Guitar Maestro Joe Bonamassa Keeps It Righteous With ‘Royal Tea’ (INTERVIEW)

For those who thought Joe Bonamassa’s debut album, A New Day Yesterday in 2000, was the second coming of the blues, you have just been served an almost pure perfection update with A New Day Now to celebrate its 20th anniversary. With it, Bonamassa has done something so rare, which is to actually make a great album better. Singing with a voice dripping with an authenticity that can only come with age, and a bit of life’s travails behind him, songs such as the Warren Haynes penned “If Heartaches Were Nickels,” that originally featured Gregg Allman and Leslie West, Al Kooper’s “Nuthin’ I Wouldn’t Do,” and his own “Colour & Shape” and “I Know Where I Belong,” vibrate with a fresh intensity that is mirrored by his guitar playing. It’s like an A with a hundred plus signs next to it.

Having wanted to redo that album for like forever, and with it now done and on the shelves, Bonamassa is about to unleash another soon-to-be-classic album titled Royal Tea, an ode to his love for British Blues. Officially coming out in October, a few tracks have already dropped: “When One Door Opens,” “Why Does It Take So Long To Say Goodbye” and “A Conversation With Alice.” All feature the guitar god at the top of his game, as a musical artist and as a songwriter. “Beyond The Silence,” another track from Royal Tea, is bloody blues brilliant while “High Class Girl” punctuates a ’50s bounce with just enough snark to keep it edgy, “Lookout Man” skirts John Mayall and Deep Purple, and the title track stomps with a Clapton slowness that builds into a classic sixties pop inferno. All originals by Bonamassa and recorded at the infamous Abbey Road Studios in London, he has gone as close to the heart of British rock as he could immerse himself.

Attempting to think of something new to say about Bonamassa is a task unto itself. Hundreds of publications have praised his playing, his vocals, his songs, his band. Fans come out in droves to see the once boy wonder emote with every drop of sweat that pours off his brow. His peers have joined him onstage and in the studio and heaped upon him their revered accolades. For the kid who opened for BB King when he was only twelve years old, his passion has taken him higher than his dreams could have imagined. He now produces – and was awaiting, as we spoke, the arrival of Eric Gales to begin work on his album – and he has his own interview series.

On top of all that, Bonamassa will be doing a live Pay-Per-View event on September 20th, from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville (details can be found on his website, https://jbonamassa.com/, and other social media). He will be performing Royal Tea in its entirety as well as other classic songs from his catalog. So when Bonamassa called in the other day to talk, he had a lot to talk about, starting with the upcoming concert.

You have a virtual concert coming up on September 20th. Tell us more about that.

Well, it’s live at the Ryman. There will be no people, other than the people onstage obviously. And we’re going to do a good old-fashioned pay-per-view event. The money’s going to go to our Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation and we’re going to make a DVD out of it and a cut for PBS and everything. Its also, because having no one in the Ryman Auditorium except for cardboard cutouts of people in the seats that donate to our charity – kind of like what Major League Baseball is doing and stuff – it’s going to be a snapshot in time. You’ll always remember this DVD, you’ll always remember this year; I don’t think there is any way we WON’T remember this year in our lifetime. So it’s going to be a snapshot in time and we’re going to play our entire new album, top to back, and then we’re going to play some old stuff and then there’s going to be like an extra livestream event with some of our friends in Keeping The Blues Alive who have been on our cruises over the years who have donated some tracks. So it’ll be like a three hour, four hour, deal.

Is it going to be easy to feed off an empty auditorium, since you absorb so much from the live crowd and now you’re just going to be feeding off cardboard?

(laughs) Yeah, well, you know, we’re all pros and we’ve done live in-studios before, you know what I mean. As soon as the red light goes on, you’re hammering down, you’re playing like there’s no tomorrow. And yes, is it going to be different? A hundred percent. Is it going to affect the performance in different ways? Maybe. But I think in some ways it’s going to be better and in some ways you’re going to go, well, there’s no crowd. So musically I think we’re going to get a better performance cause you’re not playing to somebody in the front row. Energy-wise, we’re going to try to do our best to siphon as much energy from those cardboard people as we can.

You recently released an anniversary edition of your first album. How long have you been wanting to “fix” the first album?

Since 2000. You know, after about a year I couldn’t listen to it. And I’ve been thinking about this for five years. If we ever did a 20th-anniversary edition, I have to re-sing it, I have to fix it. There’s no law saying that a reissue record has to be the same tracks and I went to the Library Of Congress and consulted the great legal minds of this country, and I said, you know what, it’s all my rights to get those master tapes out and erase all those damn lead vocals and do it again. And that’s what I did.

The song “If Heartaches Were Nickels,” has become much more authentic sounding on the new version. What did you do to make it better, besides get older?

(laughs) Besides get old, I mean, it’s funny, cause we started to play that song again about a year ago and I arranged it for horns and background singers and everything and it was going over great. And then I re-sang it so I had had some time with it again. The original version had Gregg Allman and Leslie West on it and unfortunately those master tapes were lost. So it boiled down to, well, we have this kind of husk of a version, let’s just start again and look at it from forty-three year old eyes as opposed to twenty-two year old eyes.

When you’re composing your original music, what is most common for you?

I like to start with lyrics. I like to start with a title and I like to start with verses or a chorus and then make something out of it. I find those songs turn out better for some reason. It’s just a hard thing to come up with a riff and then sit down and, well, what do I want to say? The possibilities are infinite but then, are they really? Cause it’s harder to come up with stuff that means something. You come up with a catchy phrase or something that really speaks to you or means something to you, it’s much easier to put music to that than it is to go, well, I’ve got this killer riff. To me, you’ve got to have a killer title or some sort of chorus going first. So I write lyrics first, chorus, verse, and then the riffs come.

Do you have a backlog of riffs?

They’re so easy to come up with because you don’t want to ride on the same trail as everybody else, so it’s easy to come up with little twists and turns that make it interesting for not only yourself but the listener.

When you first started learning to play guitar, and you were really young, what was the hardest thing for you to get the hang of?

I think developing your own tone is difficult. It’s not hand-eye coordination, it’s muscle memory and it’s strength in your hands. It’s the note within the note, the little subtleties that make a pro a pro. When you hear someone that has been doing it for a long time, you know that person knows what they’re doing, cause they have control over every aspect of the instrument. The instrument doesn’t control them. That’s what you look for in a great guitarist. That’s what you look for in a great racecar driver. That’s what you look for in someone who has been in business or any profession. It’s the macro, it’s the little things, the subtle things. Like, anybody can ask questions, okay, but do you ask interesting questions that not only interest yourself but also the reader or the viewer. That’s the difference between being a pro and just asking questions. And it’s the same thing with guitar.

You mentioned tone but being as young as you were, did you realize what tone was?

I knew what I wanted to hear. I didn’t know how to achieve it. As you get older, then you go, okay, now I know how to achieve this, if there’s a specific sound in your head. So at first you’ve got the world as your oyster, you can sit there and play with all this stuff. My dad ran a music store in the nineties so I had access to all this stuff.

Was there ever a time when you were too much inside your head to get out what you wanted?

No. That’s why I’ve avoided really learning music in the sense that I don’t know music theory. I know enough to get in trouble and I know enough to play in the right key but as far as music theory in the sense that I can’t tell you what an augmented thirteen chord is but I can play an augmented thirteen but I’m unaware of it. It prevents you from getting into your own head and going, well, the rule book says I can’t really do this and blah-blah-blah.

When did you realize that it’s not always about how many notes you play?

When I first saw BB King. He plays one note, he just has that knack, had that knack, and he also had that knack to emote and it’s this emotive thing that not many people ever achieve. It’s that direct connection to everyone’s soul. It could be 2000 people in the audience, could be twenty people in the audience, he had a direct conduit.

The Royal Tea track “Beyond The Silence” is timeless. How did that song start and change and become what it is?

It didn’t change much. I wrote it at Abbey Road by myself; it’s one of the few songs on the record that I wrote solely by myself. I had the afternoon to just mess with things and I just started messing with a baritone guitar and I came up with the lyrics and I started sketching them out and got the chorus and when I presented it to Kevin Shirley [producer], it was like, well, we’re going to make this real big and heavy and do our thing. I think it came out great. The album is very British. My goal was to make it sound British. But I have so much music influences, everything from Traditional music, stuff from Africa, music that comes from the Americas, to blues to rock, everything. 

Being in a studio, do you feel more like a caged animal or totally free?

I can’t wait to get out of there. I am not a studio rat. We work between like 11:00 and 5:00, 6:00, and I’m out, can’t do it anymore. I’m not one of those kids that get in there and light a bunch of candles and incense and try to summon the creative god. I’d rather get my act together, go in there and cut it and hit the car, Sinatra-style.

Do you like producing, considering you do not like a studio?

I do like producing because I get to exercise my ultimate narcissism. I boss better musicians than myself around. I like bossing people around (laughs). But I really enjoy producing records for other artists. It’s something I picked up about three years ago when Reese Wynans asked me to do his record and I literally just flourished with that. After the second day, I went, wow, I really enjoy this.

So you didn’t feel those walls closing in

No, but I’m still an 11 to 5 guy. We’re in there by 11:00 and I try to cut the band by 3:00 and do little tidy ups and overdubs and by 5:00 I’m like, dinner time.

When was the first time you remember that you really went outside your comfort zone?

I think I’ve been out of my comfort zone a bunch. I did records with Rock Candy Funk Party, I’ve done collaborations with like Jon Lord and the London Philharmonic and that’s very challenging.

Is that a whole different frame of mind to work with like Jon Lord?

Yes, you try to play the right part for the music you’re playing but you also have to be yourself.

You worked with Dion on his latest record. How did you hook up with him?

Dion and I have been friends for a long time and he’s actually a neighbor of my manager in Florida. He’s been a big supporter of mine and he simply asked me, “I’ve got this track that I’m doing,” and then he asked us to put the record out for him and we totally did. He’s a hoot.

How do you feel about Eric Clapton?

I can never repay Eric Clapton for the debt of gratitude that I owe him for what he did for me in 2009. He put me in business and he’s as good as you think. The thing about Mr. Clapton is he has this way of calmly being badass. He just stands up there and plays; he’s not jumping around and it just makes you feel good and it’s calm and then you listen back and go, man, that’s like killer, badass stuff. And then he sings. And then he plays his song. And you go, if he’s not the greatest of all time, I’m not sure who is. He is the person that you go: great songs, great playing, great singing, multiply that over five decades and it’s almost unrepeatable at this time.

Have you played at the Jazz Fest in New Orleans?

Never been invited. I don’t know why I’ve never been invited. Everybody says, “Joe, you should play Bonnaroo,” and I’m like, never been invited. I’m not going to show up with four buses, three semi-trucks and thirty people and go, “Where do I set this shit up?” without a formal invitation.

Where do you think the chemistry lies between you and Beth Hart?

Truth be told, we’ve been working together for ten years and we’ve done four records: three studio and a live one. Throughout all of that, I don’t even have her phone number, if you can believe that. I’ve always been routed through management and we very rarely directly speak. We work well together as musicians and because my idea in 2009 when I approached her about all this stuff was she needed songs and a real band and we got her songs and a real band and she flourished with it. But as far as our chemistry, it’s a very strange story and I’ve never been able to figure it out. It’s not that I dislike her, I think she’s fantastic, but we’re not hanging.

When did you fall in love with horns?

When I heard BB King’s band for the first time. I went, I want THAT. Then I heard Ronnie Earl had horns and then I heard Roomful Of Blues. I just think horns are the coolest. To me, it’s Chicago blues.

What do you think of the music down here in New Orleans?

You know, one of the things about gentrification of cities, like, it used to be when I first started touring almost thirty years ago, you go down to New Orleans and you see New Orleans type stores; there would be a different supermarket, a different hardware store, it was more mom and pop. Then you travel up to Nashville and you’d see the Piggly Wiggly for the first time. The same thing with music. It was regionalized. Like when Muddy Waters traveled from Mississippi to Chicago and then it was the Chicago sound and the New York sound and then the Boston sound; San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, Nashville. The problem with the communication, everything being so gentrified, is that the music starts to sound the same everywhere. So the regional dialects of music, those edges get worn down. It’s kind of like, every strip mall has a Staples and a Hobby Lobby and it’s the same in Louisiana as in New York State. Some of that culture that influences the music is kind of going away in lieu of commerce.

Yet you love your “British” blues

Same story. They learned from the Chicago guys but they put their own spin on it and then sold it back to us. The musicians in New Orleans were just servicing the community. These people like to dance, this is our style to make them dance. Boom. That was it, that simple. Then there were the regional record companies going, “Hey, we should record you Allen [Toussaint], come here and record for us.” And they put out regional singles: the same thing happened at Capricorn Records in Georgia. The same thing happened in Muscle Shoals. You had these regional labels. Chess was a regional label. Stax was a regional label. Then Atlantic partnered up with them and took them national. Decca was the record label in London so you got John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and so on and so on. They were servicing the community.

You’ve mentioned Paul Kossoff in the past as being an influence and he does not get mentioned enough.

He tragically died very young. I mean, the fact that Free is not in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame is insane to me. I mean, “Alright Now” is one of the most played singles of all time, if not the most spun single of all time. You’re like, if that’s not rock & roll, I don’t get it.

You have ventured into journalism with your own program where you interview all these rock stars and famous people. What are you most interested in finding out about them?

So I’m not going to ring up Brad Paisley and go, “Hey, what’s it like being a country superstar?” I don’t need to waste his time. What I’m interested in is the notion of the passion. Everyone gets in their chosen profession for a reason. Everyone makes that leap from casual music lover to okay, I’m picking up a guitar, I’m going to write a song, or do whatever, and then they come to a point in their life where they cannot NOT do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re Paul Stanley, who fills stadiums, or Brad Paisley or you’re a journalist or writer for the New York Daily News and have your own show on CNN. There’s a point where you go, I NEED to do this, I NEED to pursue this for a living. Even if I wasn’t making money at it, I would still do it. 

Everybody starts in their bedroom as a kid with that idea, going, “I’m going to figure this thing out.” And that’s what I’m interested in. It’s the journey and how you got there; the host, the conduit, who gave you a record, who gave you your first writing gig, who did what. Like Myles Kennedy, he’s chosen to spend his whole life in Spokane and now he’s got this great career but he also turned down Slash. He didn’t submit his demo tape in Velvet Revolver because he had his reasons. Those are the things I’m interested in, not so much the pedantic day-to-day questions. And on my show, nobody is flogging anything, you know what I mean. I rarely go, “Tell me about the new record.” That’s not what I’m interested in. They have 10,000 interviews that they’re going to do about the new record. I want to know what makes them who they are and that’s what I’m interested in.

Have you ever felt the hellhound on your trail?

See, the hellhound takes on a different personality and persona. Some people would say the hellhound is the guy from the IRS wanting his tax money. Some people would say it’s the bank when they foreclose on your house or a relationship that you can’t shake. It just depends. It has a different meaning to just about everyone you ask that. I’ve been lucky, I’ve never had the hellhound come after me but yet I’m only forty-three and the day is still young.

When you play do you feel an unusual tingle up your spine on certain songs?

There’s a few songs that I’m very proud of that I’ve written and they’re part of our catalog, and it’s a decent catalog, and yeah, there are certain ones, like our new live version of “If Heartaches Were Nickels.” I always look forward to singing that. I always look forward to hearing the horns, the background singers and everything put together. For me, it’s a real thrill. When it all comes together, it’s a good song and it’s a great band, there is nothing like it. That’s what keeps you coming back every day, keeps it from getting boring.

So the rest of your year is pretty much the PPV and the new album coming out

And then I go home

What are you going to do? Sit around and learn how to bake cookies?

No, I’ve actually lost fifteen pounds. I’m trying to buck the trend. The thing is, I initially gained seven or eight pounds when I came home and was depressed and was like, whatever and just ate everything. My ideal weight is 175 and I got on the scale and was like 190 pounds. I said, I got to get my stuff together here because I don’t want to have twenty-five pounds to lose. I can do fifteen in about five or six weeks but twenty-five or thirty, that’s half a year, you know. I’ve lost a bunch of weight before and I kept it off for about twelve years now and the trick is, ten is easy to lose but thirty is not. So you kind of just have to identify what’s putting on the weight and then cut that out of your lifestyle.

Where is your ancestry, your lineage?

I’m a northern Italian. Some people have actually confused it with Cameroonian roots but to see a picture of me, there is no way Joe Bonamassa and any of Joe Bonamassa’s family has origins in Camaroon. It does not take paying Ancestry.com to figure that out (laughs). We are not Cameroonian. We are from the northern part of Italia. 

Did you have grandmas that would holler at you in Italian?

No, a little cussing. That was the only language they kept. My great-great grandfather came from Italy to Ellis Island, you know, classic story, late 1800’s. My great-grandfather was a very accomplished trumpet player in the 1920’s and 1930’s. My grandpa was a trumpet player. My dad is a guitar player and a guitar dealer. So I’m fourth generation of Bonamassa’s who made a living playing music.

Where did your great-grandpa play his trumpet?

My great-grandfather, Dominic, he was regionally based in Utica, New York, but back then there were no deejays so if they were going to throw a dance they had the orchestra – he played with Mickey Collea who had a small orchestra so it was like drums, piano, a couple of horns – and they would play like jitterbugs and dances, old-timey stuff. Then they would play serious jazz. The second set was serious jazz to clear people out. Then my grandfather played trumpet in regional bands in upstate New York, again the same situation, where he’s like, somebody wants a 12-piece, okay, he gets a call from the union, it was very union based, and then he played with the military band.

Did he ever record anything?

No, that’s the thing. I’m the only Bonamassa to ever record a record. My father did some demos in the seventies and eighties to basically get his band out there cause that’s how you used to get booked, was with those classic 8×10’s and a demo tape. He did some demos in studios but I’m the first to ever record on a label and have something released.

 

Live photographs by Robert Sutton, Amy Harris, Marc Lacatell & Mary Andrews

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