Soloing Over a Minor Blues with Joe Bonamassa
TALES FROM NERDVILLE by Joe Bonamassa
GREEN LIGHT
Way back in 2003 Joe Bonamassa recorded a collection of some of his favorite blues classics, such as B.B. King’s “You Up- set Me Baby,” Freddie King’s “Pack It Up” and Muddy Waters’ “Walkin’ Blues,” and released the album Blues Deluxe, which went on to become one of his most well-known recordings. Joe recently got to work on recording its followup, aptly titled, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, on which he covers another handful of some of his all-time favorite blues songs.
GREEN LIGHT
Way back in 2003 Joe Bonamassa recorded a collection of some of his favorite blues classics, such as B.B. King’s “You Up- set Me Baby,” Freddie King’s “Pack It Up” and Muddy Waters’ “Walkin’ Blues,” and released the album Blues Deluxe, which went on to become one of his most well-known recordings. Joe recently got to work on recording its followup, aptly titled, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, on which he covers another handful of some of his all-time favorite blues songs.
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 Hey there guys, Joe Bonamassa,
00:11 and one of the songs on Blues Lux Volume 2 is 24 Hour Blues by the late great Bobby Bluebland.
00:18 Always one of my favorite singers, band leaders,
00:21 arrangers, songwriters, and actually rolled with BB King back in the day,
00:27 and BB encouraged him to be a solo artist.
00:29 Some of those records that they did,
00:31 Let the Good Times Roll and all those sides that they cut, especially live.
00:36 They were friends and what a time to be alive.
00:41 This is why I need a time machine so I can go back and see those concerts.
00:45 So on this 24 Hour Blues thing,
00:47 it was actually Larry Carlton playing guitar on it and playing brilliantly,
00:52 and it was an all-star band based in the West Coast,
00:55 and the song is really cool.
00:56 So the groove is like this and it's a minor blues.
00:59 So it's [MUSIC]
01:11 pretty standard.
01:11 [MUSIC]
01:27 So my approach to playing minor blues,
01:30 I really like to explore the lower strings.
01:33 I think it's more motive and you get stuff like,
01:37 [MUSIC]
01:52 So you can explore those lower bend.
01:55 [MUSIC]
02:20 I like all that stuff we do,
02:22 the half-step bend.
02:25 [MUSIC]
02:41 So that was the approach I took on the solo.
02:44 And there's one riff that I did in the solo when you finally hear this,
02:47 that I'm not going to try to recreate now because I wouldn't be able to recreate it
02:51 if my life depended on it.
02:52 And it was just one of those stream of consciousness things where I just kept going for this,
02:58 and I'll probably screw it up now.
03:00 [MUSIC]
03:11 It was something like that.
03:12 And it was just one of those things you just go for it when you feel it.
03:16 And luckily, I stuck the landing.
03:17 It was like my one big Olympic moment.
03:20 It was the gold medal winner.
03:23 Today, we weren't even on the podium.
03:25 [MUSIC]