Joe Bonamassa Talks about 'Sloe Gin'

by Tom Watson.

Sloe Gin, the seventh studio album from singer, songwriter, and guitar-ace Joe Bonamassa, is slated for release on August 20, 2007. Like 2006's You & Me, Bonamassa's best selling album to-date, Sloe Gin is the result of a close association between Joe and producer Kevin Shirley whose credits include Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Rush, Joe Satriani, Black Crowes and Dream Theater. While the 11 tracks of Sloe Gin provide electric-blues-rock guitar fans ample portions of Bonamassa's signature sound and style, the new album is not essentially a guitar playing showcase. Instead, Sloe Gin highlights Bonamassa's maturing vocal ability with a shift in emphasis toward verbal storytelling and a unique blending of influences.

Says Bonamassa, "I wanted to make a different album from You & Me, which was more focused on the playing and sheer, unabashed, hit-you-over-the-head guitar, which was cool, but you don't want to make two records in a row like that."

Modern Guitars spoke to Joe Bonamassa about Sloe Gin on August 1 while Joe was on tour in the United Kingdom.

Tom Watson: When you and producer Kevin Shirley started talking about the Sloe Gin project you were thinking about making it all acoustic?

Joe Bonamassa: We toyed with the idea of doing an all-acoustic album. Then we started re-thinking it because You & Me was doing so well at that time - it kept selling and selling and stayed on the charts - so maybe an acoustic record would not have been the best follow-up for all these new people who had never heard of me before. I can't assume that everybody's heard about me because I have seven albums out. You & Me was the biggest record I'd ever had. We had so many new people coming in I didn't want to confuse them. I think it was wise to crank up the electrics one more time.

Tom: Would you call Sloe Gin a blues album?

Joe: I would probably call it "an album" - just an album - an album that has blues on it. The whole thing is, I was inspired by The Rod Stewart Album (Stewart's 1969 solo debut album). It has heavy blues on it, some acoustic music, it has some English folk music on it, and the way I interpreted the album was that it's just a synopsis of everything that went to making up who Rod Stewart was. So, my inspiration was that this (Sloe Gin) is everything that goes into making up who I am. That's why, to me, I just call it "an album". It's a look into the pieces of a whole.

Tom: Let's say I'm with Billboard and I need to chart Sloe Gin. Where do I put it?

Joe: I could make a heavy metal or a goth metal record and they'd put me on the blues chart. "Oh, Bonamassa's out again, yeah, blues chart." [Laughs]

Tom: That might change after they hear this album.

Joe: I don't mind being on the blues chart. That's very good company. You know, it's a lot easier to be #1 on the blues chart than it is to be #1 on the pop chart. At least I'm #1 of something - king of the small hill.

Tom: The emphasis of Sloe Gin seems to be on storytelling and song as opposed to guitar wizardry.

Joe: I wanted to make a different album from You & Me, which was more focused on the playing and sheer, unabashed, hit-you-over-the-head guitar, which was cool, but you don't want to make two records in a row like that. People will go, "It's just You & Me II" and if they don't like the songs as much as they did on You & Me, they'll go, "It's You & Me Lite, he's washed up, he's done." It's that - and I've only got so many of those in me. I can't keep going and going with this shred-o-rama.

Tom: Your voice on Sloe Gin is so up-front, so clear, I think your vocals come out more on this album than they did on the others.

Joe: The songs dictate that and I've been really working on singing, too, which has helped me. I was in a good space with my voice and the songs brought out the best of what I can sing. I can't sing everything. This batch of songs was definitely my ringer batch.

Tom: How much input did Kevin have with respect to arrangements?

Joe: A lot. We would sit around and record parts of the whole song and go, "I think we need a chorus here" and with the magic of the computer you can insert a chorus wherever you want. It wasn't like we arranged it then recorded it the way it was arranged, we kind of arranged it by seeing where the emotional peaks were.

Tom: The one-sheet that came with the review copy of Sloe Gin quotes you as saying you wanted to do an A/B-side thing with the album. That still the case?

Joe: To me, it's like Side A/Side B, with "Sloe Gin" being the end of Side A and the rest of it being Side B. "Sloe Gin takes you to a certain point, then on Side B we have different things like "Black Night" and "India". I think with this album, out of any of them, the listener will not be bored and won't be, 'Oh, it's just the same thing over and over again. He had two good songs and he filled in the rest.' That's not the way I like to do things. Hopefully, it's enjoyable from track one to track eleven.

Tom: Let's talk about some of the tracks in particular. Regarding the opener, "Ball Peen Hammer", were you friends with the writer, Chris Whitely?

Joe: We weren't really good friends. We knew each other casually enough to say hello since we had played on some of the same shows. I was always really stunned by his solo work. When he would go out there with an acoustic guitar or a dobro and the sound system was really loud, it sounded like a whole band's worth of music that he was doing by himself. I was floored every time I saw him play solo acoustic. The guy was like a genius. On Sloe Gin, "Ball Peen Hammer"'s basically a blues song done in a rock style. It was done on one take all the way through, we didn't comp it or anything. It was a good head-space, the end of the day, let's sing it once and just do it.

Tom: "One of These Days" reminds me a bit of Southern rock.

Joe: It's more of a Ten Years After Kind of thing. The beginning of the song is like a swampy, Delta blues, then it hits the chorus, and by the end it's written in sort of a "Layla" mode, like an epic jam. I always wanted to do a song like that, one that had two or three separate movements that all made sense.

Tom: Why "Seagull"?

Joe: I did it a couple of times live because I got booked to do some acoustic-only shows and I needed more material. I was like, "I can sing this" and it was always one of my favorite Paul Rodgers tunes. So, I sang it a couple of times and people went crazy for it and I put it in the mental file cabinet. When we were working on acoustic songs for Sloe Gin I said, "I have this song, Seagull." Kevin did a great job producing it. It has a strong climax and a bigness to it.

Tom: Let's talk about the title track, "Sloe Gin". Were you familiar with Dick Wagner's guitar solo on the original?

Joe: We listened to it a lot. We actually thought it was Earl Slick (David Bowie) at one point before we figured out it was Wagner.

Tom: Did Wagner's solo influence you?

Joe: A little bit, like those trills that I do. I just liked it because it was really '70s-sounding to me, sort of like the height of the glam era of rock. Glam guys playing blues, it sounded pretty cool. The original is a strange track, but it's a beautiful blues song and the way Tim (Curry) sings it is just wonderful - as far as getting emotion out of a vocal, there's no better.

Tom: How have fans been reacting to "Sloe Gin"?

Joe: It's like an instant favorite. They haven't even gotten the record yet and somebody here in England last night was going, "Are we going to get to hear "Sloe Gin"?"

Tom: And "Another Kind of Love"?

Joe: It's a John Mayall song. I wanted to include a different style of blues and we needed kind of an up-tempo blues-rocker. It was one of the last things we did and we thought it came out really good.

Tom: Why revisit "Around the Bend"?

Joe: I hated the original version that I did. I felt like I had this really beautiful song that Will Jennings and I had put together and I had completely blown it. Some people might like it better than the new one, but I hated the original version that I recorded for Had to Cry Today. It's always been stuck in my head that I missed the boat on that song. When I listen to the original it sounds like half-assed blues-rock. We were kind of in this head-space of doing a worldly version, but nobody really knew what they were doing. The song really is an acoustic song, not electric. We just needed an acoustic guitar to build around the vocals, and that's what Kevin did.

Tom: How did you find the song "Jelly Roll"?

Joe: One of the acts that opened for us in the UK gave me a John Martyn record and I heard the song and I thought it was awesome.

Tom: "Black Night" was a hit for Charles Brown back in 1951.

Joe: Yes, it was. It's a cool song and I really liked the way he sang it.

Tom: It also got some attention when Brown toured with Bonnie Raitt in the '90s.

Joe: It was actually Bonnie Raitt that told me about the song. Not to be the über-Hollywood-name-dropper, but I sat at a table with her at some Grammy function and she said, "Have you ever heard of this singer named Charles Brown?" We were talking about blues singers like B.B. King and she said that one of her favorites was Charles Brown.

Tom: "Richmond" - the lyrics make it sound like you were born and raised there.

Joe: It does, but actually it's talking about the time I was living in Washington D.C. I really loved my time there, it's one of my favorite cities in the world and I have very fond memories of that town, but, unfortunately, "Washington" doesn't sing as good as "Richmond". So, for the sake of "the-a-ter" we changed the town.

Tom: "Utica" would have been interesting.

Joe: Yeah, Utica doesn't sound good either. [Laughs] "I wish I was in Utica".

Tom: "India" is one of the most interesting tracks on the album. Is this a teaser? Is the next album going to have more world music, more flavorings from other countries?

Joe: Maybe. To me, it's like where do you take the blues? There are only so many songs and the same influences. All music at its core has the blues in it so it's about trying to put it together and making a mash-up. It could be a teaser, I have no idea. I liked the demo I did of "India" - just off the top of my head in D-A-D-D-A-D tuning. One of the interesting thing about the Indian scales is a note can be a half step sharp or flat and it sounds "right". I think Rick Melick did an awesome job with the tablas when we recorded it and it's cool because there's no better way to wrap up a blues record than with a sitar-inspired song.

Tom: Let's talk about the guitars you used on Sloe Gin.

Joe: Mostly the (Gibson) Les Paul '59 Historic Reissue that I've played for the last 2-3 years. It's wonderful guitar. I have original pickups from a 1964 335 (Gibson ES-335) in it and a few tweaks here and there, but it's generally just a cool guitar. I was just reading a magazine here on the bus and everybody's talking about how they mod pickups. You know, there are so many people who make a living trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm looking at the article thinking, "You know what, a good guitar is a good guitar." The airlines are so bad about guitars these days we're pretty much renting stock Les Pauls. We have a little set-up we do with our Les Pauls, but to be honest with you, the difference in the sound between the stock Les Pauls that we're renting and the ones that I've tweaked out, to the normal discerning human ear, is very little. It's been a revelation to me. It's really gotten me to concentrate more on just playing the guitar as a guitarist, not going "I need this gear, I need that gear or I won't get my sound." It's mostly in the hands.

Tom: You've really slimmed down the guitar arsenal you use to record.

Joe: I really have. I think I basically used five guitars for the whole album. We used an Esquire (1954 Fender Esquire) for the choruses of "Sloe Gin", but otherwise mostly used the Les Paul reissue. We also used the 345 (a 1959 Gibson ES-345) for "Black Night", an old '50s Martin D-28 (probably his 1958 Martin D-28), my '30s L-Century (1936 Gibson L-Century), and that was the ballgame.

Tom: You also use a National Triolian.

Joe: I use the Triolian on "Jelly Roll". It's a 1931 that I bought with a gaggle of reissues that were sitting in a music shop. To my astonishment, the reissues were more expensive than the original. I got it for around a thousand US dollars. It's a wonderful one - the neck's in good shape and it had some fretwire left on it. It's good for certain things. You couldn't play a whole gig on it but if you capo it and get the tuning right, which is kind of hard, it's actually a lovely guitar. The resonator's in really good shape and doesn't rattle. You know, the biggest litmus test for any guitar in the studio is not what year it is but is it in tune? The tuning is so crucial.

Tom: You've moved away from the Stratocaster and are obviously liking the Gibson sound.

Joe: The Strat is so over used. You could get up and play Tchaikovsky on a Strat and you'd get somebody going, "Oh, you sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan." I'm so sick of that. The Les Paul has fewer tonal options and I've stripped my pedal board way down. I'm trying to force myself to just play and see what comes out of me. It's part of trying to create your own style. I'm trying to get away from the comparisons. It's always great to hear the comparisons, but I don't want to be remembered as the guy that sounded like Stevie Ray Vaughan or Eric Johnson, or whoever. I want to get a grip on something that's my own. I'd like to play one original lick in my lifetime. [Laughs]

Tom: Discover the "Unknown Lick".

Joe: Discovery of the Joe Bonamassa one original lick influenced by no one. [Laughs]

Tom: Are you still collecting guitars? You've got quite a few.

Joe: I've got a couple hundred of them, but I haven't bought a guitar in six months. I'm pretty much over it. It used to be, the bus would drive by a guitar shop - hit the emergency brake, I'm walking in. But now, it's more like a minimalist phase of my life. I have five or six really rockin' Les Pauls, a bunch of 335s, a bunch of Teles, and a bunch of amps, and it's like if I cannot do the job with this collection of guitars, then I need to re-examine myself. I used to buy a guitar to help inspire me to write a song or to play differently. But after you have the Harmonys and Hagstoms and all the weird guitars, it's time to re-evaluate yourself. Look at Rory Gallagher. He was great. He had one guitar, or two. Or like Jimi Hendrix, he didn't have a collection of guitars. He'd buy one the day of a show and play it. Paul Kossoff had a couple of Les Pauls and a Marshall. These guys had three or four guitars and they changed the world.

Tom: Sometimes you get tired of all the stuff. You want to just grab a guitar and play.

Joe: Yeah. I know it's what makes the world go around, especially in your universe of magazines and websites and stuff like that, but again, do we need "Another take on the Tube Screamer," "I've re-invented the wheel," or "The best pickups ever"? Here Joe, here's a $400, 20-foot cable. Get out of here with that. You guys got nothing better to do than invent cables because you don't want to play the guitar. [Laughs] I'm sorry. I'm just in a weird head-space today. Seriously though, to me, the "great ones" had a curly cable they got with the guitar and plugged it into the amp and moved mountains. I don't need a $400 guitar cable to do that.

Tom: That attitude of back to basics with a focus on song is what impressed me about Sloe Gin.

Joe: That was my whole point. Too often you can hear the mentality of "we're just making a record, get some songs together, sing a couple of verses, blow, and that's good enough." That didn't work for Eric Clapton. Clapton had great songs, and then he was a great guitar player, and a great singer. You start flirting with that combination and it's crossover, it's deadly. He consistently had great songs. Same thing with Jeff Beck. He's a great guitar player but it's never been just a jam-a-thon. He's had great melodies and great phrases, stuff you remember. This has been a huge shift in my mentality, partly from having to open for big-name bands without having like 80 million hits to my name. We just did a show at the North Sea Festival where we followed Steely Dan, and I was like, really, we're going on stage after "Kid Charlemagne" and all those hits? It was a wake up call. I'd like to start collecting a few of my own.

We did "Tea for One" (You & Me) which was a blazing slow blues, and we did Blues Deluxe four or five years ago, and to me it's like the days of going four bars around on a slow blues with the crescendo and payoff, people have heard it. Gary Moore does it better than me. [Laughs] Let him do it.

Tom: You're on the Board of the Blues Foundation and created the Blues in Schools project. What are you telling kids about the blues?

Joe: If you've listened to Led Zeppelin, then you've listened to the blues. All the kids know about Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. I tell them if you've heard Led Zeppelin, you've heard the blues and didn't even know it. The blues can be Robert Johnson but it can also be Jimi Hendrix, it can also be James Brown. If it wasn't for the blues there wouldn't be hip-hop, heavy metal, or any of that stuff. Don't write the blues off because you think it's just one thing. It's not. It's a huge umbrella of music that influences everything you're listening to now. You can see their eyes light up.

Usually, my example is "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin. I tell them it's a Willie Dixon song. They say, who's Willie Dixon? There you go. If they walk out and buy a B.B. King record or a Led Zeppelin record that they wouldn't have bought otherwise, I've done my job.

Related Links
Deutsche Übersetzung des Interviews auf Stringworks.ch (German translation on Stringworks.ch)
Record Producer Kevin Shirley Talks about Sloe Gin
CD Review: Sloe Gin by Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa's official website
Joe Bonamassa on MySpace
Joe Bonamassa fan website
Provogue Records
Mascot-Provogue website
Caveman Productions (Kevin Shirley's website)
Joe Bonamassa to Tour UK and Release New Album in August
Joe Bonamassa interview on Modern Guitars
Brian D. Holland's review of Live at Rockpalast
Brian D. Holland's review of Signature Sounds, Styles, and Techniques

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