Soloing Over a Minor Blues with Joe Bonamassa
TALES FROM NERDVILLE by Joe Bonamassa
GREEN LIGHT
Way back in 2003 — 20 years ago! — 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 — 20 years ago! — 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
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:09 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,
00:20 arrangers, songwriters, and actually rolled with
00:25 BB King back in the day 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.
00:44 So on this 24 hour blues thing,
00:47 it was actually Larry Carlton playing guitar on it and playing brilliantly.
00:52 It was an all-star band based in the West Coast and the song is really cool.
00:56 So the groove is like this and it's a minor blues.
01:00 [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 emotive 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 kind of stuff we do, a half step bend.
02:23 [MUSIC]
02:41 So that was the approach I took on the solo.
02:43 And there's one riff that I did in the solo when you finally hear this,
02:47 that I'm not gonna try to recreate now because I wouldn't be able to recreate it
02:50 if my life depended on it.
02:52 And it was just one of those stream of consciousness things where I just kept
02:57 going for this thing 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.
03:26 [MUSIC]