Bonamassa on the road to the Civic

Award-winning blues-rock virtuoso Joe Bonamassa continues his climb to superstardom with a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in May and a UK tour which includes a gig at Wolverhampton Civic Hall.

With the Royal Albert Hall gig already sold out, Midland fans will be able to catch up with Bonamassa and his band at the Civic on Thursday, April 23, with tickets costing £20 plus booking fees.

Bonamassa headlined the Music Live event at the NEC in November, when the Shropshire Star's reviewer raved: "If there's a more thrilling guitarist on the planet than Joe Bonamassa, then it's almost beyond belief."

Click here to see our review of Joe Bonamassa at the NEC

This time round the guitarist singer is promoting his 11th solo studio album, The Ballad Of John Henry - and ShropshireStar.com has been given an exclusive preview.

The album showcases Bonamassa's growth as a singer, player and writer, as its 12 tracks criss-cross musical boundaries.

The guitarist's rock credentials are well and truly underscored by the title track and the thunderous Story Of A Quarryman, while his blues dues are served on Lonesome Road Blues and the tentatively beautiful The Great Flood.

Happier Blues is an exquistive six-minute acoustic ballad punctuated by Bonamassa's trademark guitar runs and then there are a handful of cover songs, most notably a blues-tinged version of Sam Brown's hit Stop!, the barroom swagger of Tom Waits' Jockey Full Of Bourbon and a stunning reading of Feelin' Good, the 1965 hit made famous by Nina Simone.

The album ends on a high note with a wilfully funky cover of Tony Joe White's song As The Crow Flies.

After rave reviews for his previous album, Sloe Gin, which debuted at number one on US Billboard's blues charts and broke into the top 50 in the UK, Bonamassa is hailing The Ballad Of John Henry as "my strongest work to date".

The title track recounts the legend of John Henry in American folklore, the story of a "steel-driver" piledriving the railroads across the mid-west in the mid 19th century.

When the railroad owner buys a steam-powered hammer to take over his men's work, John Henry challenges him to a contest - him on his own versus the steam hammer. But although John Henry beats the machine, he collapses and dies from exhaustion.

Bonamassa calls John Henry "the ultimate working class hero". He was inspired to write his tribute while touring across the US and seeing things heading in what he felt was the wrong direction.

Bonamassa says: "It used to be there was dignity to being a middle class worker making an honest living. My mom and my dad are my heroes, working their whole life at meaningful jobs that add to society. We need more of those heroes today, and that's what this song means to me."

Joe Bonamassa was voted Best Blues Guitarist by readers of Guitar Player magazine lat year and was also in the running for an award at the Classic Rock awards in London. He can be heard presenting a weekly show on Planet Rock Radio, which airs on Tuesdays at 7pm and is repeated on Sundays at 11pm.

* The Ballad of John Henry is released on February 23, 2009. Tickets for Joe Bonamassa's Wolverhampton Civic Hall concert on April 23 are on sale now.

Click here to see our October 2008 interview with Joe Bonamassa