Joe Bonamassa
The Ballad of John Henry

Bonamassa on autopilot: one album a year in his name (and soon there will be those with the gritty Beth Hart, and others with the didactic Black Country Communion of Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham), plus two hundred concerts between one and the other, generously documented by frequent releases of live albums… the man seems to have infinite energy, all dedicated to expressing his enormous passion for music and the guitar.

Here we are still in 2009, and this seventh studio work allows somewhat more space for his own compositions: this time there are seven out of twelve. The illustrious colleagues from the more or less recent past considered for the usual Bonamassa treatment, that is, masculine rhythms and guitars of every kind, are on this occasion Tom Waits, Sam Brown (blond blue-eyed soul singer), Michael Bublé (!!!... it must be producer Kevin Shirley who suggests these out of the box songs to see how much his client can twist and make them his own…), Ike & Tina Turner, and Tony Joe White.

Well, the best track from my point of view is titled “Happier Times” and it is an extensive lament towards a woman he has recently split with. His broken heart inspires bespectacled Joe to create a delicious melody, almost hypnotic, and an equally touching guitar solo sublimated by the fiery, thundering rolls of his excellent regular drummer, Anton Fig, whose face and skill many of us know since he was in Paul Shaffer's orchestra, the musical director of the David Letterman Show.

Another gem of the album, this one a bit more for insiders, is the instrumental “From the Valley”, skillfully performed on a resonator guitar, meaning a regular acoustic guitar but with a metal body, which makes the sound more powerful and penetrating, as well as distinctive. Bonamassa plays it divinely, with all the sensitivity and attention to nuances he is capable of, Shirley adds a fabulous reverb and the game is done: it's delightful, as far as I'm concerned.

This time, I won't go on and won't point out anything else about this usually interesting work of the chubby American guitar, blues, and rock talent. It deserves the classic four solid stars.