Fans thrilled as American guitarist embarks on tour of cultural influences from Celtic folk rock to Hendrix. In an interview with TimeOut before this, his first and only New Zealand show, American guitarist Joe Bonamassa said in passing he knew the audience for the blues was small, but that there was an audience out there.
And, as with other touring blues artists whose record sales can be
negligibly small in this country, Bonamassa - Grammy-nominated, with a back catalogue of at least a dozen albums but hardly a household name - found blues loyalists turned out for him in their legions.
In a game of two halves - an acoustic then an electric set - Bonamassa proved he was only nominally a blues player because the thrilling first half found him and the small band (which marshalled banjo, the Swedish nyckelharpa, Irish bodhran, jaw harp, keyboards and various percussion) exploring areas akin to Celtic folk-rock, traditional Irish music, North African sounds and furiously rhythmic world music of no fixed cultural abode.
Black Lung Heartache came with references to Indian drones and scraping fiddle, Jockey Full of Bourbon jaunted down to New Orleans courtesy of keyboards by Derek Sherinian, an under-utilised player on the night. If Bonamassa's vocals were somewhat undistinguished (and weak on Happier Times) the attention was always elsewhere in the surging and churning sounds which at times were more like Robert Plant's investigation of similar folk blues-cum-world music than the straight-ahead kiss-the-sky playing Bonamassa is renowned for. It was an exceptional set.
