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Several months ago, my wife realized this concert fell on the date of our sixth wedding anniversary. She knew I was fascinated by the Guitar Hotel and suggested we take in the show and stay in the hotel, what the hell. And so we did.
Great show. Joe has a crackerjack band. The second guitarist was Josh Smith (users of TrueFire and / or Joseph Alexander's Fundamental Changes books may be familiar with him.) Josh is from South Florida, and I saw him live when he was too young to drink or even drive. (I bought his CD backed by The Rhino Cats after the show from his mom and dad!) It was great to see him again. He wasn't center stage, but he had several spotlight turns and made the most of them. He has great rhythm chops and used 'em.
The keyboardist was Reese Wynans, who spent several years with Stevie Ray Vaughan (-the Soul to Soul and In Step period). Reese also played with Berry Oakley and Dickie Betts in a band called Second Coming just before the Allman Brothers formed. Reese has been with Joe for 11 years now but at 78, this was his final tour, and it happened we saw the last night of it. Joe was pretty emotional about that. There was a father-son vibe about it. They swapped solos on several songs, most notably on "Double Trouble," the Otis Rush tune. They also went back and forth during another cover, Guitar Slim's "I Done Got Over It."
Joe played several different guitars: a weathered Strat for the two opening numbers (from his latest album), "Breakthrough" and "Trigger Finger." He switched to one of a few Les Pauls for a Bobbly Blue Bland's "Twenty-Four Hour Blues" and "I Done Got Over It."
BB King is a big influence on Joe, which showed most in what came next. For those who don't know, when Joe was just 12, he got a shot to open for BB King, and they played together many times after that and developed a friendship. Joe---and Josh Smith---spent the first part of this year working on an album for the 100th anniversary of BB's birth. That double album--BB King's Blues Summit 100--is due to come out in February '26 and has a wide range of players on it: Buddy Guy, George Benson, Derek Trucks, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jimmy Vaughan, Larry Carlton, Larkin Poe, Eric Gales, and Robben Ford. Looking forward to that!
Joe switched a red ES 335 for "Self-Inflicted Wounds" and that was as BB as he got that night. The guy knows his way around a slow blues.
Didn't take notes during the show, so I can't like guitars to the rest of the songs in the set. Only 13 songs total (including the "Mountain Time" encore, which saw the lone appearance of a Tele), yet the show ran two hours with very little time between songs. More soloing than singing, all in all. But the singing was fine---the two backup singers were exceptional.
I'll include a few pics. (I didn't any concert pix, just a few of selected memorabilia on the walls of the casino.) I'll add a video of "Trigger Finger" a rock song with a good sense of humor----Joe takes a water gun to selected critics of his playing. Just today I found a YouTube clip of the show's audio supplemented with picture from the show. If I can find it again, I'll post the link.
(The Yamaha acoustic came from Robbie Robertson, who etched his name into the body.")
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12-08-2025 07:01 PM
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Wow, what a show!
And thank you for a great write-up.
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Isn't that BB tribute album out alreadyA friend of mine was streaming it on Amazon when i was at his house last month .I never get all the hate Bonammassa gets,the man can play.Sounds like you saw a great show.
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Hhm. Could be there is more than one BB tribute album out there. Joe's is due out in February. Amazon is taking pre-orders with a shipping date of February 6. Some tracks may already be streaming on Amazon; I don't know about that.
Originally Posted by nyc chaz
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From "CBS This Morning" this morning, a feature on the BB King tribute album.
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