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.
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MusicTranscript
00:00Hey there guys, Joe Bonamassa, and one of the songs on Blues Lux Vol. 2 is 24 Hour
00:15Blues by the late great Bobby Blue Bland.
00:18Always one of my favorite singers, band leaders, arrangers, songwriters, and I actually rolled
00:25with B.B.
00:26back in the day, and B.B. encouraged him to be a solo artist.
00:30Some of those records that they did, Let the Good Times Roll, and all those sides that
00:34they cut, especially live, they were friends, and what a time to be alive.
00:41This is why I need a time machine, so I can go back and see those concerts.
00:45So on this 24 Hour Blues thing, it was actually Larry Carlton playing guitar on it, and playing
00:51brilliantly.
00:52It's an all-star band based in the West Coast, and the song's really cool.
00:56So the groove is like this, and it's a minor blues.
00:59So it's...
01:01You know, pretty standard.
01:12And then, you know...
01:27So my approach to playing minor blues, I really like to explore the lower strings.
01:33I think it's more emotive, and, you know, you get stuff...
01:52So you can explore those kind of lower bends.
02:20And I like all that kind of stuff where you do a half-step bend...
02:23So that was the approach I took on the solo.
02:44And there's one riff that I did in the solo, when you finally hear this, that I'm not going
02:48to try to recreate now, because I wouldn't be able to recreate it if my life depended
02:52on it.
02:53And it was just one of those stream-of-consciousness things, where you know, I just kept going
02:57for this thing, and I'll probably screw it up now, you know.
03:11It was something like that.
03:12And it was just one of those things, you just go for it when you feel it.
03:16And luckily, I stuck the landing.
03:17It was like my one big Olympic moment, you know.
03:21It was the gold medal winner.
03:23Today we weren't even on the podium.