PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight was the third of Joe Bonamassa’s run of four London shows within a week. Each show is at a different venue, with different musicians involved at each and a different setlist at each show. Having played the Borderline and Shepherds Bush Empire earlier in the week, tonight’s show was at the Hammersmith Apollo (with the final show being at the Royal Albert Hall).
The show started dead on 8pm which clearly caught a lot of people out judging by the number of people arriving late. The show kicked off with an acoustic set, just Joe Bonamassa sitting down with an acoustic guitar accompanied by a single musician on percussion. Kicking off with a cover of Bad Company’s ‘Seagull’, he followed this with ‘Jelly roll’ – another cover but I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you who wrote it. The acoustic set then carried on with another three songs. One thing that struck me was the fact that whereas normally he changes guitar rarely during a show, with the acoustic set he changed guitars after each song – possibly because they are tuned differently, or maybe just that his playing style makes them go out of tune faster than an electric guitar does. Either way, this part of the show despite being very simple at face value – acoustic guitar, vocals and percussion, was actually extremely enjoyable and as you watch and listen to him play, you quickly realise it’s pretty complex stuff. Anyone who’s seen his latest DVD (An acoustic evening at the Vienna Opera House) will know what we were treated to.
As soon as the fifth song ended though, the acoustic guitar and his stool were whisked away, the lights came up and the rest of the band came on and Joe Bonamassa moved straight into the main part of tonight’s show. It was a bit of a shock at first as the volume ramped up significantly as well as the lights being much brighter, so the first song (Rory Gallagher’s ‘Cradle rock’) really had a lot of impact. Now with his electric guitar, Joe Bonamassa was in his element and many of the songs veered off into extended solos or jams before going back to the song at hand.
Tonight Joe was joined by Doug Henthorn on vocals (he did backing vocals for most songs but for the Led Zeppelin cover ‘Tea for one’ sang lead vocals. Also on stage was Arlan Schierbaum on keyboards including a Hammond organ, who did a superb keyboard solo which climaxed with him climbing onto the keyboards as he played; Tal Bergman on drums; Lenny Castro on percussion (he also took part in the Acoustic evening at the Vienna Opera House show), and Carmine Rojas on bass. It’s a great band who deservedly get introduced by Joe during the show.
The lighting was spectacular for the show – simple at times, with Joe being spotlit at all times, and at others the lights projected patterns of light on the stage which swirled around making for some great visuals for those of us upstairs – those at the front downstairs will have missed some of the effect, but of course got great views of Joe Bonamassa.
During the show Joe Bonamassa, when not singing tends to walk around the stage as he plays, and seems to be having a great time. When he talks to the audience he comes across as being down to earth and in touch with the fans.
Tonight’s set was certainly blues-rock with more rock than blues, and was one hell of a show. The set ended with ‘Ballad of John Henry’ during which Joe not only played guitar and sang, but also used the Theremin at one point to create some amazing sounds – if you’ve never heard of a Theremin I certainly recommend that you google it – it’s one of the most unusual instruments around, and can create some fantastic and unusual sounds.
After a short break Joe Bonamassa and the band were back on stage for the encore. It kicked off with Sloe gin’, which for me was one of the highlights of the show – simply superb. The finale though was a ZZ Top cover – ‘Just got paid’, but just a straight cover would be too simple, so we also get a short medley of other songs thrown into the mix – Led Zeppelin was definitely in there, but I’m sure there were others I either can’t remember or didn’t recognise.
Tonight was a fantastic show. The acoustic set at the start was great and was very different to the main set which was much heavier and more rock biased. Overall we got two hours of great music, and I can see why some of his dedicated fans were going to all four nights on this run of dates.
A superb show from Joe Bonamassa – I definitely recommend that you go and see him on his next UK tour in September
Set list:
Seagull
Jelly Roll
Richmond
Athens to Athens
Woke up dreaming
Cradle rock
When the fire hits the sea
Dust bowl
Dislocated boy
Driving towards the daylight
Who’s been talking
Jockey full of bourbon
Tea for one
Lonesome road blues
Ballad of John Henry
Encore:
Sloe Gin
Just got paid
September tour dates
18th Cardiff Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
20th Bournemouth Bournemouth Bic
21th Manchester Manchester Arena
23th Aberdeen Aberdeen AECC
24th Edimburgh Edinburgh Playhouse
27th BIRMINGHAM BIRMINGHAM NATL. INDOOR ARENA
28th Brighton Brighton Centre
