Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast
Speaker 1: Why Guess Today because guitarists extraordinary? Joe Bonamas, Joe, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me, Bob. This is like a real honor.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been a fan of your work for
Speaker 1: twenty years, you know, and the fact that like I'm
Speaker 1: on your radar is it's it's it's a real it's
Speaker 1: a real treat. You know. I even set you an
Speaker 1: email saying, hey, thanks for the kind words about my song.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get that every day, not around
Speaker 1: here at least, I don't get positive feedback like that
Speaker 1: every day. So, Joe, you're doing a live stream in
Speaker 1: a couple of days. Tell me how that came to be. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, we all we've just been sitting around for
Speaker 1: five months and we're bored, and you know, and now
Speaker 1: is the thing. It's like, well, how do you promote
Speaker 1: a record in the traditional avenues of promoting the record
Speaker 1: are not available to you like we would we would
Speaker 1: start playing songs traditionally off a new album a month
Speaker 1: two months before a tease, three or four songs, and
Speaker 1: everybody kind of oh, you know, can't wait for October.
Speaker 1: Well we haven't toured since March, and we decided to
Speaker 1: do this pay per view at the Rhyme and and
Speaker 1: we're gonna debut the record, you know, start to finish
Speaker 1: in order, which we've never done before. And it's a
Speaker 1: way to promote the record. It's also a way to
Speaker 1: raise some money for charity. Um, because I've been I've
Speaker 1: been doing this thing, uh for the last few months
Speaker 1: called fueling Musicians, And it's basically because I've been very
Speaker 1: fortunate my career and I can weather the storm and
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully come out the other side doing okay. Um.
Speaker 1: But a lot of my friends in the music business,
Speaker 1: especially in the blues business, are really struggling to find
Speaker 1: ways to pay their bills until we're allowed to come back.
Speaker 1: So it was a win win on both sides. We
Speaker 1: get to promote the record, raise some money for a
Speaker 1: good cause, and hopefully, you know, make some people happy
Speaker 1: in a time where we need that. Tell us more
Speaker 1: about the philanthropy, the charitable end of the show. Well,
Speaker 1: the whole thing about it is We've had this thing
Speaker 1: called Keeping the Blues Alive Foundations. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: nonprofit for about seven or eight years, and you know,
Speaker 1: through our cruise and you know, just just raising money
Speaker 1: in the private sector. We were able to you know,
Speaker 1: come up with about six hundred thousand dollars in which
Speaker 1: we were you know, given away to schools and music programs.
Speaker 1: Since then, we've raised over a million dollars because were
Speaker 1: five thousand has coming the last few months and we've
Speaker 1: been given it away to musicians. So when you buy
Speaker 1: the hundred dollar package, um of you get your you know,
Speaker 1: you get your face, cardboard face in a seat, you know,
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. That's really to me. You know,
Speaker 1: like like a portion of that money is going to
Speaker 1: go directly to musicians in need, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them are represented. Ten of them at least are represented,
Speaker 1: you know in the after show, like people like Tired
Speaker 1: Bryant and all of our friends from you know, Keeping
Speaker 1: the Blues Alive, pass cruises and whatever. We've helped people,
Speaker 1: and you know, again, it's like philanthropy. If you're lucky
Speaker 1: enough to be able to do it, Now is the time.
Speaker 1: Now is the time to step up and make a difference. Okay,
Speaker 1: keeping the Blues alive. From your viewpoint, what is the
Speaker 1: state of the blues and can blues survive? And come back.
Speaker 1: You know, they've been writing this article since the sixties.
Speaker 1: Is Blues dead? You know? How how do you kill
Speaker 1: off something that never was? You know, like it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where like, you know, is the Blues dead?
Speaker 1: Is the blues still relevant? Is the blues this is?
Speaker 1: It's like, you know what, here's the thing keeping the
Speaker 1: blues alive. The blues is how you make it. You know,
Speaker 1: every ten years there's a Gary Clark Jr. That comes
Speaker 1: along and and gives it a B twelve shot in
Speaker 1: the butt, and all of a sudden is the new
Speaker 1: blues boom question mark? And then and then somebody you
Speaker 1: know that it kind of fades and rides the wave
Speaker 1: and then and then you know, something else comes along,
Speaker 1: and then somebody else like you know, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: Chris stone Ingram kingfish Ingram. Well, he'll make a definitive
Speaker 1: record that changes his life, you know, and then they'll
Speaker 1: be right in the same thing about him in five
Speaker 1: or ten years that they wrote about me in oh nine,
Speaker 1: and they wrote about Gary Clark Jr. In two thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, like two thousand. To me, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, Um, it's not a question of is
Speaker 1: the Blues dead. What's the status of the blues. It's
Speaker 1: just who's gonna who's gonna give it the B twelve
Speaker 1: shot that comes along every decade. And you know my
Speaker 1: turn was in O nine in ten and and you
Speaker 1: know Gary's was five six years ago, or you know,
Speaker 1: three years ago, and it'll be somebody else's to take
Speaker 1: in five years, you know. So that's that's what I. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll get back there, but let's stay with the live show.
Speaker 1: So the live show is Sunday the twenty at one pm.
Speaker 1: How did you decide on one pm? That's uh, four
Speaker 1: pm East coast, one pm West coast. We need sell
Speaker 1: packages in Guam. Apparently I'm big and Guam, you know.
Speaker 1: So the whole thing is is we decide it's three
Speaker 1: pm Central, so before percent, you know, four pm on
Speaker 1: the East coast, Uh, you know, you know, one one
Speaker 1: pm on the West coast. Plus Europe, it'll be like
Speaker 1: just after dinner, eight o'clock, nine o'clock. You know, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of fans in like Moscow. St. Petersburg
Speaker 1: will be ten eleven o'clock. And then also it would
Speaker 1: be like wake up to Joe Bonamassa and friends, in
Speaker 1: Australia and you know New Zealand and Hawaii and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and and so we decided to kind of
Speaker 1: try to just play the whole globe. What would be
Speaker 1: the best time to play this gig where everybody has
Speaker 1: a good chance to watching it as it goes down.
Speaker 1: Now it will be on it will be on the UH,
Speaker 1: it will be on the interwebs and on our our
Speaker 1: our our stream for seven days, so you can watch
Speaker 1: it anytime after you you know, if you buy it,
Speaker 1: you can you don't have to watch it as it
Speaker 1: goes down. You can watch it the next day at
Speaker 1: your convenience. But we've just figured, you know, three pm
Speaker 1: Central would be a good starting point. We're just guessing.
Speaker 1: We're making this up as we go along about you know,
Speaker 1: That's why I'm asking, we're informing everybody the whole live
Speaker 1: performance world is in transition. How do you decide on
Speaker 1: the rheman selfishly? It's a block from a house, okay,
Speaker 1: and to what degree do they have infrastructure? To what
Speaker 1: degree do you have to bring in your own UH equipment? Well,
Speaker 1: ever since this thing started, um, you know, you walk
Speaker 1: by the Rhyman and there's there's TV trucks, you know,
Speaker 1: um out there almost daily, you know, so they've been
Speaker 1: live streaming, people have been doing special events there. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a very special place for me because it means
Speaker 1: the world that I get to play there. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I have posters on my wall that' say you know,
Speaker 1: you know the next three nights Joe Bonamassa live at
Speaker 1: the Rhemans. This was inen and that we did one
Speaker 1: last year and and it's a beautiful place. It's it's
Speaker 1: something that I never thought I would achieve in my career. Going, man,
Speaker 1: I could. I literally can walk to work and it's
Speaker 1: the Rhyman Auditorium. And I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: in this town, a lot of people that don't live here, going, man,
Speaker 1: if I could just play the Rhyman one time, it
Speaker 1: would be fine, you know. So it's a special venue
Speaker 1: to me. Um. It's also a great venue, has great acoustics.
Speaker 1: So even though there's no no people, but you start
Speaker 1: putting the room mix in it and you know, I
Speaker 1: call it the Frampton comes Alive effect. It's like that
Speaker 1: big reverb thing. It's nice and so it's gonna make
Speaker 1: for a good live concert. And um, you know, the
Speaker 1: band will look good on stage. We were dapper folks.
Speaker 1: Need let's just say we have a virus at this
Speaker 1: time and you're doing this live show. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: What precautions are you taking so that the people actually
Speaker 1: in the band and the building and the crew are
Speaker 1: not getting infected. So we bay basically we're all tested
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago. Happy to report everybody is
Speaker 1: COVID free. We will rehearse with that in mind, meaning
Speaker 1: that we're starting to get into the bubble, and then
Speaker 1: on we're tested again. On the we really go into
Speaker 1: the bubble band and crew, and we don't really come
Speaker 1: out until like you know, five o'clock on September twenty. Now,
Speaker 1: if there's a if there's a problem, we have to
Speaker 1: deal with it, um. But we're taking as many precautions
Speaker 1: as not only the rhyming requires, but as we require
Speaker 1: as just human beings, um to make sure that that
Speaker 1: that our people are safe, because that's really tantamount to
Speaker 1: what we're doing. There's no gig worth somebody's health. There's
Speaker 1: no gig worth somebody's life, obviously, But what we're doing
Speaker 1: is we're without it being like without really just putting
Speaker 1: isome you know, isometric chambers around Reese Weinen's and and
Speaker 1: and you know myself. We're basically, you know, um uh
Speaker 1: you know, we're basically doing as much as we can
Speaker 1: to prevent everybody, you know, from being at risk. I
Speaker 1: don't even know if is I so metric the right now?
Speaker 1: It's but I wasn't gonna bust you onf no, no, no,
Speaker 1: But I was like, what is what did I just say?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, remember those exercise from the sixties.
Speaker 1: But then I think of Carson hyperbolic? That is that?
Speaker 1: Is that the right? Is it? With its hyperbolic chambers? Sorry,
Speaker 1: I've been producing a record my brains mush pop. But
Speaker 1: thank you for That's okay, that's okay. I was gonna
Speaker 1: let it slide, but it was I thinking, oh god, okay.
Speaker 1: So one interesting thing. If somebody goes to your page
Speaker 1: and they want to go to this show or watch
Speaker 1: this show, they're different levels of buying, which you also referenced.
Speaker 1: How did you come up with that concept and how
Speaker 1: did you come up with the specific price points for
Speaker 1: this show? Well, we we basically looked at other models
Speaker 1: what people were doing. Um, now there's some it's it's
Speaker 1: like it's like it's like when you buy vinyl, vinyl
Speaker 1: is a vinyl? Is a vinyl? Is a vinyl? No
Speaker 1: people pay more for the for the was it the
Speaker 1: five grand vinyl and stuff like that. So some people
Speaker 1: want to watch in HD. Some people have a huge
Speaker 1: rig at their house. They have the mac they have
Speaker 1: the Macintosh power ramps and the and the super High Deaf,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure how I look in super high deaf,
Speaker 1: just saying okay, some people don't need to be shot
Speaker 1: in super high Deaf. I probably am one of those folks,
Speaker 1: like you're like, whoa geez bombases it's been a rough
Speaker 1: forty three, So I mean based on the tears are
Speaker 1: based on the definition. And then obviously obviously what we're
Speaker 1: talking about is is you know, like the hundred dollar
Speaker 1: packages is a donation to the charity. You know, you
Speaker 1: also get a you know, you get a record credit,
Speaker 1: a DVD credit, so like they'll be seventy or whatever.
Speaker 1: People we sell this thing too is they're gonna be
Speaker 1: you know, credited on the DVD and you know, so
Speaker 1: they get to look at themselves eventually in All Music
Speaker 1: Guide and be like, hey, look at me. I was
Speaker 1: credited on Joe bonamass Alive and you know the COVID
Speaker 1: sessions at the Rhyman whatever we're gonna call this thing,
Speaker 1: and and you know, it's just trying to engage the
Speaker 1: fans and make them feel vested while also you know,
Speaker 1: donating to charity as well. How long you lived in Nashville.
Speaker 1: I had this place three years. I still have the
Speaker 1: place in California. By the way, I I I'm very
Speaker 1: lucky in my career. I have three theme parks that
Speaker 1: are guitar based. I live. I have a place in California,
Speaker 1: New York and and here. But I've been working here
Speaker 1: out of here so long, it just made sense to
Speaker 1: buy a place that you know, it's supposed to just
Speaker 1: stay at a hotel for a month, you know, while
Speaker 1: you're making a record or writing. Okay, people, what studio
Speaker 1: did you recorded? We just got done. Um I just
Speaker 1: produced a record for Eric Gales the great Erica as
Speaker 1: a guitar right and um I um. We worked at
Speaker 1: Sound Emporium. So I either work at Sound Emporium or
Speaker 1: I work at Ocean Way, and they're great studios. We've
Speaker 1: done records at Blackbird. You know, so you're kind of
Speaker 1: spoiled for choice in this town. And also you're spoiled
Speaker 1: for choice as far as a musician. You know, like
Speaker 1: the level of musicians here in any genre any way
Speaker 1: you want to look at it, or if it's not here,
Speaker 1: it's not anywhere. I mean, they're all they're they're all
Speaker 1: congregating in Nashville, especially now it's cheaper to live in
Speaker 1: l a bro Uh. But what it's what's it like
Speaker 1: being a blues player in a country town. I think
Speaker 1: it's cool because you stand out, you know, do do
Speaker 1: you ever get called for sessions? I get called to
Speaker 1: do guest spots, like you know, they they call me
Speaker 1: because they want the little the little the little yellow
Speaker 1: sticker on on the CD featuring special guests so and so,
Speaker 1: so and so and so and so. So they don't
Speaker 1: call me to be like, you know, like like a
Speaker 1: Brent Mason or somebody like that. Um, they call me
Speaker 1: to to to overplay over changes. You know, they're like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we need some blues rock overplaying Carbon Amassa,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's it. But I don't really put
Speaker 1: myself out there, nor do I really fancy myself as
Speaker 1: session guitar player, because I don't feel that. I believe
Speaker 1: what makes me good as an artist would make me
Speaker 1: a bad session player. And if I became a session player,
Speaker 1: it would dilute my what I am as an artist.
Speaker 1: And and so for me, that's that was a conscious decision.
Speaker 1: Years ago. You're like, oh, what makes you great as
Speaker 1: an artist? I'm a bowling the China shop. I stand
Speaker 1: up there, I play louder, and I make people notice me,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes me good as an artist. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm a blues rock artist with a strange last name,
Speaker 1: a very funny speaking voice, and people say I sound
Speaker 1: like Kermit the Frog, especially the kind of microphone that
Speaker 1: I use. Um, which is what kind of microphones? And
Speaker 1: I don't know I use. I use a telephone in
Speaker 1: and live. But but when I speak, I sound like
Speaker 1: Kermit the Frog. When I try to sound like Paul
Speaker 1: Rodgers when I sing, I fail in both both categories.
Speaker 1: And I don't have a discernible hit song. So that
Speaker 1: so that in the music because the deck is stacked
Speaker 1: against me, but because I have this chip on both shoulders,
Speaker 1: and when I play and when I sing and when
Speaker 1: I do something, I try to move the needle. And
Speaker 1: that's what makes me good as an artist. And and and
Speaker 1: and I step up there and I just do what
Speaker 1: I do un apologetically. That's what's that's what's gotten me
Speaker 1: noticed over the years. And a few decent songs which
Speaker 1: came first You're bull in a China chop style, or
Speaker 1: you realizing that worked and you empty up. Um. I
Speaker 1: knew it worked when I was eleven years old. I
Speaker 1: walked up there, I was called up to play. Oh god,
Speaker 1: I was called up to play with a cold shop
Speaker 1: blues band in Hamilton's, New York at a place called Nardies.
Speaker 1: And it was the Hamilton's Blues Festival and it rained
Speaker 1: all day, so they moved it inside. Luckily. Unluckily for
Speaker 1: the promoter, was like a hundred fifty people showed up
Speaker 1: for the entire blues festival, included the headliner, James Cotton,
Speaker 1: the late great James Cotton, And he watched me play
Speaker 1: with the opening act and he invited me to up.
Speaker 1: He invited me up to play with his band, and
Speaker 1: he says, man, you know how to get people's attention,
Speaker 1: don't you. And it always stuck with me and I said,
Speaker 1: I just don't know anywhere else. It was like I
Speaker 1: was a shy kid. I'm still a shy kid, but
Speaker 1: you give me a guitar and a namp and I
Speaker 1: know what to do, especially electric guitar, because that's really
Speaker 1: where I've always found my confidence. And I found the
Speaker 1: other character meeting. The character is the guy in the suit.
Speaker 1: That's the confident Bona Massa. Not to speak to myself
Speaker 1: with the third person, but that's what I'm doing. And
Speaker 1: the shy kid is the nerd kid with the guitar collection,
Speaker 1: with the glasses and the hat that you see on
Speaker 1: the zoom call. And ultimately it's two different people, but
Speaker 1: it's all the same person. It comes from an authentic place.
Speaker 1: And I don't really I don't want to be the
Speaker 1: guy who dresses for the gig when he goes to
Speaker 1: Walgreens to pick up a toothbrush, you know. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to be the oh shucks. I just I'm
Speaker 1: just here to just here to participate guy either. So
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of the road. Okay, through your eyes,
Speaker 1: who's the best rock gutars, best blues guitarists of all time?
Speaker 1: UM paid to say it, but I will if you're
Speaker 1: talking about a guy who's reinvented himself and then in
Speaker 1: to me the top of the heat for five decades
Speaker 1: in a row. I gotta say, Jeff Beck, I'm with you, Okay.
Speaker 1: People don't realize. And he plays without a pick. I
Speaker 1: want to talk to him and said, you never miss
Speaker 1: a note, and he was humbled about that's not his reputation.
Speaker 1: But when he plays, it's astounding. It's astounding. You say
Speaker 1: he reinvented himself, Uh, what exactly do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: So starting the sixties, he comes out he's just out
Speaker 1: of the yardbirds, got a chip on his shoulder's gonna go.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show them. And then he makes Truth and
Speaker 1: Beco Lah almost in the same year, recruits his kid
Speaker 1: from wherever, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Mickey Waller, Nicky Hopkins,
Speaker 1: and they go in and they're like, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: a heavier Beano record, which, by the way, tomorrow I
Speaker 1: get to interview John Mayo. How cool is that? Right?
Speaker 1: And then he makes two those kind of records. The
Speaker 1: band breaks up and they and they cancel on Woodstock.
Speaker 1: Next thing you know, he's he's in the studio with
Speaker 1: Bobby tench and he doesn't sound the same as he
Speaker 1: did four years or three years before. Okay, next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, blow by Blow wired all those records. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the musos like him. Then he goes
Speaker 1: through there and back and then meet Simon Phillips, and
Speaker 1: then he makes Guitar Shop, then he makes who Else
Speaker 1: and Neal. Brush with the Blues changed the game. Okay,
Speaker 1: stop there, because the only problem with Brush with the
Speaker 1: Blues is not enough people have heard it well. The
Speaker 1: only there's two problems with Brush with the Blues. The
Speaker 1: two problems with Brush with the Blues not to slide anybody,
Speaker 1: because we've all been influenced, is if you listen to
Speaker 1: Ray Gomez, who used to play with Stanley Clark and
Speaker 1: Rita Franklin. If you listen to a song called sweet Life,
Speaker 1: which predates Brush with the Blues about fifteen years, and
Speaker 1: then Brush with the Blues he something chicken or the Egg.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anything. I'm just suggesting you listen to
Speaker 1: Ray Gomes as well. But we've all been influenced. The
Speaker 1: problem Brush with the Blues is you go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: here's a guy who at that point in his career
Speaker 1: could have just said whatever, I'm Jeff Beck and you're not.
Speaker 1: But keeps going and going and doubling down and then
Speaker 1: you know, um was it the last record he did
Speaker 1: with um Loudhailer or one of those records where people
Speaker 1: kind of looked at me like, well, what's he doing.
Speaker 1: It's like he's experimenting and he's never he never rests
Speaker 1: on his laurels. And that's why I think he's the
Speaker 1: best of all time. Hendrix was the biggest game changer
Speaker 1: because it just it just went it just went mad,
Speaker 1: you know. But without buddy guy, no Hendrix, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So it's like it's all it's all interrelated,
Speaker 1: and it's not it's not something that you you can go, well, well,
Speaker 1: you know who's the best of all time, because it's arguable,
Speaker 1: there's it's there's taste, there's perspective. To me, the most
Speaker 1: immaculate conception blues guitar player of all time Albert King.
Speaker 1: Nobody sounded like him before and everybody copied him after.
Speaker 1: There's just no there's no like well, big Bill Bruns,
Speaker 1: he sounded like Albery. No, he did not. Albert bent
Speaker 1: a certain way he phrased a certain way. He was
Speaker 1: also a drummer. His name is Albert Nelson and he
Speaker 1: played on Jimmy Reed records as a drummer. So, okay,
Speaker 1: I know you're a big guitar collector, but you go
Speaker 1: that deep? Are you a student of the game. Are
Speaker 1: you someone who's wrapped up in history and knows all
Speaker 1: the credits? No, I'm not a musicologist like my friend
Speaker 1: Jimmy Vavino. Um, my friend Paul Stanley. These are these
Speaker 1: are Stanley of Kisses A is a big musicologist. Paul Stanley.
Speaker 1: Will you don't want to play rock and roll Jeopardy
Speaker 1: with Paul Stanley? He will school you on everything, soul records,
Speaker 1: blues records, rock records. You you you just you just
Speaker 1: just listen and learn, okay. And you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of those kind of people that that I try
Speaker 1: to I get into things that I like and I
Speaker 1: go down the rabbit holes. But there's so much you
Speaker 1: know that that you can it to me. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: becomes a distraction because you're just going, you know, is
Speaker 1: that is that you know who's playing on this James
Speaker 1: Brown record? You know, it's like like I don't know,
Speaker 1: You're trying to identify just but you can't enjoy. At
Speaker 1: some point, you just want to put it on and enjoy,
Speaker 1: you know, as a as a fan. Are you friends
Speaker 1: with all these players at this point? You know? One
Speaker 1: of the weirdest things. One of the weirdest things is
Speaker 1: having your heroes text you. You know, You're like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, it's Warren Haynes. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You know that's that's you know, it's just whatever, and
Speaker 1: and and you just go. I never thought any of
Speaker 1: my life would turn out this way. I hoped that
Speaker 1: I would be able to make a living playing guitar.
Speaker 1: I had hoped I would be able to just have
Speaker 1: fun and enjoy being around guitars. And thank god I
Speaker 1: never had to get a real job, because I think
Speaker 1: I would fail miserably in the in the in the
Speaker 1: in the private sector. You know what I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: like what, I'm selling cars, you know, or I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm God forbid him. In an office, I would be
Speaker 1: fired at it, almost said, will I'm a loose cannon.
Speaker 1: I have I wear my heart on my sleeve and
Speaker 1: I'm a character which is not conducive to normal operations,
Speaker 1: and I would be fired and and I would just
Speaker 1: be like running a comic book shop with guitars on
Speaker 1: the walls. You know. Okay, we all know a lot
Speaker 1: of musicians. And what I always say is if they
Speaker 1: weren't a musician, they could not work in the real
Speaker 1: world because they couldn't even show up in the seven
Speaker 1: eleven on time. So the question becomes you, to what
Speaker 1: degree are you disciplined? If I say, hey, you know
Speaker 1: we're gonna be somewhere too, You're gonna be there too.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be there three five of ten after I'll
Speaker 1: be there at two. I pride myself and being on time,
Speaker 1: and I hate running late, and I hate putting people out.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a it's a Roman Catholic
Speaker 1: guilt that's instilled in you from baptism. Okay, you never
Speaker 1: put people out. I'm an upstate New York Italian who
Speaker 1: went who was raised Roman Catholic, and you never you
Speaker 1: never keep people waiting. You always rather be earlier than late,
Speaker 1: and you'd always over over deliver and under promise. Those
Speaker 1: are those are tenants of my life. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to Catholicism, you're still a believer. No, I haven't
Speaker 1: been for a while. What what changed there? Um? It
Speaker 1: was an incident when I was a kid where the
Speaker 1: priest ran off with the neighbor's wife and took them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's cliche at this point, but
Speaker 1: it seemed like like and these people idolize this guy,
Speaker 1: and it broke that rule. He broke that rule. He
Speaker 1: broke that rule. He kind of like just chiseled off
Speaker 1: some of them commandment things, and and then uh, there
Speaker 1: was that, and there's just a few other things where
Speaker 1: I just you know, as you go down rabbit holes
Speaker 1: of science, you go down rabbit holes of of of things. Now.
Speaker 1: Do I believe in the tenets of religion? Yes? Do
Speaker 1: I believe in being a good person? Yes? Do I
Speaker 1: believe in giving than receiving? Yes? Do I believe in
Speaker 1: not stealing? Do I believe in all the things at
Speaker 1: the tank commments teach you when you're at religious going
Speaker 1: absolutely except for that pesky when it says I'm your
Speaker 1: one God and there's no other God but I that
Speaker 1: I don't believe because because that's that's like it's specious reasoning.
Speaker 1: It's like saying this, this this poster has prevented Barrett
Speaker 1: or this lap steal that you see here in the
Speaker 1: photo has prevented Barrett X in my my condo in Nashville,
Speaker 1: in the sense that that there hasn't been any bear
Speaker 1: attacks since this thing has been sitting here. But is
Speaker 1: it really preventing them? Okay, so you're from upstate New York.
Speaker 1: We're exactly Utica, New York. Not to be confused with Ithaca,
Speaker 1: of course for that. But you know, I know the difference.
Speaker 1: People are not New York savvy. May not. People go like,
Speaker 1: you're from Ithaca. That's Cornell Universe. Utica, it's from Cornell University,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, it's not. That's our that's our
Speaker 1: Ivy League brethren in the South. Okay, we're Utica. We
Speaker 1: were military industrial complex. We were what we are. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: blue collar proud. You still have a used of a
Speaker 1: place there. No, No, I haven't lived there for twenty
Speaker 1: two years. Okay. And then Genesee Beer there was a
Speaker 1: Unica Beer, wasn't there. I believed Utica Club which is
Speaker 1: now saranac Um. The Utica Club Genese I believe was
Speaker 1: from the Batavia, Rochester it was, you know, but see,
Speaker 1: I love the fact that I grew up in a
Speaker 1: working man's town. And one of the things about Upstate
Speaker 1: New York, especially that part of Upstate New York, is
Speaker 1: we are recession proof, and we are we are salad
Speaker 1: year proof, if you know what I mean. The boom
Speaker 1: never reaches us, The bust never reaches us. It the
Speaker 1: when the co War ended and the last of the
Speaker 1: factories closed. Basically, economically, the area flatlined and it and
Speaker 1: too huge gains in the stock market through huge recessions.
Speaker 1: It didn't change if you take home three and fifty
Speaker 1: dollars after taxes in Utica, New York in eighty you
Speaker 1: were living large. In nine you were living large in
Speaker 1: two thousand. When I left, you were living large. That's
Speaker 1: what that's that area in a nutshell, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with it, but it's just because of how isolated
Speaker 1: it is, and it never grew past the industrial age
Speaker 1: and the and the military industrial complex. And that's that's
Speaker 1: It's true. But about a lot of areas in the country.
Speaker 1: In Ohio, Michigan, you know, it's like the rust belt.
Speaker 1: It's rust belt. How many kids in the family. My
Speaker 1: sister is four years younger than me. To the day,
Speaker 1: to the day that says something interesting about your parents
Speaker 1: birth control, just like it was consistency. Yeah, she's she's
Speaker 1: technically May nine. I'm May eight, but we're hours apart. Okay,
Speaker 1: And what is she up to these days? My sister
Speaker 1: is smarter, She got the looks, she got, the brains,
Speaker 1: she got the she's just superior to me in every way. Um.
Speaker 1: And she has two beautiful children and a wonderful husband, Michael.
Speaker 1: And her name is Lindsay and uh and and the
Speaker 1: two kids, Gibson and Waverley, And they live in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: They've been living there for about ten years. And she's
Speaker 1: doing great and has a master's degree in business. And
Speaker 1: you know, she just she's superior to her brother in
Speaker 1: every way except playing. Okay, So how many How long
Speaker 1: was your family in the Utica area up until about
Speaker 1: two years ago? No, the opposite. Your parents? Were they
Speaker 1: born in that area? Did they moved? They were born? Okay,
Speaker 1: and it's all over. Your parents ran a music store?
Speaker 1: Was that their mode of providing food and shelter when
Speaker 1: you were born? My mom worked from the State of
Speaker 1: New York for the State of New York. Um. From
Speaker 1: basically high school after she graduated high school. Still when
Speaker 1: she retired, different jobs. She worked for Universities um Department
Speaker 1: of Labor, but she it was it was a state
Speaker 1: state job with great benefits and and you know, healthcare,
Speaker 1: which provides My father did various things through his life
Speaker 1: and he's both still alive and they live in Sonoma,
Speaker 1: California now and I got the Son of the Year
Speaker 1: plaque for that, by the way, anyway, that's just another story.
Speaker 1: But basically, you know, when I was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, and when my parents were born in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, and when their parents were born, it was
Speaker 1: the prevailing narrative was you you're born in this community,
Speaker 1: and you stay in this community, and it was just
Speaker 1: the cycle of life. Now, this is not unique to
Speaker 1: upstate New York. This is not unique to California or
Speaker 1: any It was basically, and a lot of my classmates
Speaker 1: still lived there from my class of because if you're
Speaker 1: born in New Yorkville, New York or New York Mills,
Speaker 1: chances are you marry your high school sweetheart or somebody
Speaker 1: you met in college, and then you settle and have
Speaker 1: kids in New York Mills, and then your kids go
Speaker 1: to New York Mills Junior Senior High School and their kids,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times you have the same teachers
Speaker 1: that have been there thirty five years. It's a story
Speaker 1: that's repeated so many times in America. And that was
Speaker 1: the We were the first generator, and I think Generation
Speaker 1: X to ever kind of like bust out and say
Speaker 1: maybe I don't want to live here my whole life.
Speaker 1: Maybe I want to do something, Maybe I want to travel,
Speaker 1: maybe I want to see something or experience something different.
Speaker 1: And we were one of the first people, first generations,
Speaker 1: to really take a chance and and kind of buck
Speaker 1: the system, as they say in the in the sense
Speaker 1: that we were like I'm moving to New York, Okay,
Speaker 1: good luck. And my my mom freaked out and I said, well,
Speaker 1: because your your room is always there, and the offer
Speaker 1: was still stands. You know, there's always a room for you.
Speaker 1: If this thing goes bust, I'm like, okay, thanks. My
Speaker 1: mother is the opposite. I left Tolim at seventeen. Don't
Speaker 1: come back. She literally said, you talk on the phone,
Speaker 1: but don't come back and live in my house. But
Speaker 1: she turned my bedroom into an office. But at what
Speaker 1: point did your father open a store selling guitars. This
Speaker 1: is about Okay, so this was this is not how
Speaker 1: you grew up with a guitar shop. No. I grew
Speaker 1: up my mid to late teens. I was around a
Speaker 1: guitar shop. My dad had two different shops. He he
Speaker 1: opened up for about seven years, close for about six years,
Speaker 1: and then opened up again. And it was fun being
Speaker 1: in a guitar shop. Doing guitar shows. I met a
Speaker 1: lot of characters that I still know, Like like if
Speaker 1: you took the best Hollywood scriptwriters, like like like the
Speaker 1: out guys, you know, like like you get Stephen King,
Speaker 1: and you know Tim Robbins and and and and and
Speaker 1: you know somebody else like like just like you know
Speaker 1: the Coen Brothers and something like that. Okay, and you go,
Speaker 1: Here's what I need you to do. I need you
Speaker 1: to come up with a cast of twenty people that
Speaker 1: are as eccentric as they are driven, as they are crazy,
Speaker 1: as they are weird as they eccentric. They couldn't come
Speaker 1: up with the characters that show up on a yearly
Speaker 1: basis to the Dallas Guitar Show. Okay, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: the only place in the world where sweatpants and a
Speaker 1: Fannie pack full of hundred dollar bills is socially acceptable.
Speaker 1: So this is the world I'm thrust into. And these
Speaker 1: guys are shrewd. They're buying, they're selling, they want, they
Speaker 1: they're collecting, or they're not, or they say they are.
Speaker 1: The New York Guitar Show, you know, the first time
Speaker 1: as a church and you know, um, twenty three Street,
Speaker 1: and you're like, on, how many sins are being committed
Speaker 1: in this room right now? You know that shall not steal,
Speaker 1: you know, being the biggest one of them, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, so all of that like kind
Speaker 1: of permeated as I was starting my career. I was
Speaker 1: signed to E and My Records at that point, and
Speaker 1: then we were we had a band um that was
Speaker 1: called Bloodline that was kind of an A O. R oriented,
Speaker 1: you know, Southern rock band at the same time as
Speaker 1: The Archangels and Cry of Love and Brother Kane, and
Speaker 1: I was helping my dad. I was living at home,
Speaker 1: and then finally I just said, you know, I need
Speaker 1: to I just need to go and and take a
Speaker 1: chance on Joe Bonham Moss. I dropped smoking, drop all
Speaker 1: that nonsense and take a chance. And I've had lucky.
Speaker 1: I've had the same manager for thirty years. Who's gone
Speaker 1: with me on that on that journey. Okay, let's break
Speaker 1: some of this down though. So when do you first
Speaker 1: pick up a guitar? When I was four and there
Speaker 1: was just a guitar line around, how did that happen?
Speaker 1: Dad played professionally. Um, he would do weekend gigs. So
Speaker 1: he was playing Dan Fogelberd songs, Crosby Stills in Nash songs,
Speaker 1: Neil Young songs in a duo setting at the ground Round,
Speaker 1: which was like a chain of steak houses that that
Speaker 1: instead of serving bread as the appetizer or the free
Speaker 1: appetiser was it was peanuts. So they were you know,
Speaker 1: you get a hamburger and then he would play, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, he made some good money and and
Speaker 1: and and I was extra money because he worked in
Speaker 1: a factory at the time. You worked in a factory
Speaker 1: in Utica that made suits. It's called Joseph and Feiss,
Speaker 1: And they would they would make these suit coats. And
Speaker 1: my mom would work for the state and she dad
Speaker 1: would play. And we had an oldsmobile and in a
Speaker 1: little house on Campbell aff and but Dad always had
Speaker 1: a guitar, so I wanted to follow in his footsteps,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I love this guitar. And
Speaker 1: then he would play Eric Clapton records like just One
Speaker 1: Night from and you'd see that black strap with the
Speaker 1: worn out neck, and then like it. Once I got hooked,
Speaker 1: Stevie ray Vaughan came out a year later. Um, then
Speaker 1: he would take me down the rabbit. If you like
Speaker 1: Steve Rayvonne, you need to hear Robin Trauer. I feel
Speaker 1: like Robin Trout. You like hear Hendrix And then it's
Speaker 1: just my whole world exploded. Okay, she you picked up
Speaker 1: his guitar. How did you learn how to play? He
Speaker 1: would teach me things. He would teach me the fundamentals,
Speaker 1: like chords and a few rudimentary pentatonic scales. And then
Speaker 1: I had this knack to hear something and then play
Speaker 1: it off a record. So I would hear it, I
Speaker 1: would play it and mimic it. So by the time
Speaker 1: I was six, I'd really gotten serious about it and
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I'm actually pretty good at this.
Speaker 1: I can actually hear something in like Voodoo Child. I
Speaker 1: can actually pick it out the notes and then mimic
Speaker 1: the sound, at least in my mind, you know. And
Speaker 1: I know Jimmy Hendrix, but I knew I had a
Speaker 1: propensity or proclivity depending on the positive negative context. You're
Speaker 1: whipping out the big so okay, but what I'm saying
Speaker 1: it is like you know, positive negative sums it's positive
Speaker 1: something it's negative. Is I knew I had a I
Speaker 1: had some sort of gift for it. But I also
Speaker 1: had a good work ethic, and that was instilled by
Speaker 1: my parents, Like they always used the preaching, if you're
Speaker 1: not gonna work for it, then what's the point. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna come to you. Nobody's gonna give you anything.
Speaker 1: Nobody's given the Bonham Mass is anything. We're working for anything,
Speaker 1: you know. And and that's been my story for forty years.
Speaker 1: And I've been playing guitar thirty nine years. And it's
Speaker 1: just like, okay, so you're six years old and you
Speaker 1: go to school for another twelve years. Are you you
Speaker 1: have friends or you're so deep in the guitar thing?
Speaker 1: Where do you fit in the social structure of the school.
Speaker 1: Few friends, um never never never never never on the
Speaker 1: never a hip kid, And I kept the guitar playing
Speaker 1: to myself because I didn't want I didn't want any
Speaker 1: trouble I wanted. I didn't like being made fun of. Um.
Speaker 1: I was made fun of a lot when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. That's why I have such an issue with
Speaker 1: bullying now. UM not to say that, like, don't feel
Speaker 1: sorry for me, because I can give as good as
Speaker 1: I get. The problem with social media is like you're
Speaker 1: kind of doing it with one hand time behind your back. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I digress. Um, So I don't want to be made
Speaker 1: fun of. I don't want to be bullied. I wat
Speaker 1: nonsense and want that trouble myf I just like I
Speaker 1: would do my work, go to school, get off the bus,
Speaker 1: go home, whatever homework we had, get through it, play
Speaker 1: the guitar the rest of the night. That was really
Speaker 1: the whole, the long and short of every single day.
Speaker 1: I didn't play sports. Um. I played. My parents kind
Speaker 1: of said, hey, the kid needs some exercise, getting a
Speaker 1: little pudgy, Let's get him into some soccer. He can
Speaker 1: run around. Um. And I never signed up for any
Speaker 1: of the school activities. It was a one track mine
Speaker 1: and I was completely anonymous musically until the third grade
Speaker 1: and what happened then. That's when the third and fourth
Speaker 1: grade at New York Mills Elementary School, they had these
Speaker 1: cheap Japanese Cordoba guitars, like these class guitars. They like
Speaker 1: twenty of them. There's a lot of them. Were just rotting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, crappy strings and whatever. And
Speaker 1: so my my one of my few friends, knew I played,
Speaker 1: and the music teacher goes, um, hey, does anybody know
Speaker 1: how to play guitar? And then of course my friend
Speaker 1: just sells me out. Joe knows how to play. And
Speaker 1: I was always a shy kid, never participated in the
Speaker 1: in the anything, you know. I just would answer questions
Speaker 1: if I was called upon, because Joe play is really good.
Speaker 1: And she's like, does he So I just learned Rude
Speaker 1: Mood by Stevie ray Vaughan, which is this very fast
Speaker 1: shuffle do do do? Do you know? I was proud
Speaker 1: of it. I learned it, and she's so I get
Speaker 1: up there and I'm like, oh god, this is terrible.
Speaker 1: I sit in the chair and I get the guitar,
Speaker 1: I tune it up and it's like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: laughter because you know, it's like this that awkward moments
Speaker 1: out of a movie. You know, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: you're tuning up. It's like that dead silence. It seems
Speaker 1: like an hour, but it's like thirty seconds. And then
Speaker 1: she goes, are you gonna play anything for us? And
Speaker 1: I just start into it right and I keep the
Speaker 1: kids go nuts because they never expected it coming out
Speaker 1: of me. And I see her run out of the
Speaker 1: room and she goes and gets to high school music
Speaker 1: teacher because it's all the schools are connected, and the
Speaker 1: principal and what did I do to my said this
Speaker 1: is this is insane? Right, So afterwards they're like, when
Speaker 1: did you learn how to? I go, I play all that,
Speaker 1: and then I think they called my parents and said,
Speaker 1: do you know he plays guitar really well? I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's been playing for years. So that was the first
Speaker 1: time I publicly went out as a guitar player. And
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, that applause is a good
Speaker 1: deflection from the from the from the stuff that they're
Speaker 1: they're aiming at me, And I go, hm, I could
Speaker 1: now use this as a shield as a weapon at
Speaker 1: the same time, and I was like, mmm, not a
Speaker 1: bad way of looking at things. Bonamassa And then I
Speaker 1: started playing setting, you know, sitting at my dad's do
Speaker 1: around eight or nine. And then I had my first
Speaker 1: professional gig when I was a love it And that
Speaker 1: was first professional gig was at a place called the Metro,
Speaker 1: which was a converted bank in Utica, New York. We
Speaker 1: charged five dollars. There was an article in the newspaper,
Speaker 1: and my grandfather collected money at the door and we
Speaker 1: made three thousand dollars at night. And and I go,
Speaker 1: that's not this is this is this is? I get
Speaker 1: the new I said. The deal was all the money
Speaker 1: has to go into bank, except I wanted a Super
Speaker 1: Nintendo and some new pickups from my guitar, at which
Speaker 1: they my parents acquiesced and let me buy. And okay,
Speaker 1: that's a big success. It could only be downhill from there.
Speaker 1: What happens well, by the way, after I got done
Speaker 1: paying the band, which was about a thousand bucks, say
Speaker 1: about two thousand net to an eleven year, I Mr
Speaker 1: Burns at that point and and I and I go,
Speaker 1: then we started doing this, and we started drawing a crowd,
Speaker 1: and I was known as this kid from upstate, New York.
Speaker 1: And then there was there was like about a year
Speaker 1: and a half later, there was a rumor there was
Speaker 1: a there was a kid. But this is pre social
Speaker 1: media yet, so it's all just it's all just rumor.
Speaker 1: And and a few newspaper articles at this point. Then
Speaker 1: there was a rumor there was a kid in Jacksonville,
Speaker 1: Florida who played slide, you know, who was about a
Speaker 1: year or two younger than me. I'm like, wow, there's
Speaker 1: another one. And then there was another one. And then
Speaker 1: there was a kid named Eric Gals And then and
Speaker 1: and well you know that, you know that the kid
Speaker 1: in Jacksonville, you know, eleven year old playing slide like
Speaker 1: an adult, was Derek Trucks. And kid from Memphis who
Speaker 1: who's playing with his brothers and got a deal with
Speaker 1: Electric Oh my god, I got a major deal. It's
Speaker 1: Eric Kales. And here we are now thirty years later,
Speaker 1: laughing at this notion of like these we were the
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse Club of blues guitar players, you know, like
Speaker 1: we were we were like this, these young kids that
Speaker 1: are popping up regionally. But without the without the invention
Speaker 1: of social media, nobody knew about us. Only the people
Speaker 1: in our areas, you know. So there was there was
Speaker 1: Joe in the North, and Derek in the South, and
Speaker 1: and and Eric in Memphis. And there was a kid
Speaker 1: from Australia, Nathan Cavalaria. I never forget his name. He's
Speaker 1: a fellow Italian. He was a kid who was twelve
Speaker 1: years old ripping up the guitar. So there was these
Speaker 1: prodigies or I don't consider myself a project with these
Speaker 1: people that were the kids are well advanced in guitar
Speaker 1: um popping up all around the same time. This was
Speaker 1: the early nineties. Okay, as we all know, they're making
Speaker 1: new people every day and the rest of us get older.
Speaker 1: At some point, you're no longer the young phenomenon. Where
Speaker 1: does that leave you? You know, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, who's
Speaker 1: also I need to put in that category because he
Speaker 1: was sixteen and he had a major label deal and
Speaker 1: he's had hits on the radio. Johnny Lane was fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen, but there were a few years later. There
Speaker 1: was like there was a two and a half year gap.
Speaker 1: And because Kenny came out in the ninety six and
Speaker 1: same thing with John Lane. And uh so, you know,
Speaker 1: like I was having this conversation with Kenny Waan Shephard
Speaker 1: and we're sitting there like going, I go, first of all,
Speaker 1: do you realize that both of us are older than
Speaker 1: Stevie Ravon when he died by seven years, you know,
Speaker 1: which is crazy that we're now older than our hero
Speaker 1: that really wrote the roadmap between him, Robert Cray, Eric Johnson,
Speaker 1: um Satriani Vye, those were the those were the guys
Speaker 1: that wrote the book the Roadmap for me in the eighties,
Speaker 1: Gary Moore and Early Nice. And I said, and then
Speaker 1: do you realize that we're not the kids anymore? And
Speaker 1: we both just had this moment like yeeks, you know,
Speaker 1: like like because we've always looked at as the kids,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, oh, there's the younger generation Johnny
Speaker 1: and Kenny and Joe and Derek, and we all got
Speaker 1: four in the first number. Okay, I think I think
Speaker 1: Derek just turned already. We all got a four and
Speaker 1: maybe John's thirty dynamic he's close, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a generational shift. I mean, like
Speaker 1: you can't you can prevent a lot of things in
Speaker 1: your life. Lapping the sun every three d and sixty
Speaker 1: five or three hundred sixty six days is not one
Speaker 1: of them. Time going you get old. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: have the band signed Bloodline signed to E M I.
Speaker 1: How does that come together? We had a I was
Speaker 1: on a television show called Real Life with Jane Pauli,
Speaker 1: which was the predated Dateline NBC. My manager um uh
Speaker 1: Roy Wiseman and his father, Elliott Wiseman. They had a
Speaker 1: company called Premier Artist Services and they managed Frank Sinatra
Speaker 1: and Dean Martin and lizmllion most of all of the
Speaker 1: rat Pack, really Um and they went to the record companies.
Speaker 1: We've taken meetings with Colombia and E M I and whoever,
Speaker 1: and they're all saying the same thing. It's like, what
Speaker 1: it's like, he's good, but what do we do with it?
Speaker 1: He's an instrumental guitar player who likes to play blues.
Speaker 1: It's not a he's not an artist, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a well, I'm really at that point was the the
Speaker 1: equivalent of the polar Bear riding a unicycle, juggling bowling
Speaker 1: pins at the p T Barnum. You know, I came
Speaker 1: out and did my thing, made the crowd go nuts,
Speaker 1: and then left. I didn't have a song, couldn't sing,
Speaker 1: I didn't really have an act, and so the idea
Speaker 1: of putting this band together, Um, I had met Barry
Speaker 1: Oakley Jr. And Whalen Kreeger at this Leo Fender tribute concert. Um,
Speaker 1: they recommended we call this guy Aaron Davis, who happened
Speaker 1: to be the son of Miles Davis. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: we got all these sons of famous musicians and a
Speaker 1: keyboard player that was working with my solo band at
Speaker 1: the time, Luca Gretty. There's a really good keyboard player,
Speaker 1: very nice man, and and we were really, um, we're
Speaker 1: kind of put together. Other than I and my goes,
Speaker 1: Charles Cobbin goes, there could be something there, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, big New York meeting Smith and Wilenski and
Speaker 1: never forget it, you know what I mean? It was
Speaker 1: it was classic music biz like pre It was the
Speaker 1: way you wanted to be, you know. It was expense
Speaker 1: accounts and car services and Manhattan, Smith and Wilenski Lobster
Speaker 1: tales are eighteen pounds or some world record ship. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was. It was just classic they and they signed
Speaker 1: us to a development deal and we were writing with
Speaker 1: people like Warren Haines um Mark Hudson from the Hudson Brothers,
Speaker 1: but he wrote a lot of hits with aerosmith at
Speaker 1: the time, Richie super who was an arrowsmith, but he
Speaker 1: was working, you know, with Desmond Child and and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we get enough tunes to make a
Speaker 1: record in Memphis with Joe Hardy at Arden Studios and
Speaker 1: our band. We were dysfunctional kids with egos, me included,
Speaker 1: and we didn't really see the forest from the trees,
Speaker 1: and we didn't realize how good we had it, and
Speaker 1: we screwed it up. We did. We screwed it up,
Speaker 1: and luckily for me, I screwed it up at an
Speaker 1: age where it wasn't fatal to my career. I learned
Speaker 1: the lessons of the music business and how hard it
Speaker 1: is to achieve a major label deal at the time
Speaker 1: early on, and I never took it for granted ever again.
Speaker 1: And that was a lesson I learned when I was
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. And and thank god it didn't I had.
Speaker 1: I had an opportunity for a rebirth and a second
Speaker 1: act and a second chance at my career where some
Speaker 1: of the people that were later in there, you know,
Speaker 1: and some people just bailed on the business, and some
Speaker 1: people made bad choices. It's not this is not news,
Speaker 1: and this is not new to the music business. Fair
Speaker 1: success is terrible and it and it plagues a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Okay, so how do you hook up with
Speaker 1: your manager? Called us on the phone. We were listed.
Speaker 1: We were the only two bottom mosses in the in
Speaker 1: the in the Utica phone book. One was my dad's
Speaker 1: brother and one was us. They called his brother first
Speaker 1: and then they called us. Are you are you from?
Speaker 1: Are you lem Bonamassa? And are you um? Are you
Speaker 1: Joe's dad? And they're like yeah. And by the way,
Speaker 1: as soon as that thing aired um on national television
Speaker 1: Jane Pauli Sunday Night, National Television pre Netflix, we had
Speaker 1: heard from every major label. Mercury, we had heard from Colombia,
Speaker 1: E M I Capital, um god, I think it was
Speaker 1: the Crystalists called next thing. You know, we have lawyers
Speaker 1: driving up. Okay, um, what's his name? David Sodenberg? Right,
Speaker 1: Big music music and sorry and I'm like, we're in
Speaker 1: a nine square foot ranch house, okay. And my mom
Speaker 1: would put out these nice bagels and these are power
Speaker 1: players coming up to the house, one of which was
Speaker 1: Um Roy Wiseman and Um and his girlfriend now wife
Speaker 1: of thirty years, Debbie, and we just had a meeting
Speaker 1: and we really got on his people. And he was
Speaker 1: ten years older than me, and his father was you know,
Speaker 1: now he's in his eighties, but the patriarch of this
Speaker 1: music business family. And we just got on his folks.
Speaker 1: And that's how many people do you know has had
Speaker 1: the same management thirty years? Very few? So what was
Speaker 1: his pitch back then? Pitch was along. It was a
Speaker 1: long play versus a quick cell. And we were smart
Speaker 1: enough as people to to realize that one of the
Speaker 1: things you're famous for is you and your manager do
Speaker 1: it all by yourself, which no one else does. How
Speaker 1: did they come up and how did the two of
Speaker 1: you come up with that game plan? The vertical integration
Speaker 1: started when the music business decided to push me out,
Speaker 1: Meaning I had a deal with Epic Records when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Um, when I was the first solo
Speaker 1: Michael Caplan sign me will Always be Grateful. Harvey leads Uh,
Speaker 1: Steve Barnett, Um and Tommy Motola was still running the
Speaker 1: company Sony and basically our record comes out in August
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, exactly twenty years ago, because my reissue
Speaker 1: just came out comes out in August. By October, I
Speaker 1: was gone because the company had posted their first quarterly
Speaker 1: loss under Tommy Matola's leadership, just as the business was
Speaker 1: kind of changing and whatever. And so I found myself
Speaker 1: back to square one. After working so hard to get
Speaker 1: a deal. Back at my parents house, we went um.
Speaker 1: We we approached people like Alligator Records, Tone Cool, which
Speaker 1: was Susan Tadeshi's record label at the time, and they
Speaker 1: were signing Blues Axe and nobody would take us. Nobody
Speaker 1: would take us. Roy's brother had a little label that
Speaker 1: was doing compilations. We put our second record on that. Finally,
Speaker 1: by the time two thousand two runs around rolls around,
Speaker 1: we are now listless, you know, we have we have
Speaker 1: we have no direction. My my agent, who are now
Speaker 1: friends with Bet she actually probably regrets dropping me. Um
Speaker 1: who was the agent, Oh, I'm not even it was Monterey.
Speaker 1: I'm out, I'm I'm I don't have an agent. I
Speaker 1: got not a okay, not a except Roy. We then
Speaker 1: decided to pull our money and we make this record
Speaker 1: called Blues Deluxe, and Roy's brother Eric, who was running
Speaker 1: U Distribution company down in Florida, gets the records in
Speaker 1: the stores basically force feeds you know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: F F y E and stuff like that. No sales
Speaker 1: records and we didn't know anything about return reserves and
Speaker 1: all that stuff that fun part of the record business. Um.
Speaker 1: And he ended up deciding to go it alone, and
Speaker 1: we sold more records of that Blues Deluxe record than
Speaker 1: we'd ever you know, basically done in the past and
Speaker 1: made way more like wait, wait, since you're an unknown quantity,
Speaker 1: how did you just sell the records? Because of the
Speaker 1: generosity of people like BB King and Paul Rodgers and
Speaker 1: Bad Company and George Sara are good and I know
Speaker 1: I'm missing somebody, buddy guy. And one of the few
Speaker 1: things that I did take away from the experience at
Speaker 1: Monterey was relationships with people like that, and they would
Speaker 1: let me open up, especially BB King. So I would
Speaker 1: go out there and I would have this like truncated
Speaker 1: set that would just play to that audience and we
Speaker 1: would crush it, crush it at the merch stand two
Speaker 1: CDs and a half hour right signing Boom boom. We
Speaker 1: would crush at Peter Frampton whose I was, I'm forgetting sorry, Peter,
Speaker 1: Peter Frampton, huge for me, Peter Franz another another Nashville resident. Yes,
Speaker 1: and a good friend and and a legend. And the
Speaker 1: thing was, we sold that record because we had no
Speaker 1: other choice. And then all of a sudden, we we'd
Speaker 1: see our sound scans going up boom boom, boom, boom boom.
Speaker 1: Then William Morris takes us on as a client and
Speaker 1: we start getting more opening acts, and then we're kind
Speaker 1: of doing headline clubs and and and and opening acts.
Speaker 1: And the opening acts were the you don't get any money,
Speaker 1: but the merch was great, so it was it was working.
Speaker 1: Two thousand five. Um, we got tired of the of
Speaker 1: the offers that in the types of venues that we're
Speaker 1: going Listen, Joe Bonasa just the blues act. He only
Speaker 1: is gonna play like dirty clubs, and you know, it'd
Speaker 1: be like one night to be Guar and then me
Speaker 1: and then and then it would be like you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, just you could you could put
Speaker 1: whatever whoever, you know, So it was like these clubs,
Speaker 1: do you know, they just hose him down and and
Speaker 1: and they just replaced you know, you're just a widget.
Speaker 1: And what I realized is that my audience didn't like
Speaker 1: go into those kind of places. They weren't kids. They
Speaker 1: wanted to sit down, they wanted to chair, they wanted
Speaker 1: to theater because they saw me in the theater opening
Speaker 1: up for Baby King or Peter Frampton or whoever Farrell Good.
Speaker 1: So we decided to do our first four Walls in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, and we did one of For those
Speaker 1: who don't know, four walls, you basically rent the room
Speaker 1: and you do everything yourself. Yes, yes, it's a you're
Speaker 1: you're the promoter. And we did our first two. We
Speaker 1: did Jacksonville, Florida, and we did Fort Wyne, Indiana. Do
Speaker 1: you remember how big those buildings were. We did the
Speaker 1: Embassy Theater in Fort Wayne. I know, I remember the cap,
Speaker 1: I remember what we sold. And well, well that's what
Speaker 1: I want to hear. Okay. We were playing this place
Speaker 1: called Pierre's in Fort wayn Indiana. They would give this
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars to draw approximately people and we would
Speaker 1: do good in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Okay, but it was
Speaker 1: a big club and we got four thousand dollars. Taking
Speaker 1: or leave it. Okay, we took it. We played the
Speaker 1: Embassy Theater holds I've sold it out many times. Okay,
Speaker 1: first time I played, I draw the same people. We
Speaker 1: went from a twelve dollar ticket price to a thirty
Speaker 1: five dollar front row in a twenty in the balcony.
Speaker 1: Balcony wasn't open because we didn't sell that many, but
Speaker 1: we did thirty five to twenty. We walked out with
Speaker 1: there's your sign. Jacksonville. We played the Florida Theater. We
Speaker 1: used to play his place called Freebird Live. Same deal.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't give us more than three thousand dollars. I don't
Speaker 1: care the whoever is on the other end, I don't
Speaker 1: care if he's bringing Eric Capton with him, I'm giving
Speaker 1: him three thousand dollars. You know that kind of agent
Speaker 1: promoter thing. We we read the Florida Theater, which was
Speaker 1: a friend of Roy's dad, and we do six hundred
Speaker 1: people made thirteen dollars. You can see. But now, how
Speaker 1: do you continue that on? Because you need capital to
Speaker 1: do these four walls or these these self promote because
Speaker 1: a what happens is you have to pay for the advertising.
Speaker 1: You're you're you're fronting this whole thing, and then you
Speaker 1: get it all back on a settlement a couple of
Speaker 1: days later. So we started picking our battles and our
Speaker 1: tour so we would do too maybe the four of
Speaker 1: these four walls per tour. Then as the years started
Speaker 1: to progress, by oh seven o eight, we were doing
Speaker 1: se four walls because we reinvest the money into the business.
Speaker 1: And then by two thousand nine, which is basically the
Speaker 1: last year with William Morris, we decided, you know, early
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten was debate last year William Morris
Speaker 1: and I have no I have I have. I have
Speaker 1: no hard feelings to William Morris except for the fact
Speaker 1: that they overcharges for their acts on the crew. So
Speaker 1: fuck you William Morris, just for that. Okay, you can
Speaker 1: take it right to the top for me to them,
Speaker 1: to them, they over they try to go just because
Speaker 1: they're bitter about not taking a cap. That's just me talking.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter. I'll take that, you know, I don't. I see.
Speaker 1: We've had to we've had to do end a rounds
Speaker 1: because it won't even bring our offers for the cruises
Speaker 1: to their acts because they're just they're just a little
Speaker 1: bit they hold a grudge, no problem. Um. We ended
Speaker 1: up parting ways with William Morris am the couple, which
Speaker 1: I thought until we started making doing cruises. Um, and
Speaker 1: we basically went on our own. So at that point
Speaker 1: in time in America, I was unsigned. I had my
Speaker 1: own label. We would do one artist, which was me,
Speaker 1: and we had no we had no agent, we had
Speaker 1: no nothing. We just did it all in house. And
Speaker 1: that was the vertical integration of the of the of
Speaker 1: the company. And that's that's the rest is history. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of hats to be worn. Do
Speaker 1: you have a full time staff taking there's twenty people
Speaker 1: in the office, between twenty and twenty two people depending
Speaker 1: on how busy we get. Um, that's their sole jobs
Speaker 1: to run everything. Joe Bonamassa and uh, that's been the
Speaker 1: art department. There's an there's a social media department. There's
Speaker 1: a marketing department. There's there's a merchandizing department. There's a
Speaker 1: web store, there's everything. But it's also when you vertically
Speaker 1: integrate your your model, you're you're not leaving these huge
Speaker 1: chunks of money on the table which you then can
Speaker 1: use to reinvest in yourself. It's not like you just
Speaker 1: it's like if you normal show you have a ten
Speaker 1: percent agency. Okay, there's a ten percent kind of promoter fee.
Speaker 1: Then there's the show cost, which how how does a
Speaker 1: bag of lace potato ships become six it's you know,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, you get when you when
Speaker 1: you promote your own shows in four wall, you get
Speaker 1: to see exactly what everything costs. The building rental is
Speaker 1: six grand, the ushers are three, the popcorn people are
Speaker 1: are are five hundred bucks. And then there's a you know,
Speaker 1: so you get to see the macro of of what
Speaker 1: you're trying to you know, of the real expenses. And
Speaker 1: then you look at a settlement sheet from a promoter
Speaker 1: like man, these are inflated, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: so you start saving money and you don't have you're
Speaker 1: not giving away off the top then having to pay
Speaker 1: your bills, so that actually twenty to that you're saving
Speaker 1: by doing your own four walls. Um uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you able to reinvest in yourself. And and it's it's
Speaker 1: called scaling a business. That's how it scales. And we
Speaker 1: we my manager and I we we've had many discussions
Speaker 1: about that. It's like, thank god we invested in especially
Speaker 1: now because we didn't sell our merchandise we didn't do
Speaker 1: one of those dreadful three sixty deals. We didn't. We
Speaker 1: didn't give it away for a big chunk, you know,
Speaker 1: because when you give it away for a big chunk,
Speaker 1: the chunk doesn't it's not big forever, you know. And
Speaker 1: then when you're you know, you're like, oh, man, I
Speaker 1: really could have used that that money to reinvest and
Speaker 1: you know, do something else. And it's the same with
Speaker 1: the label. And it's I know, I'm long winded today,
Speaker 1: but it is what it is. Okay, pre COVID, how
Speaker 1: many gigs a year were you doing? Hun between hundred
Speaker 1: and how many domestic it's been basically fifty fifty, so
Speaker 1: you're looking at probably call it fifty five per per
Speaker 1: per territory plus Australia thrown him. Okay, of those hundred
Speaker 1: and five eight, how many were four world? So no
Speaker 1: matter you go to a foreign country, you do it
Speaker 1: there too. I do it, I do it there. UM
Speaker 1: promoters will try to tell you that that um promoting
Speaker 1: a show is like splitting the atom in complexity and
Speaker 1: and and it's not, it's just it's are you willing
Speaker 1: to now? The only times we will not four walls
Speaker 1: if we're doing festivals obviously if we do, if you know,
Speaker 1: if we do like north Sea Jazz or montro or
Speaker 1: we're not, that's it's end. But but as far as
Speaker 1: if there's a Joe b headline show, it's four walled
Speaker 1: everywhere we got. Okay, So just starting with domestically, how
Speaker 1: often do you have a date that's in the red
Speaker 1: never and even how about when you started? I think
Speaker 1: once once or twice where we broke even we we
Speaker 1: we pushed and the venues you play now capacity tends
Speaker 1: to be um well, taking red rocks off the table,
Speaker 1: which is five thousand, Okay, I'm talking to an expert here,
Speaker 1: I should have done my research for I talked to you. Um,
Speaker 1: we're we're in the twenty five to five range, depending
Speaker 1: on like we'll do cut Arenas in in in Europe,
Speaker 1: we'll do the Albert Hall in London, which is five thousand.
Speaker 1: We'll play the the The Rhyme in which is twenty
Speaker 1: three hundred, so it's in that range, and then we'll
Speaker 1: go down it like well, sometimes we'll do a Tuesday
Speaker 1: night account Basie Theater, which is people and it's rocking.
Speaker 1: We love it, you know, I get the meat balls.
Speaker 1: From Buenos Sarah. It's beautiful experience. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: going there for years, So it just depends. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of philosophies which you may or may
Speaker 1: not agree with. But a lot of people say, you know,
Speaker 1: once you get the ball rolling, you don't want any
Speaker 1: any empty seats. You don't want to play in a
Speaker 1: bigger venue. Do you think that's a factor? People don't
Speaker 1: care taping ont have eyes in the back of their head.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, I'd rather scale into it then
Speaker 1: scale myself out of it. You know, it's manifest destiny. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want every seat sold every time? Yes? But
Speaker 1: I watched bb King not what that wasn't his His
Speaker 1: his strategy. His his strategy was this is where we
Speaker 1: play now on Tuesday night. Maybe we don't sell out,
Speaker 1: but we're we're average eighty five too. I think our
Speaker 1: last tour, pre COVID was sold average. There's nights it's
Speaker 1: blown out, there's there's nights that it's eighty four. It's good,
Speaker 1: it feels fine in there. And the rest of the scent,
Speaker 1: you didn't sell his ego and and and because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, not only you're entertaining people
Speaker 1: first and foremost. That's the reason why you're there. Be
Speaker 1: you're keeping your machine going. And and and see you're
Speaker 1: employing thirty people on the road in the music business,
Speaker 1: they'll have families and wives and houses and kids. Okay,
Speaker 1: over this, let's call it ten years. It's longer than that.
Speaker 1: But um, business going up, down, staying the same. I
Speaker 1: think generally our EPIDA is earnings before interest tax. And
Speaker 1: suddenly I forgot the A. Yeah, I think it's a
Speaker 1: depreciate and appreciation depreciation. UM, I think we've kind of
Speaker 1: we we went up after the initial explosion and then
Speaker 1: I call the explosion PBS when when public broadcasting, Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. UM. I'm eternally grateful for them because
Speaker 1: they started running our Albert Hall two thousand nine DVD
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. And how did that come together?
Speaker 1: A little affiliate in Albany, because I was around there,
Speaker 1: said hey, listen, we like Joe's DVD. Would you make
Speaker 1: and would you make an hour edit like it already
Speaker 1: been out? And we went and all in with the
Speaker 1: DVD and it was something Okay, it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was we're gonna lose money
Speaker 1: in a time we couldn't afford to lose money, and
Speaker 1: they we made him an hour edit in in in
Speaker 1: public broadcasting, their internal numbers are a one to a five,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like good to bad, you know.
Speaker 1: So if you like, it's on their in their pledge drives.
Speaker 1: So when we put this thing out in all of me,
Speaker 1: they raised like dollars in the hour, which was like
Speaker 1: like it was like, oh my god, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: They did it again to see if it was a flute,
Speaker 1: did the same thing, then it then it Then it
Speaker 1: kind of made the rounds PBS corporate like the not
Speaker 1: just the affiliates, but the mothership. They decided to do
Speaker 1: it as a whole campaign and then went from twelve
Speaker 1: to three thousand pretty quick, and so it went up.
Speaker 1: That was the explosion, and I think right now we
Speaker 1: we generally go up three to five percent a year. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a push depending on the venue choices in
Speaker 1: the time of year we do it, but it's it's
Speaker 1: always on an uptick. There's always new fans no matter
Speaker 1: how popular you think you are. Okay, and I'm a
Speaker 1: d e or f less celebrity. You're really relatively You're
Speaker 1: still relatively unknown, and there's always room to grow. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like you whether you find the plateau or where
Speaker 1: you find the peak. And you know, the chances of
Speaker 1: me having a hit song are like seeing Aurora borealis
Speaker 1: during the day. Highly unlikely, and most likely it's the sun,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So it's to me the
Speaker 1: arena feeling notions. That's not gonna be me. Me. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be a theater act. I love being a
Speaker 1: theater act. Pay my bill. I live a very nice life,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful. Most importantly, I'm grateful. What do you
Speaker 1: think is driving new attendance? I think what drives new
Speaker 1: new attendance these days, and I hate to say it
Speaker 1: is like Instagram and and social media, and you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it used to be word of mouth, you know,
Speaker 1: but now it's like you have to be an instagram ner,
Speaker 1: an influencer, you know. And I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: like that or not. And I have a love of
Speaker 1: hate relationship with Instagram and social media because of the
Speaker 1: the I think familiarity breeds contempt. If they know they
Speaker 1: can get to you, then then they try to poke
Speaker 1: the bear, and I should be better at not letting
Speaker 1: the bear get poked. But then there's just some stuff
Speaker 1: that you just go, I'm just not letting that go. No. No,
Speaker 1: I learned not to respond unless I know you or
Speaker 1: you have a name that I'm aware of. Problem is,
Speaker 1: ten percent of the public is certifiably insane, certifiably and
Speaker 1: they might say something reasonable. Whatever, you respond, and then
Speaker 1: it's open season. I've had a lot of bad experiences,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, once you put your head above
Speaker 1: it's the nature of the game today. So on social media,
Speaker 1: to what degree is that your personal responsibility or does
Speaker 1: your team take care of it? Team take takes care
Speaker 1: of the Facebook. I run Twitter and I run Instagram,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I sometimes I don't read the I mean,
Speaker 1: here's the problem with with with social media. And I've
Speaker 1: gotten myself in trouble a few times by either coming
Speaker 1: off a little bit tone deaf. But I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: not on the forefront I'm not. I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 1: on the forefront of it. I just if I go, hey,
Speaker 1: here's a cool picture, you know, but don't post it
Speaker 1: on someday or when you know, it's like maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not paying attention to the news even though a news junkie,
Speaker 1: and I'm distracted, and then all of a sudden, you're
Speaker 1: worse than like like, I can't believe it. Okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: that's the loud minority talking to you. Most of the
Speaker 1: people don't really care or check. Um. The problem with
Speaker 1: with being a celebrity like yourself, um, in social media.
Speaker 1: If you have an opinion, now, Bob, you are in
Speaker 1: the opinion business. Believe me, I know if you have
Speaker 1: an opinion and you stick the landing. Okay, And I
Speaker 1: watched one of the one of the most entertaining things
Speaker 1: I ever watched, was your your It was a debate
Speaker 1: with Gene Simmons. Okay, but there was no right or
Speaker 1: wrong because both of you had an opinion and you're
Speaker 1: willing to stick the landing. And the problem is now
Speaker 1: you have to. It's like social media. To be really successful,
Speaker 1: you have to be the most perfectly curated, crafted vanilla
Speaker 1: wafer of all time, who ray for everyone, who ray
Speaker 1: for everything. Everybody's right. There's nothing wrong except the things
Speaker 1: that are agreed upon by the masses to be wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have an opinion on music, if
Speaker 1: you have an opinion on anything, look out because the
Speaker 1: arrows are gonna come back at you, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and and then it becomes a game of gotcha,
Speaker 1: and it's like that didn't sign on for that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So since Instagram is driving new bonham maassa fans, what
Speaker 1: works on Instagram? I'd say what works on Instagram sincerity
Speaker 1: and and it's the candid moments. It's it's the ones
Speaker 1: that the post that means something. It's not the ones
Speaker 1: that the you know, social media like people. They're like
Speaker 1: social media consultants. It's like, well, you know, you must
Speaker 1: post between one fifteen and one nineteen every day because
Speaker 1: that's the peak hours and people are, you know, having
Speaker 1: their salad at lunch and they're checking. I could care less,
Speaker 1: could care less. If it means something to me at
Speaker 1: the moment, I'm going to post it or not, you know,
Speaker 1: and let aley not. I just I find myself happier
Speaker 1: posting much less. And I don't need the dopamine shot.
Speaker 1: I don't need your peek. How many times were you
Speaker 1: posting and how much are you posting today? It was
Speaker 1: two or three times a day? You know, if I
Speaker 1: was you know, if we were doing something. Mostly it
Speaker 1: was just one time a day, and I try to
Speaker 1: do once a day and then, but there's there's days
Speaker 1: I don't do it anymore. Um. And there was a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks where I let I needed to get
Speaker 1: away and I let the I let I let the
Speaker 1: web master do it. And the fans didn't like that
Speaker 1: at all because they're like, who's this JB. Web Master.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's Scott. He's a nice guy. Give him
Speaker 1: a break, you know. Finally said no, no, I'll take
Speaker 1: it back, but on a contingency. And and I also
Speaker 1: there's there's a certain thing that you have to look
Speaker 1: after more than more than your followers, more than your career,
Speaker 1: more than anything. It's called your soul. And if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you don't protect that, you lose your soul. And
Speaker 1: that I see people going down those rabbit holes where
Speaker 1: you're just like, you can't fight everybody. It's like it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, reading the history books about my grandfather fought
Speaker 1: in Korea, and when the Chinese got involved, it was
Speaker 1: one of those two soldiers one rifle kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They just keep coming. You're like, man, no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: none of this anymore, and and it was to me.
Speaker 1: I'm much happier posting less. And when I post, I
Speaker 1: don't look at the comments anymore. Just don't. So you
Speaker 1: guys want to punch yourselves out and get into big
Speaker 1: fights over really nothing that matters. A picture of a
Speaker 1: less Paul doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 1: But if they want to get involved in that, that's
Speaker 1: up to them. Let's talk about you personally relative to
Speaker 1: your career. Uh, Males tend to like to keep going up, okay,
Speaker 1: and you you get a unique thing, which is you
Speaker 1: get to be on stage. You get a hit which
Speaker 1: you can't get anywhere else in the world, which is
Speaker 1: very fulfilling. But at this point in time, despite yourself
Speaker 1: deprecating manner, are there certain goals, certain wants that are
Speaker 1: still driving you know, I'll tell you what bout. I
Speaker 1: can tell you this, and I think I'm coming closer.
Speaker 1: I'm not there yet. I have not made the definitive
Speaker 1: Joe Bonamassa record yet. I think the one at Abbey
Speaker 1: Road is getting It's the first It's the first step
Speaker 1: in a long journey to where I have not made that.
Speaker 1: I've had good songs, and I've had songs that people
Speaker 1: come to my concerts to see. That's that means that resonates.
Speaker 1: I have not made a ten song released at all.
Speaker 1: Ten of them are that like that. And it's not
Speaker 1: for lack of trying. It's not because I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get lazy. It's not. It's it's it's nothing other than
Speaker 1: the fact that a need to capture lightning in the
Speaker 1: bottle ten times. And if I can do that, I'm cool.
Speaker 1: I'm cool with Let's just assume you do that, and
Speaker 1: I would presume your sales on albums is relatively the same.
Speaker 1: So let's say you hit it out of the park
Speaker 1: and the reception is the same as the previous records.
Speaker 1: How will you handle that? Emotionally good question? Like I
Speaker 1: played a song called Self Inflicted Wounds every night and
Speaker 1: it goes over well, it's not it's not a standing
Speaker 1: oh song. But I played every night because I think
Speaker 1: it's the best song I've written in ten years. And
Speaker 1: that's just for me. I love saying it. I think
Speaker 1: it's the best message and it's based on a true event.
Speaker 1: I I play it and and never discounts spite is
Speaker 1: a great motivator, you know. But I'm also I'm also
Speaker 1: very cognizant of the fact that I need to give
Speaker 1: the folks in the crowd what they want, and I
Speaker 1: don't take anything personally because if if there's the nights
Speaker 1: that you think are great, man, this band is like
Speaker 1: kicking ask and we're we all get off the stage
Speaker 1: and everybody's arms get huge, and we all pikes ourselves
Speaker 1: on the back, and then the fans, the fans have
Speaker 1: been there twenty times. You guys were off, and then
Speaker 1: the ones and the ones you think absolutely owe everybody
Speaker 1: their money back because we were it was amateur night.
Speaker 1: They it was I don't know what you guys were doing. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was magic tonight. You go. Okay, And same same
Speaker 1: tangentially to to a concert a record ten songs that
Speaker 1: mean the world to me, that I think are great,
Speaker 1: that I think is the definitive Joe bonamassa record most likely,
Speaker 1: and I got my head around this most likely will
Speaker 1: be the least successful one. But at least I can
Speaker 1: say I made the statement. Okay, But those inside the
Speaker 1: business certainly are aware of your career. We live in
Speaker 1: an arrow where the biggest acts of less penetration than
Speaker 1: ever before. So you have created your own business, and
Speaker 1: generally speaking in terms of other genres, it doesn't tend
Speaker 1: to intersect. It's wort of its own silo. Do you
Speaker 1: how do you feel about getting more recognition, being more
Speaker 1: integrated with the so called mainstream, getting more acknowledgement. To
Speaker 1: what degree is that important to you? In the degree
Speaker 1: if it, if it requires more work on my end
Speaker 1: to be one of the cool kids, count me out, okay,
Speaker 1: because I already worked plenty, and everybody's been saying I
Speaker 1: need to take a year off. I have a hard time.
Speaker 1: I have a hard time being around mainstream anything I have.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. It's a there's a
Speaker 1: visual reaction reaction to to it. I've always been the outsider.
Speaker 1: I've not I've not been an outcast, but I've been
Speaker 1: an outsider my whole life. And a few times that
Speaker 1: I flirt with the mainstream, it's like it's like it's
Speaker 1: like two north ends of a magnet. They tend to
Speaker 1: just do this, you know, And I don't feel at
Speaker 1: home or I don't feel at home around celebrity and
Speaker 1: and and red carpet. I never I've never walked the
Speaker 1: Red carpet in my life never will. The two times
Speaker 1: have been nominated for a Grammy didn't go because as
Speaker 1: soon as I heard that, Charlie Mussele White and Ben
Speaker 1: Harper were playing, and I go, guess who your winner is?
Speaker 1: You know? And I was right. And and the thing is,
Speaker 1: I've never been comfortable around that. And I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to say this in a facetious, like up my own assway.
Speaker 1: I just I luckily, at forty three years old, I've
Speaker 1: been around long enough. I've been successful enough to not
Speaker 1: do things that make me feel uncomfortable out of sheer going, Man,
Speaker 1: we really need this one. I bet I better get
Speaker 1: to that that that Grammy pre party and and you know,
Speaker 1: network and shake some hands. That sounds like a nightmare
Speaker 1: to me. Not that I don't like the people in
Speaker 1: the room, but doing that out of necessity seems so
Speaker 1: phony and so disingenuous and and and to myself of
Speaker 1: why I do this and why I got into the
Speaker 1: business to begin with that, I I just can't do it.
Speaker 1: It's talking about it, you can see me. It just
Speaker 1: makes me up tight and it's weird. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean to I'm not de meeting anybody who who who
Speaker 1: goes into those situations and flourishes, because they're gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot more successful than I will. But I'm willing
Speaker 1: to sacrifice success for my soul. And since you're working
Speaker 1: all the time, how has this affected your personal relationships
Speaker 1: and love life? I'm never, I'm I've never I've never
Speaker 1: been great at being the boyfriend. Never, not that I'm
Speaker 1: a bad boyfriend. I don't cheat, I don't whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: just like if you, I mean, if I gave you
Speaker 1: a tour of my house in California, you would walk
Speaker 1: in and go, this man is not married at all,
Speaker 1: work at all, these fender signs. Look at these amps. Now,
Speaker 1: it's well done. It's done like a museum. Um. And
Speaker 1: I've had some very wonderful women and very understanding women
Speaker 1: in my life. Unfortunately, it's just my consistency and my
Speaker 1: resolve eventually wears them down to where they don't resent me.
Speaker 1: But it just it doesn't work. So unfortunately, I've been
Speaker 1: very unsuccessful at that. But I never I never said
Speaker 1: I wanted, you know, kids and a family. I may
Speaker 1: want a dog one day, and I already have a
Speaker 1: name for the dog. And a breed of the dog
Speaker 1: that I want to rescue. Obviously I'll get a rescue dog.
Speaker 1: But but it other than that, I never had those goals.
Speaker 1: I never put that like, well, I really just just
Speaker 1: doing this until I can find the right woman and
Speaker 1: settle down and have me a bunch of kids, because
Speaker 1: how do you raise a kid when you are one?
Speaker 1: Let's say, say if you don't have kids or a
Speaker 1: child forever. Okay, let's get into the guitar collecting thing.
Speaker 1: How many how many guitars Joe? Now? I would say
Speaker 1: they're spread out over three locations. I would say approximately
Speaker 1: about four hundred and fifty. Okay, if you buy a
Speaker 1: new guitar, at what point do you get rid of
Speaker 1: a guitar at all? You know? You remember remember the
Speaker 1: CEO of ge Jack Welch, the late of course, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he would always go on this is when CNBC
Speaker 1: was in the nineties. I used to watch it and um,
Speaker 1: he used to talk about this concept and he did
Speaker 1: it with people, okay, which is okay, that's these are
Speaker 1: people's livelihoods. He used to do it, but he used
Speaker 1: to go he would clear out the bottom ten percent
Speaker 1: of his employees every year the underperformers, the ones that
Speaker 1: that that that weren't that we're just kind of along
Speaker 1: for the ride or wherever wherever criteria. He attached to
Speaker 1: that every year, I look at the collection top down,
Speaker 1: and I haven't obviously we have an inventory and everything,
Speaker 1: and I clear out the bottom ten percent as because
Speaker 1: you only have so much room. B you're not playing
Speaker 1: these things. And see you probably were in the moment
Speaker 1: and you bought it and you thought it was cool.
Speaker 1: Because when the addictions raging, Luckily I don't have drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol. I have guitars and amps, okay, which is
Speaker 1: to me a healthy addiction to a point. And when
Speaker 1: the addiction is raging on the road and you're in
Speaker 1: a store and you've got four or five things going
Speaker 1: on at the same time, you go, hey, what about this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. You don't think about you. I'll take
Speaker 1: it because it's the it's the rush, you're in finding mode,
Speaker 1: you're in you know, your vacuum it all up and
Speaker 1: so I I get rid of ten percent of the
Speaker 1: guitars um per year. Quietly, it's not like the Joe
Speaker 1: Bonamasa Annual Collection Reduction sale here on Instagram. Bye bye bye,
Speaker 1: you know Sunday Sunday Sunday is that nothing like that.
Speaker 1: It is really, ultimately um, just an exercise. And am
Speaker 1: I a hoarder or am I got control over this thing?
Speaker 1: And just to clear out the collection? And they're all
Speaker 1: good guitars. And people have bought guitars for me, like wow,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you got rid of it because it
Speaker 1: just wasn't the guitar for me and it didn't speak
Speaker 1: to me. There's things that I hold onto that people
Speaker 1: I don't know why you keep it. It just means
Speaker 1: something to me. And the criteria is different for everyone. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's assume you do want to get rid of guitars.
Speaker 1: How do you lay them off? I got about four
Speaker 1: or five people that want stuff, and very it's very
Speaker 1: rarely in the public um. And I know the kind
Speaker 1: of guitars that people look for, and I just call him, Okay,
Speaker 1: do you want this? Here's if there's any issues. I
Speaker 1: don't really buy stuff with issues, but if there's any issues,
Speaker 1: I just disclose them. I give them a price and
Speaker 1: they like it or they don't, you know, so it's
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal generally. Generally speaking, you make
Speaker 1: money trading guitars, lose money, break even, don't care. I
Speaker 1: always call I was when I buy. Remember I'm the
Speaker 1: son of a guitar dealer. I buy not wholesale, but
Speaker 1: not retail. I buy in the brackish area where I
Speaker 1: just like I could listen, did like like we're talking
Speaker 1: about guitars that are anywhere from five thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars. Okay, you're you're talking about stuff. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I just want to dignified exit strategy. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to buy a guitar to lose money. I
Speaker 1: just like to barely if I can break even. You know,
Speaker 1: if you come out a little bit ahead, great, um.
Speaker 1: But I don't do it for a living, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't buy with the notion I will never ever
Speaker 1: find The people offer me stuff all the time, original
Speaker 1: owners and stuff like that. Some people want to give
Speaker 1: it to you, like, let's not even go down that road.
Speaker 1: I'll pay you fair because I don't want to take
Speaker 1: advantage of people because of my stature, not only as
Speaker 1: a collector but as a musician. And I've I've corrected
Speaker 1: people when they've been super undervalued on things many times
Speaker 1: and like, I'm not gonna pay you that because they
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna try to get it for less. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pay you more because I have a conscious and
Speaker 1: I want to be able to look at anything in
Speaker 1: my collection and go, remember the story. I buy stories,
Speaker 1: not instruments. And that little old lady who got three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for a guitar when she was asking a thousand,
Speaker 1: that's the story I'm gonna tell because she was she
Speaker 1: just was like, you know what, thank you for the honesty,
Speaker 1: and I go, You're welcome. I would hope that would
Speaker 1: be the same thing if somebody was, you know, if
Speaker 1: I was doing if I was if I showed up
Speaker 1: with a with a with a painted egg get an
Speaker 1: antique dealer going hey, I give me fifty bucks for this,
Speaker 1: I hope somebody would say, like, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a faberge. You know what I mean. It's like you
Speaker 1: just kind of invest in, you know, your belief in people. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get rid of how do you replenish? That's
Speaker 1: not the problem. That's not the problem. Finding this stuff
Speaker 1: is not the problem. Um, I'm a big electro magnet
Speaker 1: for guitars. People off me stuff all the time. And
Speaker 1: that's not just guitar dealers. Most of the stuff I
Speaker 1: try to buy is from original owners and from the source.
Speaker 1: And and that's the hunt, because when you have four
Speaker 1: and fifty of them, who cares? You don't need another?
Speaker 1: It's it's like, oh, like I just found uh you know,
Speaker 1: I just found like a once in a lifetime um
Speaker 1: Fender Esquire from a friend of mine who works for
Speaker 1: Guitar Center, and he bought it and and it's got
Speaker 1: a picture of a woman in a short skirt playing
Speaker 1: playing this sunburst Fender Esquire from nine nine. And you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that is like you can live two
Speaker 1: collecting lifetimes and never seen anything like that. That's what
Speaker 1: I go after. It's the ones in the lifetime stuff
Speaker 1: that you if you're not in the circle. If you're not,
Speaker 1: don't keep your finger on the pulse. That's what you're
Speaker 1: gonna miss out on. Did you go to the Me
Speaker 1: exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum which is now you do?
Speaker 1: You're saying, no, I missed it. I missed I was
Speaker 1: on tour, I was making the record, and I know
Speaker 1: it went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: But you got you gotta see. You know they have
Speaker 1: the original you know, Frankenstein guitar from Van Halen, which
Speaker 1: has been well documented. When you see it up close,
Speaker 1: you would not take it outside of your bedroom. It
Speaker 1: looked like, you know, it would fall apart so soon
Speaker 1: as you took it out stage. And uh, certainly some
Speaker 1: the Keith Richard stuff. There's a lot of great stuff.
Speaker 1: But in terms of what you're looking for in a sound,
Speaker 1: is it more about the model just I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the at the end of the day. Is it more
Speaker 1: about the model number or reality? No matter what the
Speaker 1: model number is, they all sound different. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: what people don't realize in terms of gear is everybody
Speaker 1: wanted a fifty nine Less Paul. Why because Jeff Back
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Page play one. Eric Clapton used one in
Speaker 1: John Mayo on the Blues Breakers and cream Um. Keith
Speaker 1: Richards had one, you know when they played uh you know,
Speaker 1: shin dig You know, all of a sudden, everyone in
Speaker 1: fifty nine Less Paul ain't gonna write the songs for you.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna sound like Jeff Beck if you got one, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna You're not gonna come up with. I
Speaker 1: feel free if you happen to have one on the
Speaker 1: you know, on a stand. So they were tools. I
Speaker 1: use the guitars as tools. I also like being a
Speaker 1: custodian of history and a history buff. I love history,
Speaker 1: you know, preserving American history. You know that all the
Speaker 1: stuff that I collect was made in America. Every screw
Speaker 1: and bolt and nut and speaker and string and capacitor
Speaker 1: in pot it's all us made, all manufactured here, and
Speaker 1: it's a documentation of a time which this country made
Speaker 1: everything for itself that will never get back. It's the
Speaker 1: world is too big. It's there's two inner you know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just too intertwined now to where the
Speaker 1: potentiometers and your Gibson guitar most likely now are made
Speaker 1: in China or outsource to China. Buy the company that
Speaker 1: Gibson buys them from. And get this, No, it's no
Speaker 1: fault of Gibson's. It's just what they have. And they've
Speaker 1: been doing business with CTS pots since the forties. So
Speaker 1: all of that, you know, is what goes into being
Speaker 1: a collector. Now, Like if in terms you asked me
Speaker 1: about my love life, if I'm on a date, and
Speaker 1: she goes, I see you collect guitars. Um, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big collector, and then like you you know,
Speaker 1: you know I really like And then if she asked me,
Speaker 1: like why do you need all those dates over? Why
Speaker 1: why do you need why do you need why? Why
Speaker 1: do you need all this? If you have to ask
Speaker 1: me that you don't get the collecting thing, it's either
Speaker 1: you get it or you don't. And it's okay if
Speaker 1: you don't. But I like to be surrounded by history.
Speaker 1: I like to be surrounded by things that I love
Speaker 1: and and play and cherish. And I have stories and
Speaker 1: I'm a story collector that happens to masquerade as an
Speaker 1: instrument collector. Of the four and fifty, how many do
Speaker 1: you play within twelve months? Maybe forty? About there's about
Speaker 1: forty road guitars and rotation. Those road guitars also double
Speaker 1: his studio instruments. These are the ones that are set
Speaker 1: up to play. There's the ones like like the prevailing
Speaker 1: narrative with collectors, you want to as original as possible.
Speaker 1: You want the original frets, you want the original everything.
Speaker 1: And I have tons of that stuff that's never been
Speaker 1: touched molested even looked at. It's like the Nigel Toughnesal conversation.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, I don't even look at it
Speaker 1: meant perfectly preserved tons of I never play it. Why
Speaker 1: because it doesn't deserve the beat down. It's survived sixty
Speaker 1: five years? Why do I have to beat it down?
Speaker 1: But I also have a fleeting guitars that are set
Speaker 1: up for playing, and and I play about forty of
Speaker 1: them every year consistently. And how many amps? Okay, so
Speaker 1: you Gibson a refender, totally fender with them with the
Speaker 1: amps most of my am Okay, Well I'll stop first
Speaker 1: talking guitars. Um. I I serve both masses. I'm equal
Speaker 1: about two hundred each. UM I love, but I do
Speaker 1: love solid bodies. I only collect solid bodies and a
Speaker 1: very few arch tops. UM. I like solid body fenders
Speaker 1: made from nineteen fifty to about nineteen sixty four. I
Speaker 1: love solid body Gibson's that were made from about nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two through about nineteen sixty five. That's about it, um.
Speaker 1: And it's all just different variations and colors and and
Speaker 1: and conditions of that. Okay. So let's say I had
Speaker 1: three guitars. I had a Jaguar, jazz Master, and a Stratocaster.
Speaker 1: Which one do you pick? And why? Okay, if you're
Speaker 1: talking about in terms of a canoe and a river,
Speaker 1: you take the jazz Master and the Jaguar. If you
Speaker 1: want to play real guitar, take this trap. Okay, I
Speaker 1: gotta go a little bit deeper there. I'm just making
Speaker 1: a bad joke. Um, I take the strap because I'm
Speaker 1: comfortable on his strap. Noki Edwards is great, great on
Speaker 1: a jazz Master. Um. John Fascanti changed the world with
Speaker 1: a Jaguar. Um. I'm I'm not a fan of those
Speaker 1: kind of serve guitars because it's just there's something because
Speaker 1: I'm a lead player. Um, they don't feel right when
Speaker 1: I play lead. UM strato caster to me is more
Speaker 1: of a tool that I can use. That that is, well,
Speaker 1: Leah didn't invent it for me, but but but it
Speaker 1: suits my style better. Okay, I'm gonna get click bait
Speaker 1: it on that one. I'm gonna get killed. But but
Speaker 1: your Fender amps, you're a tube guy, right, Always a tube.
Speaker 1: But never discount a solid state amp, especially early solid
Speaker 1: state like um Vox super beatles sound great. Rick and Bocker.
Speaker 1: Transnics sound great. Some early silvertone solid states sound great,
Speaker 1: um generally. But the weird thing is like we're the
Speaker 1: last industry that uses this technology. I mean, like maybe
Speaker 1: the Hi fi stuff, like they use tubes, but we
Speaker 1: used quarter inch cables, okay, and we'll be using quarter
Speaker 1: inch cable as long as we're playing electric guitar. Apple
Speaker 1: will not even keep the same headphone input for more
Speaker 1: than six months, you know what I mean. It's like
Speaker 1: it's like it's like every time you look at it,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't have the right adapter. I don't
Speaker 1: have to write plug. You know. They change the plugs.
Speaker 1: And we use quarter inch cables like old telephone you know,
Speaker 1: operator headphone jacks. They're called phono jack's, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and switch craft and all the it's ald timey stuff,
Speaker 1: you know. So we're kind of a steam powered car
Speaker 1: in the middle of a digital ocean. And how do
Speaker 1: you feel about the English company Marshall Orange, etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: James James Hendricks did pretty good with marshals Um, so
Speaker 1: did Slash and so did you know everybody? I used
Speaker 1: to use Marshalls a lot um Orange again, Tony Iaomi,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Page. There's always a Matt Amp on stage with him,
Speaker 1: which was an Orange product. Um and you know Vox.
Speaker 1: The kids from Liverpool did great with them, you know,
Speaker 1: you know Mike Campbell, Tom Petty Vox, you know uh Hank, Marvin,
Speaker 1: the Shadows use Fox um and you know. So again,
Speaker 1: it's all about the toolkit in which you require to
Speaker 1: get the sound in your head and your heart. And
Speaker 1: some people prefer brighter. I prefer darker guitar sound. But
Speaker 1: it's just what I feel in my heart, not my head.
Speaker 1: How about pedals and other effects? The Edge does great
Speaker 1: with him. Um. I think the reliance a little bit
Speaker 1: nowadays is a little bit too much on the stomp
Speaker 1: box and not enough on the on the tactile playing
Speaker 1: elements where the box does the rites the part. Now
Speaker 1: there's a there's an argument to say that a lot
Speaker 1: of great songs are written that way. Happy accidents you
Speaker 1: put on two pedals at once, or or you know
Speaker 1: Trevor Rabin like Owner of a Lonely Heart that solos
Speaker 1: with the rack freaked out and all the things went
Speaker 1: on at the same time and like that, Wait, don't
Speaker 1: you know Trevor Horners like, don't touch it, just do
Speaker 1: this all so you get the happy accidents. So you
Speaker 1: have to have it around to have the happy accidents,
Speaker 1: but also to the great players can just walk up
Speaker 1: to an amp and a cable and they and you go,
Speaker 1: oh that's Mike Campbell or oh that's the Edge, or
Speaker 1: oh it's Jimmy Hendricks or whatever. And I use pedals
Speaker 1: to augment the playing. And I use pedals historically, and
Speaker 1: I've said some weird controversial things about pedals in the past,
Speaker 1: but that was a different me in a different time pace.
Speaker 1: You know the time and place and a headspace. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you rely too much on on on
Speaker 1: Tristan Knobs, the music is gonna go by and you're
Speaker 1: not gonna you're not gonna get the most out of
Speaker 1: the music. You know. Um, But if you're just in
Speaker 1: the moment and playing with the band, you're gonna enjoy
Speaker 1: the experience a lot more and you can just be freed, minxed,
Speaker 1: turn up and go at least my attitude. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: assume you're invited to a dinner party, not a small one,
Speaker 1: but one way. There are multiple conversation. Okay, eight or
Speaker 1: twelve people, and we're not talking about the subjects we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, you're gonna fit in converse about other things?
Speaker 1: Are you're gonna tune out? You'd be surprised, how how
Speaker 1: how little I know about a lot of subjects. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying, but are you comfortable? Is that a
Speaker 1: good night to be talking a little bit about a
Speaker 1: lot of subjects? Yeah? Well you say, I'd rather I'd
Speaker 1: rather be anywhere but here. Yeah. I I don't I
Speaker 1: like talking about Like I'm fascinated with journalism, fascinated I'd
Speaker 1: probably be a journalist in another life. And I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: with with um, people that dedicate themselves to public service. Um,
Speaker 1: but not politics. I I you know, to me, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the people that are in the
Speaker 1: State department that that are a political they have been
Speaker 1: those jobs for for you know, fifty years under the
Speaker 1: attache to the Swedish ambassadors. Like it's like it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating life to me, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 1: just the just what you're dealing with, it's so different
Speaker 1: than what I do. And I'm fascinating with history and
Speaker 1: news and and again like I said everything about politics,
Speaker 1: because that that that is just a toxic pool of
Speaker 1: nobody wins on that one, especially if we discussed it
Speaker 1: at a dinner party or publicly. You know, and I've
Speaker 1: seen good friends defriend each other not only on Facebook
Speaker 1: but in real life over a post. You're like, no,
Speaker 1: that's how it works. You can agree to disagree. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: we've certainly hit a nerve here. We could talk all day.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things that you were saying.
Speaker 1: I would like to expand, but we'll do that sometime
Speaker 1: off the podcast. Joe, I want to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this. I loved hearing the story, especially
Speaker 1: since you're unique business and uh you're collecting for those
Speaker 1: who may have forgotten. For the top of the show,
Speaker 1: this Sunday, The Joe will be doing a live show,
Speaker 1: which will also be available in case you aren't available
Speaker 1: yourself for the following week. Joe, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: doing and I'm a big fan when you when you
Speaker 1: reach out and say hey, you want to be of course,
Speaker 1: thank you and thank you for doing it. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left SAX