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What the holy sh.... is this.... *lol*. I would have expected anything, but not a behaved bookkeeper from the local council house, or should I rather describe it a mixture of Kiefer Sutherland meets Al Capone with a loss of at least 40 pounds of weight since last time.... Long live the weightwatchers - respect. So when I remember the last show I've seen with Mr. Bonamassa, then I have the impression, that this here is total different person up there. 

First when he starts to work on his 6 strings (it's even 12 in the beginning), then you realize, that this is still him the wunderkind from Utica, NY, who started out in 2000 just aged 23 to conquer the world of Blues. And from then and the debutalbum 'A New Day Yesterday' he went up the peak of success. 'till this very day, six more albums have come out, whereby the latest release named 'The Ballad Of John Henry', has just arrived. Meanwhile Joe is 32 year old and still so young for a Bluesman. Apart from his complete visual change over, also his selfconfidence has established much more. Oh, and yes, he's got a different band this time, with one more musician. It's Carmine Rojas on E-Bass, Keyboarder Rick Melick  and Bogie Bowles on drums.

But of course it's mainly Joe himself, who is the centerpoint of everybody's attention, and he once again shows, what world class guitarist he is. And there are a few more things, which have changed since last time. His solos have become a bit shorter and more compact. No 30 minutes solos anymore, but only with a length of aprox. 10 minutes the most. Also the voice has improved, and Joe shows, that his got a strong voice even without a microphone inbetween. The just mentioned selfconfidence is shown by his announcements inbetween the songs. 


„The Ballad Of John Henry“ starts the set with the question: 'Who Killed John Henry'? It's a slow song with a edgy arrangement and a powerful solo, interesting keyboard passages and the 12 strings, which he only uses for this track. The opener is followed by another track named 'Last Kiss' from the latest CD. This one again shows a hell of intensity, drawing the whole audiances attention. 'So Many Roads' is next, followed by 'Mountain Time', which comes from the album 'So It's Like That'. It develops a rather exentric life for itselves thanks to a atmospheric guitar epos with a high potential to be a classic tune for sophisticated acoustic. By the way, the sound conditions are just great. The set continues this way with another highlight, of a 10 minutes almost acoustic performance of 'Woke Up Dreaming'.

Several times Joe says thank you to the Munich audiance. Our Muffathall is almost sold out, which means fairly 1.000 people. And he tells us proudly, that he recently stood on one stage together with Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall in London,England. You can feel his respect and devotion to Mr.Slowhand. It is pretty much obvious. 
One more change within this gig is the aspect, that he has become harder than before, and his blues music got much more rock inside now. It suits him, to be honest, and it makes this performance to variable trip into a fusion mixture of two different musical styles. 
After 2 hours phantastic Bluesrock including one encore it's over again. And all I have left to say: times of B.B. King supports have definately gone. And you can't name our blues orientated bookkeeper  a new generation musician anymore.
No, Joe Bonamassa is definately one of the best and innovative Bluesrock guitarist nowadays. 

Changeable also, because much later after this show, he suddenly doesn't seem anymore like Al Capone from the council house, but he rather seems very young again. Young as if he has just turned 20 again, but with a hell of a joke in his neck, as we say so..... check out  here
http://www.jbonamassa.com/