Photo by DML
What about Joe Bonamassa?
That's what a Star Tribune reader asked when I declared Derek Trucks as the best guitar player on the planet under age 35 in a review of his concert this summer with Susan Tedeschi at the Minnesota Zoo.
I'd seen Bonamassa live only in a cameo at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2010 and on TV on PBS. So, to fairly evaluate him, I sat through a 2 1/4-hour performance by Bonamassa Tuesday night at the soldout State Theatre.
His guitar-hero reputation is warranted. But the former prodigy from Utica, N.Y. (dad owned a guitar shop) is no Derek Trucks. The super-talented Bonamassa was long on technique, flash and energy, but he was often more showy than soulful. Granted, he sings and Trucks doesn't. But Bonamassa's voice is thin and high, which doesn't always match the heaviness of his material.
As a guitarist, the 34-year-old wore his influences on the sleeve of his shiny black suit — Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Joe Satriani and even Jose Feliciano (both the acoustic guitar work and the wraparound shades).
Bonamassa was animated and physical, thrusting some devil's horns in the air but in a mocking way. He's actually more of a play-with-a-theremin kind of a guy than a dance-with-the-devil dude (though his drummer, Tal Bergman, looked like he could have been cast for an American version of "Spinal Tap"). The guitarist/singer was chatty in a friendly way, recalling his first Minneapolis gig about 10 years ago at the Cabooze in front of 15 people.
The fans loved when Bonamassa played fast, which was often on an array of electric guitars with similar tones (and on one acoustic number, which embraced flamenco, jazz and blues). The crowd also admired his occasional slower, eloquent passages, which usually eventually built into a speedo run. Overall, his solos screamed "I want to be a guitar hero." Only one tune, the encore of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire," didn't feature a substantial guitar excursion.
