Joe Bonamassa "Dust Bowl"

Simply put, an early candidate for Album of the Year.  Since I jumped on this guy's bandwagon in '08, it's safe to say this is my favorite piece of work by the prolific guitarist.  My friend Bob had sent me the title track as a pre-release teaser, and upon the initial listen, I knew something special was soon to follow.  The song's got this 70's rock vibe with a haunting, rumbling bass line.  So I bought "Dust Bowl" as soon as possible and popped it in the changer.  The first track is called "Slow Train", and about thirty seconds into it, this shit-eating grin spreads across my face and remains there for the next six minutes of power blues.  The great title track follows, and well, this might be the best opening eleven minutes of any album in recent memory.  Track 3 starts and (imagine the standard soundbite of a needle pulling across a vinyl record)...WTF?  Is that John Hiatt?!  OK...wow...a severe left turn musically, but I love Mr. Hiatt and he wrote the song "Tennessee Plates" and trades vocals and guitar with JB.  So now we have a slight shift in direction, as JB has always included several covers per album, but now has the songwriter play along with him.  Also appearing with his own composition is Vince Gill, and "Sweet Rowena" could easily be mistaken for a lost Little Feat track.  Guesting on a cover of Paul Rodgers' song "Heartbreaker," the title track from Free's final album in 1972, is Glenn Hughes, his bandmate in Black Country Communion.  Other covers come from Julie London, Little Walter, Tim Curry, and
the Karen Lawrence-penned "Prisoner", which was a big hit for Babs Streisand from the movie "Eyes of Laura Mars."  As you may guess, I like this version better, and I believe it's more in line with the composer's original intent. 

Another of my favorite tracks along with the two openers is a JB composisition, "Last Matador of Bayonne," which has this lonely single trumpet floating in the background and JB's searing solo, the kind that provides goose bumps.  I've said it before, but he could easily do a complete record of his own material and I would be a happy man.

The greatest asset for JB is his continuous study of music and musicians.  I found a recent interview in which he cites a couple of my favorites as early influences, Paul Kossoff and Tommy Bolin, and both of these guys were dead before JB was born!  He also mentioned Gary Moore in the interview, and I heard plenty of his spirit on this album (RIP Gary).  I think JB has learned quite a bit of rock history over the last couple of years with Mr. Hughes, though honestly, I wasn't as infatuated with the BCC record as many were, and probably my least favorite track from "Dust Bowl" is the Free cover he's on.  If you search YouTube, you will find JB playing with all sorts of people, all the while observing and absorbing the other guitarist while smokin' along, ie. this Walter Trout video from '07.  He's on tour in Australia now, and on his Facebook page, he posted about Cold Chisel's Ian Moss joining him onstage a couple of days ago in Sydney for a cover of "Further On Up the Road."  Now THAT is something I'll be trolling YouTube for.  Yep, found it.  Mossy looked a bit overwhelmed, but as Joe says, last time he played that song was with some guy named Clapton.

Joe keeps looking for great guitarists from around the globe to observe and learn.  You have to love him for that...