Guitarist
Joe Bonamassa
was opening for
B.B. King
when he was only eight years old and was a veteran of the road and gigging by the time he was 12, so it's tempting to toss him in the all flash but no soul prodigy trash bin that has been filling up pretty well since the great
Stevie Ray Vaughan
shuffled off to blues heaven -- but that would be a big mistake.
Bonamassa
has soul, plenty of it, and he plays guitar with a reverent grace, and sometimes lost in all this is that he's a pretty good singer, too, sounding more than a little bit like a reconstituted
Paul Rodgers
. This two-disc set is drawn from a show
delivered in 2013 at the Borderline in London which was recorded and filmed for CD, DVD and Blu-ray release and features the guitarist and singer revisiting in fine form some of his early material. ~ Steve Leggett