Some new Joe Bonamassa, Drive. You can download it free.
For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair
When Black Country Communion split the different factions went different directions. While Joe Bonamassa returned to “full time solo artist”, Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham joined forces with guitarist Andrew Watt and created California Breed. The betting at the time was California Breed would be an exciting new band, and Bonamassa would continue to make serviceable, yet sort of boring albums. The betting was wrong. California Breed’s debut album was a dreary 45 minutes of Glenn Hughes screamers, uninteresting and uninspired volume-rock.
Bonamassa, on the other hand, has returned with a fantastic blues album called Different Shades of Blue. The album features Bonamassa playing in various different blues formats and playing guitar better than he ever has. As a player he is, in fact, on fire throughout the album. Vocally, Bonamassa sounds like he learned a few lessons in his time beside Glenn Hughes, and he has a more versatile singing range than he has shown previously.
My hopes were not high for Different Shades of Blue in large part because his last album, Driving Towards the Daylight was so disappointing. Full of mediocre songs that lacked life, my personal expectations were not good that he could re-reach the form of The Ballad of John Henry a few albums back. But things changed when he released the single for the title track a month back. It is a pure guitarists blues song. And Bonamassa is brilliant on it, having a “Since I’ve Been Loving You” performance (guitarists can offer no higher praise). I keep re-listening to it, and I have been trying to figure out, when was the last time an established artist had a song this good? and I can’t come up with the answer. Possibly Springsteen somewhere on The Rising album. Maybe I have to go back as far as 1992 and Delbert McCLinton’s Everytime I Roll The Dice.
But the album doesn’t start and end with Different Shades of Blue. It is the best song, bar none, on an album full of great performances of great songs. Oh Beautiful!, Love Ain’t a Love Song, Heartache Follows Wherever I Go,So, What Would I Do are all excellent. And while some songs do suffer from Bonamassa’s tendency towards feeling soulless, those are few and by no means lousy songs. There is, in fact, not a bad song on the album, and more than a few great ones.
Different Shades of Blue will be released today and can be bought at your usual online sources, but really, run to the store and get it now. It’s simply too good to wait.
Tracklist
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
Oh Beautiful!
Love Ain’t a Love Song
Living on the Moon
Heartache Follows Wherever I Go
Never Give All Your Heart
I Gave Up Everything For You
Different Shades of Blue
Get Back my Tomorrow
Trouble Town
So, What Would I Do
Joe Bonamassa has announced the release of his latest album, Different Shades Of Blue.
Bonamassa is offering a download of the single for the small price of your email address (mailing lists have value, &tc.). Go here to get a free MP3 download of the song Different Shades of Blue.
One likes to believe in the freedom of music.Rush – Spirit of Radio.
A random thought passes as I listen to Black Country Communion’s new album Afterglow: with the recent bad blood between bassist Glenn Hughes and guitarist Joe Bonamassa, if Bonamassa was on fire, would Hughes put him out? 
Answer, not on Afterglow he doesn’t.
Throughout the band’s third studio album in as many years, Bonamassa’s playing is smoking: Big Train’s wah-wah infused rave up; the white hot solos on Midnight Sun and The Giver; the guitar intro to Midnight Sun; or the slow burning slide on Cry Freedom. Bonamassa lights the album up with his best playing to date with this band. Hughes response is to fuel the flames with a collection of songs of great licks and words that twist and turn, offer loud and soft (light and shade?) moments throughout.
If, as has been allowed as possible through various media outlets, this is the end of the line for Black Country Communion, it will prove to be a great pity. On reviewing their first album, I offered a number of times their influences came to the top, on their second album, I noted less of this. On this album, they sound from start to finish uniquely like themselves. Hey are a band that has found an identity. Moments like the dual Hughes/Bonamassa vocals on Cry Freedom or the tight, super-funky groove Hughes and drummer Jason Bonaham get on the Bonham penned piece Common Man sound like Black Country Communion and no one else.
You can’t talk about Afterglow without also mentioning Derek Sherinian, who takes a greater role than the first two albums, playing a couple of organ solos that are exceptional. His playing throughout is top notch.
Black Country Communion’s Afterglow, which was released Tuesday, is a great rock and roll album that will improve with time and listenings. It is what these guys do best, flat out rock.
If your in Ottawa this week, the news is all good: Joe Bonamassa is in town and the politicians aren’t. Tonight he’s in Ottawa, tomorrow in Toronto, with Montreal behind him already.
I gotta say I really have been loving the new Joe Bonamassa album, Dust Bowl. Man, this guy is good. Here’s the title track from Dust Bowl as played in Las Vegas a month ago.
Great guitar player, but he can write a lyric too:
Gonna make my own way, gonna head downtown,
Walk around, settle down, find me a proper drink,
Don’t need a helmet to get me through life,
I walk across the water, blame it on foolish pride.(Chorus)
Lifting me up, tearing me down,
All you give me is indecision the classic run-around,
Bringing me higher, keeping me whole,
Now I feel I’ve been living, living in a dustbowl.Diamonds and pearls, you’re that kinda girl,
You size me up to break me down while you’re sipping on your Crown Royal,
I’ll give you shelter, babe, it’s your call,
It’s hard to find the truth within when you are living in your own zone.(Chorus)
Lifting me up, tearing me down,
All you give me is indecision the classic run-around,
Bringing me higher, keeping me whole,
Now I feel I’ve been living, living in a dustbowl.Find in deception, the same kinda pain,
If all that’s left for me to lose, is meant for you to gain,
Playing it close, stealing your time,
Who cares anyway, I’ve gone the extra mile.(Chorus)
Lifting me up, tearing me down,
All you give me is indecision the classic run-around,
Bringing me higher, keeping me whole,
Now I feel I’ve been living, living in a dustbowl.Living in a dustbowl
Living in a dustbowl
The incredible Joe Bonamassa doing Led Zeppelin’s Tea for One in a Stunning piece of blues virtuosity:
All the work of blogging occasionally pays off, and in most unexpected coin. Through another blog I keep up, Ramble On, I was advanced a copy of the new “supergroup” Black Country Communion’s debut CD. I’ve been listening for four days now, and absolutely love this CD.
My review is in. Be sure to read it all, but here’s some highlights:
I woke up this morning with a part of a song stuck in my head… It is the latter song I can’t shake today. Specifically, it is the part of the song when the band comes out of the chorus: they have built up to a great crescendo, Glenn Hughes voice straining, Marshalls at 11 and they transition to guitarist Joe Bonamassa coming in with a tasty little guitar lick, bringing the band back down a notch. It is such a sweet, melodic little line: one of those moments when the music seems to sigh…
Joe Bonamassa on guitar, Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals, Jason Bonham on drums and Derek Sherinian on keyboards. Each has an impressive pedigree, each shines in their own way on the debut, self titled, album. The rhythm section carry song after song with pounding regularity. Derek Sherinian offers subtle touches of 70’s era keyboards, adding ambiance and feel, never taking over. And Joe Bonamassa is brilliant, his licks imaginative without overplaying…
At 73 minutes long, it would be my normal MO to complain that Black Country Communion is too long, anything over standard LP length of 45 minutes being an extravagance…
… this would be the first album where I would be tempted to give five stars…
As it is, Black Country Communion is the best post-Zeppelin work of anyone associated with Led Zeppelin.
Black Country Communion will be released Tuesday Sept 21
Black Country Communion
1. Black Country 3:15
2. One Last Soul 3:52
3. The Great Divide 4:45
4. Down Again 5:45
5. Beggarman 4:51
6. Song of Yesterday 8:33
7. No Time 4:18
8. Medusa 6:56
9. The Revolution in Me 4:59
10. Stand (At The Burning Tree) 7:01
11. Sista Jane 6:54
12. Too Late For the Sun 11:21
I am really liking what I have been hearing of the new “Supergroup” Black Country Communion, with Jason Bonham, Derek Sherinian, Glenn Hughes and Joe Bonamassa. Their first single, One Last Soul, is available for free download on their website (use the promo code OLS2010). It is excellent.
Then last week a video of them “recording,” The Great Divide, was released. Lets call it an easy 2 for 2:
In July 1966, myself, my brother and my mother jumped on a puddle hopper from Ireland to Scotland, and from Scotland came to Canada, where my father had arrived, found a job and set up a home three months earlier. The story is a family legend: mom almost didn’t come. Husband or no husband, Ireland was home. Standing at the airport, surrounded by family, she was having doubts. Then my grandfather took me by the hand and led my brother and myself to the plane. Dazed, mom followed us kids. My energetic brother, and me, dragging a teddy bear almost as big as me. A good story, a yarn, even perhaps. I have told the teddy bear story for years, and always wondered how accurate it was.
Last Friday, I found out. Not the day, not the event, but the very moment of my grandfather taking me to the plane was caught on film. For the first time in my life, 43 years later, I saw this picture last week.
In case your wondering, the Teddy Bear is still around: both of my kids played with it. He lives at my mother in laws place, along with all the grandkids favourite stuffed animals.
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