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Guitar Great Joe Bonamassa at Coronado By Peggy Werner
H
ailed internationally as one of the greatest guitar players of his generation, Joe Bonamassa returns to Coronado Performing Arts Center for a one-night performance at 8 p.m. Monday, March 9. Bonamassa says he looks forward to performing in Rockford, where he has a strong fan base and feels well received, having played here in 2013 and 2015. “With every performance, my sole goal is to entertain and hopefully become a better songwriter, singer and performer,” he says. The 2020 tour began mid-February in Montgomery, Ala., and will wind up in Seattle at the end of March. The concert will feature new songs from an album that will be released in October, as well as familiar tunes. The new album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London and is described by the
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Smart Living Weekly
artist as “blues with a British influence.” “It’s been on my bucket list to do a British blues album,” he says. At 42, the artist performs more than 100 shows each year and is on the road more than 200 days per year. He’s booked for the next two years. The 2020 tour will take him to South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio before he arrives in Rockford. Then, he’ll travel north to Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wis., before performing in Minneapolis, Boise, Spokane and Seattle. Next he’ll head to Europe, where he’ll perform 17 concerts, with stops in England, Germany and Russia before headlining the Mediterranean edition of his Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea festival, which sails from Spain this August. Bonamassa began playing guitar at age 4 in Utica, NY. It was his childhood
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dream to play guitar like Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of the greatest guitar players of all time. Vaughan spearheaded a blues revival in the 1980s and was an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer before he died in a 1990 helicopter crash at age 35. Bonamassa was also inspired by the talent of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. At just 12 years old, Bonamassa was invited to open for another one of his heroes, B. B. King. He was playing regularly around New York and in 1994 joined a band called Bloodline. He also played with Black Country Communion from 2009 to 2013 and then with Rock Candy Funk Party. With 37 albums to his credit and two Grammy nominations, the most recent one in 2017, some of his best-selling singles include “Woke Up Dreaming,”
