down – on a super-chill funk lounge version that features Joanna Jones on vocals. 

Appropriately for anyone preparing to assume Angus Young’s role in a band, Bonamassa raided the Nerdville electric guitar arsenal for a Gibson SG. Criminally, on this occasion we did not see Bonamassa in short trousers; he left the school uniform at home.

But then this is obviously an AC/DC cover that takes it as far from the original as possible. Isn’t that one of the rules of a cover version, to either play it straight or make it all your own? 

• Joe Bonamassa: the 10 guitarists that blew my mind

The performance also features Ryan Lerman who is playing what looks like a late ‘50s Harmony Meteor in natural finish – with what also looks like the original DeArmond gold-foil pickups. So you have both sides of the vintage electric guitar market covered; JB with the more aspirational Gibson SG, Lerman with a more affordable entry point for collectors, though with a guitar that is 100 per cent vibe.

Joining Bonamassa and Lerman are Dan Bailey on drums, Calvin Turner on bass guitar, with Jack Conte playing keys.

If the original Back In Black was a full-throated rock tribute to late AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, marking a triumphant comeback with Brian Johnson bringing some gravel to the mic for a new era for the band, this is the Back In Black you might here in the cocktail bar of an upmarket hotel chain. 

As on the original, it’s a verse-heavy arrangement that gives the singer a chance to vamp all over it, and here Joanna Jones sure cuts loose. But when it comes time to solo Bonamassa doesn’t miss, reworking it as fingerstyle blues. There was no need to dig out a vintage Schaffer-Vega Diversity System (SVDS) like the one Young used on to give his tone a little extra juice on Back In Black. This was all clean tone. 

Playing-wise was Bonamassa putting his feet up and having fun. After scoring his 26th number one blues album with Tales Of Time, he’s earned it. Bonamassa is on tour across Europe and plays the Stadthalle, Rostock, Germany tonight. He hits the UK in May. See Joe Bonamassa for full dates and ticket details.

This St Patrick’s Day, by all means avail enjoy a pint of plain – it’s only right. But for entertainment, why not revisit one of the great moments in blues guitar history when Joe Bonamassa took to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall, playing the late Rory Gallagher’s ’61 Strat?

It wasn’t the first time that Bonamassa got to play the late Irish blues-rock icon’s number one guitar onstage. A couple of years prior to Bonamassa’s 2013 headlining show at the Royal Albert, he played Gallagher’s Fender Stratocaster onstage for a two-night stint at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. 

Bonamassa’s then-girlfriend, the Scottish singer-songwriter Sandi Thom, knew the family, and arranged it with Gallagher’s brother Donal and son Dan to use the guitar for the night.

Bonamassa had a few hours with the Strat before the show, just to get the lay of the land, and speaking to MusicRadar after the event, he said it did not disappoint.

“My head was head was rushing,” he said. “Rory played a bunch of guitars in his time, but the '61 is the guitar. There is no other. When it came out of the gig bag, I was floored. There I was, looking at a piece of history. 

“Immediately I was in ‘Rory mode’. The pinch harmonics, the feel of the neck...there was big ‘Wow!’ factor. The thing is, this was a great guitar. If it belonged to Jerry Abrams from Peoria, Illinois, it’d still be a fantastic Strat. But it was Rory’s guitar. The contours, the heel, the fretboard…you could really feel that he'd played it and made it his own.”

We talk about guitars having songs in them but they have stories in them, too. Gallagher’s Strat lived hard and wore its experiences on its finish. The Fender Custom Shop charges an arm and a leg for such finishes these days. Gallagher’s acquired its scrapes the old-fashioned way, onstage and through misadventure.

It was stolen in the mid-‘60s, with the Rory Gallagher site reporting that the Strat spend a couple of nights in a rain-soaked ditch before it was reunited with its owner. Moisture was a recurring theme. Gallagher would sweat so much he’d have neck problems, swapping them out and leaving them to dry.

The Stratocaster was already worthy of note before finding its way into Gallagher’s possession in 1963. It was rumoured to be the first Strat to be sold in Ireland, and was originally ordered by Jim Conlon of The Royal Showband, only Conlon ordered a Fiesta Red model because back then everyone wanted to look like Hank Marvin. Ultimately, Gallagher bought it for £100 from Crowley’s Music Store, Cork, and paid it off in instalments. 

It would be modded extensively over the years, pickups, hardware, not to mention the swapping of the necks. Bonamassa might have been under the spell of that neck profile that had been manipulated under stress, night after night in Gallagher’s hands, but he did have the good sense to change the strings first – “probably the second time the strings have been changed since Rory died” – and played three tracks with it, including Cradle Rock.

On 30 March 2013, Donal Gallagher lent Bonamassa the Strat again, and he put it to good use during the encore with a rendition of the Tim Curry standard Sloe Gin. Check it out. And chase it down with some highlight's of Gallagher's performances over the years at Montreux in the video above, which go some way to explain why Bonamassa was blown away to get his hands on the great man's guitar.

Bonamassa is quite literally at sea right now, playing on the KTBA III Cruise Tour. When he gets back on terra firma, he'll be gearing up for the Byron Bay Bluesfest, in Australia, on 8 April, before embarking on an extensive European tour later in the month, opening at Helsinki Hall, Finland, on 19 April, hitting the UK on 5 May when he rocks up at the International Centre, Bournemouth. See Joe Bonamassa for all dates.

Joe Bonamassa has posted a dispatch from Nerdville that promises we will see the release of his much-anticipated Fender ’48 Dual Professional JB Edition signature guitar amp some time soon. 

Bonamassa first unveiled the project in April 2022, posting a demo video to his Instagram account and sharing some of the details of the amplifier. Now, after what has been a five-year process, the amp is finished, its release imminent.

Bonamassa does reveal any specifics but the amp looks ready. Bonamassa sounds ready for it. And we sure are all ready to see it live in the Tweed.

The ’48 Dual Professional JB Edition is a 26-watt 2x10 combo amp , and a clearly has been a labour of love for Bonamassa and the Fender team, with a host of period-correct specs augmented by some signature updates.

It has the classic split grille design, with vertical chrome strip, Tweed covering and brown mohair style grille clothe. The Fender badge is mounted on the cabinet in the old-school block type logo. The control panel and inputs are mounted on the top of the amp.

When he first unveiled it, Bonamassa promised vintage amp cork sniffers they were in for a treat. “We’re anoraks, we’ve recreated the original font and look of the original tube chart [in the back of the amp],” he said.

Bonamassa did however swap out the original Jensen PM10-C Alnico speakers out for an all-new speaker design from Celestion. The British speaker company was only too happy to downsize Bonamassa’s signature drivers from 12” to 10” for the project. 

“Now they are 35-watt, Joe B-branded Celestion ceramic speakers which I found sound good in the amp,” said Bonamassa. “I prefer them to the Alnicos, but that’s just my preference – I’m just one man.”

Exactly, there are no rules, especially when the amp is taking your name. Other features are more practical, such as the cage guard around the tubes – a prophylactic measure that makes sense when you consider how hot a vacuum tube runs. “You cannot trust human beings not to grab a molten, 600-degree bulb of glass!” said Bonamassa.

Bonamassa is having something of a social media moratorium after an online contretemps, with all future posts coming from his team, but it has not slowed his willingness to tease the odd gear release. 

Last month, he posted a video from Nashville that suggested he was working with IK Multimedia in creating a digital model of his live rig. The blues guitar superstar is presently on tour in the US, playing the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia, tomorrow night (15 February). See Joe Bonamassa for dates.