There's great cars, and then there's Aston Martins. Same thing for the 1959 Les Paul - it's an authentic piece of art that can never truly be replicated, and its mysteries are special.
— Joe Bonamassa
At the end of the day, you really want to make sure that organic music, made by human beings, at least has a voice.
I love to collect guitars made in the 1950s. I like preserving and playing them.
I think great music sells records, and I also think, do you want to be a reality star, or someone that actually has credibility? Because you can't have both.
I work well under pressure.
If you have a good riff with a vocal as well, then it becomes a devastating song. That's why people love riff-rock: it's the ultimate air guitar music.
I've never been known as a riff kind of artist.
I feel like I always learn from somebody who can do something better than I can.
I don't have any legato skills; I could never figure out how to roll the notes off.
I've really gotten over pedals. I can't keep up with this craze of boutique pedals that make you sound like everything but your guitar. I can't get my head around it.
I'm an acoustic guitar owner - in the sense that I own them, and they sit at my house, and I never play them.
Whenever I hear my playing, I can't detach from my influences: there's my Jeff Beck, there's the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.
There's a certain thing when you start getting into your late thirties or early forties where you stop caring. Not to the extent where you stop caring about the music, you just stop caring about what anyone thinks of you, and you just kind of let it go - let the chips fall where they may.
My first memory of guitar was seeing my father play one.
If we got into a time machine and went back to the 1700s, classical and baroque music would have been the equivalent of Beyonce and Jay-Z.
Sometimes you have to blame yourself before you can blame others.
I am the poster boy for brick-by-brick foundation building. Play a club. Put on a good show for 35 people. Come back. Build your market. Have people talk about you.
When you play a gig in Poland or Australia, or you play a gig in Toledo, they all clap at the same parts of the show. They're clapping for the solos in the exact same way.
To sell out London's Hammersmith Apollo is amazing. Selling it out for two nights? Even better.
Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.
It doesn't matter if people take the music for free, because you can't illegally download a ticket to a concert.
The blues, the way it's interpreted, is always a product of your environment, and so it's almost like food. You know, it's like you use the ingredients, and you use your life experiences that you have.
When I write for an album, I'll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.
The fact that I tour religiously in the spring, religiously in the fall, and do 125 shows - you can set your watch to that. And you could have set your watch to that in 2000 or 1999, and you can set your watch to it in 2012.
I'm always looking for something new to do.
I don't really do scales... I mean, I play parts of them, but then I bail and start playing parts of other things. The term 'scale' feels very scripted to me because I'm an improv player.
I play acoustic when I need to play acoustic, and I say I'm probably a better acoustic player than I am electric.
Doing the acoustic at Carnegie is basically advised because electric music tends to get, let's just say, acoustically unsound.
I'm actually much more of a rock player than many people think.
At the end of the day, I think having some life experience is helpful to play any kind of music.
Being a niche kind of artist, you're not going to make a lot of friends in the traditional music biz.
I like to be in the room with players that are better than me. That's always a good place to be.
One of these days, when I get tired of it all, I'll keep six guitars and the amps I'm using, and I'll have a big old auction for charity.
I used to watch MTV when they played music, and discovered Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Healey.
All I'm trying to do is simply play guitar and elicit this creativity from the instrument.
You often see lifestyle over substance in L.A. Some rock stars dress up like they're going to play a gig when they're just going to the 7-Eleven store on a Tuesday night.
I dislike all those cookie-cutter Nashville songs. You know the ones: about tight jeans and pick-up trucks.
Who's to say a blues man can't play rock and roll?
When you're 12 and, you know, slightly overweight and - for lack of a better word - white, and you're playing blues, you get a lot of press.
It's good to see young kids getting into the blues.
It's not enough to play a song: you have to inhabit it.
I'm not sure when I first heard about Beth Hart. I do remember seeing her on various TV shows. I think I'd seen her on 'Conan O'Brien' or whatever. And it seemed that whenever we'd tour Europe, our paths would cross.
If I'm soloing, I usually try to start with a theme, which will often stem from the blues.
I'm probably a more intentional acoustic player than I am an electric player because of lack of influences. I just play acoustic to see what happens.
A guitar is so tactile, and when you're playing bends - and bending notes is a big part of my style - there are so many notes within the note you're bending from and the note you're bending up to.
British blues was my favorite music, and it still is.
My first proper 'Here's your guitar, Joseph' was a 1981 Chiquita, one of those Erlewine travel guitars. And it was good for a four-year-old because it was small.
When you've done so many records in 20 years like I have, you're going to have ebbs and flows and go through peaks and valleys.
I'm not one of those people that has to share personal experiences. That's not really the kind of writer I am. I'm a very private person to begin with.
Nothing I'm doing musically is revolutionary in any way, shape, or form.
