Blues Deluxe Vol. 2

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Twenty years after Blues Deluxe, his first all-blues album, Joe Bonamassa delivers a sequel with 2023's Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2. He may follow the same blueprint -- it largely consists of covers, supplemented by two originals -- but the circumstances and collaborators have changed. Here, he foregoes using longtime producer Kevin Shirley to work with Josh Smith, a blues guitarist from Bonamassa's own generation who also contributes the album's closer "Is It Safe to Go Home." Smith helps give Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2 a loose, lived-in feeling that contrasts with the eager fire of the 2003 record. It's a change that suits Bonamassa well. Not pushing so hard with either his vocals or his guitar, Bonamassa instead settles into a muscular, horn-punctuated groove that rolls right through numbers by Bobby "Blue" Bland, Guitar Slim, Ronnie Earle & the Broadcasters, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, and Albert King. Bonamassa solos plenty but the song is placed at the forefront throughout Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2 -- it's closer to an old LP from the '60s than to the shredding blues-rockers who followed in the wake of Stevie Ray Vaughan, which is a roundabout way of saying that Bonamassa's blues seem to be deepening as he grows older, which is not a bad thing at all.
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