After moving back to New York City, Joe Bonamassa spent some lockdown time in Germano Studios in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood, tightly winding the music for his latest album, Time Clocks. His longtime producer Joe Shirley had to work with the powerhouse guitarist remotely, from his home in Australia. Yet the result is as seamlessly Bonamassa as ever, with riveting guitar work that has echoes ranging from Africa to Led Zeppelin. “My ADD transcends into my musical life,” the other JB told longtime Premier Guitar contributor Joe Charupakorn in our December feature. “It’s a very different record for me. It’s not a blues record, for sure. I just try to make records that don’t bore me all the way through—we’ve got this groove covered, we’ve got that groove covered, let’s put a sorbet in, something out of left field.”

They don’t serve sorbet at Nashville’s hallowed Ryman Auditorium music hall—although I’m putting that in their suggestion box. But Bonamassa did dish out plenty of guitar flambé at his August 2 headliner there. And melded the music of Time Clocks with a selection of some of his favorite classic and original blues. PG’s JB—that’s me—connected with Joe onstage before the show, where I also did a Rig Rundown with that other guy with my initials in 2018.

This time, there were some new members of Bonamassa’s ever-growing-and-shrinking collection of gear—which he spoke about at length earlier this year with Cory Wong on the rhythm guitar kingpin’s Wong Notes podcast for PG—pressed into service, including some recent-arrival Les Pauls, of course, and perhaps the most covetable collection of historic badass amps ever played on the Ryman stage. But rareness, novelty, or familiarity isn’t what determines which toys come out to play. Bonamassa starts by building a rough set list, and then chooses the right instrument and amps for each song. So, watch, look, and listen!

Brought to you by D’Addario XPND Pedalboard.

Mentioned in this episode:

Check out D'Addario's latest here: https://ddar.io/wykyk-rr