“I’ve done a lot of shows,” Joe Bonamassa attests. “If you take the last 25 years with an average of 100 shows a year, that’s 2,500 shows right there. Between 1990 and 2000, I probably did 1,000 shows, so we could be looking at over 3,500 gigs in all, and thankfully, more of them were good than bad.”
From city venues to the open seas, Bonamassa is always onstage somewhere, usually with a Gibson Les Paul in his hands. We asked him to tell us his best and worst gigs in his 25-plus years onstage. Here's what he told us.
The Best
“The obvious one would be the Royal Albert Hall in 2009 with Eric Clapton. That one was good — it was my bar mitzvah.
“But the absolute best performance I ever gave, in my humble opinion, was the first time we played Red Rocks in 2014. The weather was perfect — it was 80 degrees, and no wind. It was a golden era and a perfect storm. And luckily, we filmed it.
“Going back to the Albert Hall, I learned something very important during that first show in 2009: You’ve got to play the venue; you can’t let it play you. The first time I did the Albert Hall, it played me. I’ve now performed there 13 times, and I play it.
“So I walked into Red Rocks with a bit of bravado. You can’t walk out all flat-footed, like, ‘Oh, shucks, oh, my... ’ You’ve got to own the place. You’ve got to be like, ‘I belong here.’ We had done some great warm-up shows, so we went in with the wind at our backs.
“We did the soundcheck, and already there were a lot of people there. Fans had come for the meet and greet. Next thing I knew, it was 7:30 – time to get the suit on and there we go. Red Rocks holds just under 10,000 people, and it was packed.
“What’s interesting is, when you go onstage, the sun hasn’t set, so it’s still light out. The way the venue is designed, the stage is maybe eight inches off the ground, and the first few rows of people are almost at the same level as the stage. It goes higher and higher the further you go. For the first few songs, before it gets dark, you can still see everybody in front of you. It’s very intimate for the size and scope of it.
“Those natural sidewalls sounded so good, and the whole thing just flew by. My left hand flowed. The inertia carried me along.
“It was one of those gigs that you want to bottle. Everything just worked – it was like an out-of-body experience. Of course, after a show like that, you usually follow it with some shit where you’re just clamming all night. But that Red Rocks show was my best gig and best performance, for sure. I’ve had such great times there. We’ve done 10 years in a row, and we’re going back this year.”
The Worst
“All musicians have bad shows. Your gear fails, your strings break. The audience doesn’t know the inside baseball of it all, because as long as there’s sound coming out at them, everything seems fine. But I’m going to introduce readers to the concept of the Golden Goose. It’s happened to quite a few people, and in 2000, it happened to me.
“My first solo record, A New Day Yesterday, came out, and right off the bat I got booked for my first tour as a replacement for Roger McGuinn on Jethro Tull’s summer tour. Of course, the album’s title song is a cover of a Tull song, and Ian Anderson and Martin Barre were so nice – they even wanted me to play the song live. I thought it was kind of tacky, but they were like, ‘No, we really want you to do it.’ Ian introduced us onstage every night, and everything went great. It was the most fun you could have.
“The tour ended, and then we had three weeks of shows booked on our own, which meant we went from playing full places to not-so-full places. We showed up at this place in Memphis called Beale Street Live — it’s not there anymore; now it’s a Coyote Ugly — and it was one of those door-deal situations. Usually door deals are for a percentage – 80/20, 60/40 – and then all the merch you can sell.
“For the Memphis show, the ticket price was $12, but we were getting 100 percent of the door, so it was a good deal. Our showtime was 8:30, no opening act. I was backstage and I said, ‘It’s kind of quiet out there.’ Time to go on came around, and I swear, there were five people in the club: me, the bass player, the drummer, the bartender and the guy driving the van. We grossed zero dollars. We got the Golden Goose.
“There’s nothing more deflating and Spinal Tap than going to one of the epicenters of the blues and drawing zero people. Not a single person paid, no one came in. The bartender said, ‘If you start playing, people might come in.’ But it was a rainy Tuesday night. I said, ‘There’s nobody out on the street. We’re done.’
“We ended up working on a couple of things arrangement-wise, so it was like a rehearsal. I think we worked up the ‘Starship Trooper’ ending to one of our songs because we were just fucking around. This went on for 45 minutes. Not even the bartender was watching us. It was ridiculous.
“So the Golden Goose Award for that day goes to Joe Bonamassa. If you looked at the settlement sheet for that gig, it was zero paid. I think I got a Diet Coke out of it, and that was it. It was the worst.
“I didn’t play Memphis for years. Nowadays, we play there to packed houses and it’s great, but I always tell the story about the Golden Goose.”
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