Joe Bonamassa

A blues guitarist first but also a lover of great rock riffs, Joe Bonamassa is liable to pull out just about anything in live performances. Sections from Yes' "Starship Trooper" are well documented but Bonamassa also tosses in the "mosh" part from Deep Purple's "Perfect Strangers" at times, a riff any rock fan hears in his or her sleep. Often cited as the best guitarist of his generation, Bonamassa tends toward the chorded lead asides of Billy Gibbons and bears an almost uncanny resemblance to Cream-era Clapton more than Stevie Ray Vaughan or B.B. King, although those two influences are still very much present in Bonamassa's playing. They're just not the first names that come to mind when he takes a solo. Like many of his peers -- Kenny Wayne Shepherd, "Monster" Mike Welch, etc. -- Bonamassa was sitting in with bands and playing live shows before he was a teenager, and his first album, A New Day Yesterday, came out when he was just 23 years old, in 2000. Subsequently Bonamassa steadily toured and released records, with eight under his belt thus far, Live From No Place In Particular being the most recent.