Joe Bonamassa reveals thoughts on modern blues rock
Joe Bonamassa is assuring blues rock fans that the genre is “not dead”—at least, it isn’t “yet.”
But the economic realities that touring musicians face these days do make it a tough job, one where success and fame often take years to achieve for even the most dedicated players.
“The cost of doing business is up,” Bonamassa said during a recent interview with Blues Rock Review. “Gasoline, hotels, lodging, meals—all of the trappings of the road that you have to pay for off the top line are more expensive. And so the margins are less.”
The three-time Grammy-nominated guitarist laughed a bit when he recalled an article he’d read in which one musician described themselves as “a T-shirt salesman,” a nod to the important role merchandise sales play for artists nowadays. “That’s a pretty cynical way to look at it, but, you know, the ancillary revenue on the road is more critical now than it’s ever been,” Bonamassa said.
Even physical media has a different meaning to fans in the 21st century, with so many turning to streaming services for their music. The artists who take the time to sign the CDs they sell at shows need to be aware that, “chances are, that CD will never see the inside of a CD player,” Bonamassa said. “They’re autograph widgets, you know?”
While the business side of music has changed, Bonamassa said there is still “a lot of great new talent in the blues rock world.”
“There’s a lot of people out there fighting the good fight,” he said. “And that’s always encouraging.”
When it comes to the status of modern blues rock, there always seems to be concern that the genre might be dying out or on the cusp of some kind of irrevocable transformation. But Bonamassa has noticed a trend among the artists who champion the blues. About once a decade, “there’s somebody that just comes in and nails it,” Bonamassa said. He identified Christone “Kingfish” Ingram as the most recent guitar phenom to break through before listing Gary Clark Jr., Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Eric Gales and himself as among the guitarists who previously broke through the white noise of the music industry.
“Every 10 years, there’s a Gary Clark Jr. that comes along,” he said. Though fans tend to celebrate those artists as “the new savior of the blues,” Bonamassa argued the genre has “never really” faded away.
“It’s good—the state of the music is good,” he said. But even artists who break through, as Bonamassa did, don’t necessarily get the status they might have envisioned for themselves when they first launched their careers in music.
“Rome’s not built in a day, you know? Just because I opened for the Rolling Stones doesn’t mean it’s like, OK, fast-track me into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Bonamassa said. “It’s a process, and it’s not contingent on a record. It’s a body of work, and it’s your live show.”
Bonamassa quickly clarified that making records isn’t as important now as it was when he began releasing music in the early 2000s. If artists these days “can just keep churning out cool singles, keep feeding the machine and just keep the momentum going, yeah—you’re going to do very well.”
Even with that recipe for success, Bonamassa reiterated that making it takes time. He discouraged aspiring musicians from setting age- or year-specific goals for their success, noting that it’s tough to predict when their trajectory will change. He cited Joanne Shaw Taylor as an example of an artist who is “doing well” and “starting to sell really nice theaters.”
“But she’s been in the game 20 years,” he added. “Same thing with Samantha Fish.”
Taylor and Fish “wouldn’t be who they are” if they’d set timers for their success, Bonamassa said. It was the same story for his own career. “If I’d quit when I was 30, my big moment was four days before my 32nd birthday,” he said. “You never know. But you’ve got to stay in it long enough to see it through.”
