Live Review: Joe Bonamassa, Sinaed Burgess, Claude Hay

The concert was sold out, over-sold it seems, so there was no excuse for local supports – the thankfully ever-exuberant regardless one-man band that is Claude Hay and singer-songwriter Sinaed Burgess – to be playing to empty seats.

Yet that’s what Hay had too many of before him, while Burgess played her five songs, oddly including two covers – Chris Isaac’s and the now obligatory Halleluhah – to the hubbub of punters arriving. So much for supporting local talent.

The audience was there of course for the main event, but many might have been surprised to find Joe Bonamassa’s performance spilt into two very different halves.

Opening with a solo slice of countrified speedpicking wizardry titled Palm Trees, Helicopters And Gasoline, Bonamassa was then joined by three members of the group that had featured on his 2013 An Acoustic Evening At The Vienna Opera House European tour and DVD – fiddler/mandolinist Gerry O’Connor, Swedish nyckelharpa or keyed fiddle player Mats Wester and percussionist Lenny Castro, along with his Black Country Communion keyboards player Derek Sherinian – for a set that ranged from alt.country through the blues (with a bodhran yet) to swamp funk, the final number featuring solos from each that brought elements of each player’s respective country – Ireland, Sweden, Cuba, the Southern US – as well as some flamenco from Bonamassa – into a country blues.

A short intermission and on came the electric band – Sherinian and Castro again, along with bass player Carmine Rojas and drummer Tal Burgman – and the room went nuts. Accompanied by Sherinian, Bonamassa opened with the brooding Woke Up Dreaming, before bringing the band in with a Bad Company cover, Seagull, and it was on for young and old as he took the audience through cuts from previous albums, Dust Bowl, The Ballad Of John Henry and Dislocated Boy among them, as well as a couple from the new album, Different Shades Of Blue – I Gave Up Everything For You Except The Blues, Oh Beautiful, Love Ain’t A Love Song – stretching things out, bringing the band down while he teased notes out of his guitar played just above a whisper, then roaring back in, loud and proud, the consummate showman.

The influences were still obvious – Led Zeppelin, Cream, Free, the associated aforementioned Bad Company – but filtered through Bonamassa’s virtuosity, it all still shone brand new – classic British blues-rock for the 21st century.