Joe Bonamassa

New Hartford, and a support slot at twelve

Bonamassa was born on 8 May 1977 in New Hartford, upstate New York, into a family that sold guitars. In 1989, aged twelve, he played roughly twenty shows opening for B.B. King — a detail that has followed him through every piece written about him since, and which gained a second life this year. Before he turned eighteen he was in Bloodline, a band assembled from the sons of established musicians, which gave him a major-label record and a taste of touring while still a teenager.

The solo career proper began with A New Day Yesterday in 2000, which reached number nine on Billboard's blues albums chart. Three of the records that followed between 2002 and 2006 went to number one there. He has not really stopped since: the tally now stands at thirty number-one blues albums, twenty-nine of them under his own name and one a collaboration, which is more than anyone else has managed.

Running the shop as well as playing in it

Most of the catalogue has come out through J&R Adventures, the company that handles his releases, and since 2020 through Keeping the Blues Alive Records, an imprint he set up to put out other artists. The Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation, founded in 2011, funds music education. The same instinct for accumulation runs through the collection at his home — more than 400 guitars and a similar number of amplifiers, which he calls the Bona-seum.

The side work matters as much as the solo records to understanding how he operates. Black Country Communion, the hard-rock band he shares with Glenn Hughes, has made five albums since 2010. Rock Candy Funk Party was the instrumental outlet. Three albums of duets with Beth Hart — Don't Explain, Seesaw and Black Coffee — gave him a route into soul material he does not sing himself. Five Grammy nominations have come out of all this, and a Blues Music Award for guitar in 2015. The 2009 Royal Albert Hall show at which Eric Clapton walked on to join him is still the pivot point fans date the arena career from.

Breakthrough

Breakthrough, released on 18 July 2025 through J&R Adventures and Provogue, is his seventeenth solo studio album and the record the current touring cycle is built on. Kevin Shirley produced, as he has for most of the past two decades, and the writing was shared with Tom Hambridge, Gary Nicholson, James House and Shirley himself. The ten tracks run forty-five minutes and were cut across three studios: Black Rock in Santorini, Ocean Way in Nashville and Sunset Sound in Hollywood.

It went to number one on the US blues chart, six in the Netherlands and thirty-eight on the UK albums chart. Reese Wynans played keyboards on the sessions; Jade MacRae and Danielle DeAndrea sang behind him, as they do on stage. Four of its songs — the title track, "Trigger Finger", "Drive by the Exit Sign" and "I Fall Apart" — have held places in the set all year.

Two tributes in one year

B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 arrived on 6 February 2026 on Keeping the Blues Alive Records, a double CD and triple LP running two hours and twenty-one minutes across thirty-one tracks. Bonamassa produced it with the King estate's blessing after working out, in January 2025, that nobody was preparing a record for the centenary of King's birth. More than forty guests appear. Clapton and Chaka Khan take "The Thrill Is Gone"; Warren Haynes handles "How Blue Can You Get" as a slow shuffle; Slash, Shemekia Copeland and Myles Kennedy share "When Love Comes To Town"; Michael McDonald sings "To Know You Is To Love You" with Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks; and D.K. Harrell, a young Louisiana player Bonamassa has since taken on tour, gets "Every Day I Have The Blues". Blues Blast's reviewer, Dave Popkin, called it hard to top as the blues album of the year and judged all thirty-one tracks strong.

Four months later came The Spirit of Rory – Live From Cork, released on 19 June 2026: fourteen performances drawn from three sold-out nights at the Marquee in Cork in July 2025, in Rory Gallagher's home city and with his family's agreement. A video of "Bullfrog Blues" from those shows went out on 10 April 2026 to trail it. Bonamassa has said he never met Gallagher but that hearing Irish Tour '74 left him captivated by the intensity of the man. The ninety-minute set includes "Cradle Rock" and "Walk On Hot Coals", stretches one ballad from five minutes to ten, and features an acoustic number played on a 1930 National Triolian resonator. Rock and Blues Muse found the readings solid, enjoyable and spirited while conceding they do not displace Gallagher's own; it still went in at number one on the blues chart.

The band that plays it now

The most consequential change of the past year was not a record. Reese Wynans, who had been at the keyboards for more than a decade, was announced in December 2025 as stepping back from regular touring at the end of that season, and played his last road dates with the band in late 2025. In February 2026 Bonamassa named Lachy Doley, the Australian organ and clavinet player, as his replacement; Doley had already sat in for the Cork Gallagher shows.

The rest of the line-up has held: Josh Smith on second guitar, Calvin Turner on bass, Lemar Carter on drums, MacRae and DeAndrea on backing vocals. Reviewing the Royal Albert Hall show on 6 May 2026 — his fourteenth appearance at the venue — Blues Matters' Paul Long called it possibly the strongest band Bonamassa has assembled, and singled out Doley's Hammond work.

Autumn 2026, and the diary beyond

The summer run went from Bethel Woods in New York on 26 June to Red Rocks on 23 August, with Gov't Mule co-headlining seven of the dates, JJ Grey & Mofro guesting on two and D.K. Harrell opening the first. He then played Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in Austin on 26 and 27 September, and on 1 October appeared at a sold-out ninetieth-birthday concert for Buddy Guy at Radio City Music Hall, where a house band led by Steve Jordan anchored more than three hours of music and Bonamassa took "Baby What You Want Me to Do" alongside John Mayer and Eric Gales.

The European autumn leg opened at the Leverkusen Jazztage on 15 October and runs through arenas in Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Rostock, Berlin and Dortmund in October, then Basel, Milan, Toulouse, Barcelona and Madrid, finishing at the Hala Stulecia in Wrocław on 11 November.

Announced in July 2026, the next US leg is eighteen theatre dates in spring 2027, opening at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee on 12 February and closing at the St Augustine Amphitheatre in Florida on 13 March, with two nights at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on 19 and 20 February. After that the diary already holds the twelfth Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea cruise from Miami to Grand Cayman in March 2027, the Soundwave Beach Weekend in Miramar Beach in April, European festivals in July and a second Alaskan cruise in September.