Blues master Joe Bonamassa to perform at the Paramount

Since kicking his career off at the age of 12, Joe Bonamassa has not only evolved into a top-notch vocalist, guitarist and songwriter but has earned a place as a respected steward of the blues.

Beyond having released upwards of 40 albums, worked with and produced a variety of artists including Eric Gales and Beth Hart and is regularly on the road 200 days of the year, Bonamassa, 48, has poured his passion and knowledge into a number of other related endeavors.

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The New York state native runs Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes music education and blues music by funding scholarships and providing music education resources to schools in need. An offshoot of that is the Fueling Musicians Program, which was started to raise money for musicians affected by the pandemic shutdowns and evolved into a permanent entity that helps touring musicians get back on the road.

For Bonamassa, all of this is a natural extension from a career that’s earned him a number of Grammy nods while getting to play alongside heroes like B.B. King, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton.

“You’ve just got to find a way to give back,” he explained in a recent interview. “I’ve been very fortunate in my life and career, so I try to find a way to give back and do what I can.”

With all this activity going on, Bonamassa still managed to make “Breakthrough,” his 17th solo album released this past July. Produced by longtime collaborator Kevin Shirley (Iron Maiden/The Black Crowes), this 10-song outing was a two-year process squeezed in amid various commitments.

These efforts produced a rich mix of blues-rock bangers and ballads highlighted by Bonamassa’s soulful singing and accomplished guitar playing. Highlights range from the soaring emotiveness of “Broken Record” to the chugging New Orleans-flavored funk of “Drive by the Exit Sign” that falls somewhere between Little Feat and Dr. John. Other gems include the driving “You Don’t Own Me,” punctuated by interplay of Reese Wynans’ pounding piano and Bonamassa’s sizzling soloing, and closer “Pain’s on Me,” a sinewy shuffle that merits repeated listening. Getting this album out was a challenging yet rewarding experience for Bonamassa.

“This record took about two years to make,” Bonamassa said. “We started in 2023 by recording in Santorini (Greece), went to Nashville and then L.A. It kind of got pieced together as they do sometimes. Sometimes you don’t have the stuff ready to go. I’d get songs in and we’d just record them. In the end, you concentrate on making the best songs, which is really the trick to it. With ‘Breakthrough,’ as soon as we had enough material, we would go for it. The challenge was trying to make something that was done in between touring and everything sound cohesive. It doesn’t sound like it was recorded in three different locations, but it was.”

With new material out, Bonamassa is pumped to be hitting the road.

“We’re finally going to start playing stuff off the new record,” he said. “We didn’t have time to work up stuff in the summer. These upcoming dates will be cool and I’m looking forward to it. It’s a completely new show from what we’ve been doing recently. Every year, you’ve got to put something new together.”

Amid all that’s going on in the world, Bonamassa couldn’t help but notice that the centennial of B.B. King’s birthday was coming up last Sept. 16, and nothing was apparently going to be done to commemorate this milestone. Bonamassa took it upon himself to curate a recorded project dubbed “B.B. King’s Blues Summit 100.” Since King’s recent birthday, batches of songs from the late blues icon’s catalog covered by a wide array of artists have been released digitally each month leading up to the final full physical and digital release that arrived on Jan. 9.

Having opened for King when he was 12, Bonamassa had a personal connection to the Mississippi native and felt it would have been remiss if the latter’s centennial had simply come and gone.

“I met B.B. King on May 24, 1990 in Rochester, New York,” he recalled. “When I realized that nobody was doing anything to recognize B.B.’s 100th birthday on Sept. 16, it was shocking. So, we did something. We have 33 songs and 33 different guests. It’s everyone from Paul Rodgers, Slash and Eric Clapton to Chaka Khan and George Benson — you name it. That was like making five records at the same time.”

Despite the enormity of this project, Bonamassa felt it needed to be done for someone who provided him with a major opportunity to play before a large audience, as well as one of his favorite pieces of advice (“Watch your money and watch the women.”).

“Very few people literally define the genre of music in which they live in and he was one of them,” Bonamassa said. “He was the King of the Blues, the grand ambassador. There have been a lot of people who have played the blues, but nobody like B.B. His singing, his songs, playing and catalog — he was truly one of a kind.”