Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa perform “Well Well” at the Echoplex in Los Angeles

Joe Bonamassa and Beth hart perform “Well Well” Live at the Echoplex in Los Angeles, California. Be sure to keep an eye out for new tour dates from Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa as well as the latest videos on Hart and Bonamassa’s official youtube page.

Download a free song – http://hartandbonamassa.com/youtube

The Blues Foundation will present the 33rd Blues Music Awards on May 10, 2012 at the Cook Convention Center in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. Performers, industry representatives and fans from around the globe gathered to celebrate the best in Blues recording and performance from 2011.

The Blues Music Awards are universally recognized as the highest honor given to Blues artists. The presenting sponsor will once again be The Gibson Foundation. 2012 Blues Music Awards sponsors include ArtsMemphis, BMI, Blue Mountain Artists, Catfood Records, Eagle Rock Entertainment, FedEx, First Tennessee Foundation, Gibson Foundation, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Sony/Legacy and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

today: www.YouTube.com/HartAndBonamassa. We posted a sneak peek of the song “Well Well”, a Delaney and Bonnie cover. The album “Don’t Explain” will be released in Europe on September 26th and in the USA on September 27th. We are expecting to receive more news about the album, early August. Please keep checking back and don’t forget to add a new website www.HartAndBonamassa.com to your bookmarks!

Tomorrow, August 13th, Beth Hart and her band will be performing at Smukfest in Skanderborg, Denmark. They will be bringing their Brazilian friends from the band Biquini Cavadao as special guests.

Earlier this year, the Biquini Cavadao brought Beth Hart and Jon Nichols out on stage as their special guests at two major festivals in Brazil. They performed three songs together in Brazil. The songs included two covers: Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin and Get Up Stand Up by Bob Marley. The other song was Beth’s single Love Is The Hardest, which was performed as a bilingual duet.

We can’t tell you yet what they’re going to be playing tomorrow, so all you can do is buy a ticket and go find out!

Tell us about the Gary Rossington Les Paul you’ve been using lately.

“I bought that guitar when it wasn’t even fashionable to do so. I got it at the Guitar Center in LA in 2004 for something like $2000, and now these guitars are worth over $7000. It’s a great guitar for BCC because it’s got a really rich mid-range sound and it’s very aggressive. You can really manhandle it. It doesn’t work so much for my solo stuff, but for BCC, it’s basically my main guitar. It’s got that right amount of meaty tone.”

And then you’ve also been playing a Steve Morse Music Man…

“That’s right. I have a stock Steve Morse model, the Y2K. It’s got three pickups, not four, and it doesn’t have all the switches. But the nice folks at Music Man made me a couple of models, one in black and another in like this Daphne Blue color. They’re really terrific. The headstocks are reversed. In America I use a black one, and in Europe I use the blue one. But it’s more of a recording guitar, really. It’s kind of Jimmy Page-ish, the way he’d use certain Telecasters on albums.”

OK, let’s get into the record a bit. Last time out, you guys had something like five days to make the whole thing. This time out, you had, what, five-and-a-half days? What a luxury!

[laughs] “Yeah, tell me about it! It was something like two weeks when all was said and done, and I’ll tell you, by the time we were finished, we were having a real goof! [laughs] We were having a blast.

“The first record was very intense, but this time there was more of a structure and a plot to everything. We did it at East West Studios – the Chili Peppers were right next door working on their new record – and it was cool. We definitely felt like more of a band instead of a project that Kevin threw together.

“It was really collaborative, as well. Jason brought in a song called Save Me, from the time that he was working with what was going to be Led Zeppelin, right after their O2 Arena gig, and that turned out great.”

Kevin said in an interview that he wanted to explore more of the ‘Bonham sound’ on this record. How did he go about this?

“Well, I can’t answer that per se because I’m not an engineer. The thing people forget about Kevin Shirley a lot of the time is that he’s not only a great producer, he’s also a world-class engineer. He really knows how to get a sound.

“Jason Bonham came in with his kit, and you know, we’re talkin’ about a guy who can play When The Levee Breaks and make it sound like Led Zeppelin. He’s got it in his genes. He’s one of the few people on earth who can do that. But how do you capture that? Kevin did. A lot of the other producers and engineers in the studio started sniffing around, like, ‘Hey, how did you do that?’ It was pretty funny.”

There’s some great rockin’ tracks on the record, but you do take some left turns with songs like The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall.

“Yeah, that was my song. I wrote that one. For some reason, I wrote it at the top of my vocal range. I wrote it in the key of A, but I said, ‘The hell with it, I’m gonna do it.’ So I went for it. Whether I’m going to be able to sing it live remains to be seen. I’ll need a lot of glasses of water and some oxygen.” [laughs]

Your solo in Man In The Middle has more than a hint of Jimmy Page to it. Does that just happen when one plays with a Bonham?

“There’s a lot of Jimmy Page all over the album, really. That just happens when you play this kind of material. I solo live in the studio, total improvisation. I don’t sit in the control room and comp solos bit by bit. I play everything live. So if we’re talking about something Zeppelin-y before we cut a song, it’s going to come out that way.”

There’s also a classic British rock vibe on many parts of the album – the Hammond organ and the way you double the parts on the guitar, some of which sound very Ritchie Blackmore-ish. Intentional?

“Sure. On The Outsider, we definitely went for Highway Star in some places, much to Glenn Hughes’ chagrin. I’d say we were unapologetically British rock on a good portion of the record, if not the entire record. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. British rock from the late ’60s and early ’70s was some of the best stuff around, so if we cribbed from that, well, there’s worse things you can do.

“Look, we’re not trying to make anybody’s cool list. We’re not trying to be the next Arctic Monkeys or anything like that. We went into the studio to make a modern rock record with a classic rock sound. That’s always been the rallying call in BCC.

“Take a song like Save Me… that took me back to my childhood in such a cool way. It’s so retro. There’s nothing wrong with using a retro sound. That’s like telling a filmmaker that he can’t be influenced by Citizen Kane or something like that. Why would you do that? As long as you’re honest about what you’re doing and you acknowledge your influences and intent, that’s cool. We’d never try to pass this stuff off as our own invention. In fact, the whole album is one giant homage.”

Crossfire is a cool blues track. When you guys sit around, what blues artists do you talk about and reference? Are you the go-to blues guy for the other band members?

“I don’t know if I’m the ‘go-to’ blues guy. I know why you’d say that, but everybody in the band has a pretty strong blues background. You know who we talk about? The entire band – or at least Glenn, Jason and I – really bond over Free. Free is a huge group with us. Then there’s Zeppelin, of course. But most of the time, we take a Free approach to the music. If I can channel Paul Kossoff in my playing, I’m a happy guy.”

Speaking of Zeppelin, we love Smokestack Woman. You play a theremin on the track. Now, you’ve played one before [on the song The Ballad Of John Henry] but tell us, do you have any specific approach to it?

“What’s weird is, the song itself isn’t Zeppelin; it’s more like Humble Pie. Right there, you might not think ‘theremin.’ I don’t know… It’s a very creative instrument. It certainly adds a lot to a live show, but in the studio, you have to treat it as a tension-and-release thing. It’s like bending a note. You can take it wide if you want, but you have to keep it musical. If you’re just going to get stupid with it, then you’re just being silly; you’re not really playing music.”

Sporting a 2008 JB Les Paul signature model, Bonamassa rocks a theremin. © Christie Goodwin

Overall, what did you come away with from this second recording experience with BCC that you didn’t the first time?

“Well, like I was saying before, I think we came away from making this record knowing that we’re a real band. We felt that way on the first album, but with the second record, which we recorded very soon after the first, that point was really driven home. It wasn’t about ‘OK, have your people call my people’; it was more like, ‘All right, here we are in a room, let’s jam!’

“We weren’t trying to be a supergroup. We really wanted to be a band, as trite and corny as that sounds. We wanted to take an old sound and make something new out of it. Thankfully, the first album was pretty well received, so we felt good going in to make the new one. I think we definitely kicked things up several notches this time. Now we’re not trying to be a band; we are one.”

What kinds of things have you learned from the other guys? In turn, what do you think you’ve taught them?

“That’s a good question. I learn so much about singing from working with Glenn Hughes. When you have to go up against a guy like that, c’mon, you’re either gonna stand there or you’re gonna fall. The guy is one of the greatest rock vocalists out there. If you can hit some notes with him and not look ridiculous, then you can live again to fight another day.

“From Jason, I’ve learned so much about the space in music. He has an approach to the kick and the snare, you could drive a truck through what he does. It’s a feel, it’s a dynamic, it’s a style. It’s something that is so magical, I’m just glad to be a part of it.

“From Derek, I’ve learned things about music that I can’t even put into words. Modes and things – I never know what mode I’m in, but Derek knows all of that, and somehow it creeps into the music I play with him. That’s the cool thing about musical osmosis that happens when you play with somebody far beyond your level. They make you better than you are, or they make you realize that you’re better than you thought you were.

“What have I taught them? [laughs] That’s a hot one! Uh… probably not much. I’m just the lucky guy who gets to tag along, really.

To all the Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa fans out there: we are giving away one whole song that will be released on the album “Don’t Explain”. The album is set to be released on September 26th in Europe and September 27th in the USA. Please visit the website www.HartAndBonamassa.com and subscribe to the newsletter. We will then send you the MP3 of the song “Well, Well”. Please, feel free to tell your friends about this free download.

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Beth Hart, known for her raw and powerful blues-rock sound, wraps her expressive vocals around classic soul covers on Don’t Explain, an album that grew out of her friendship with the acclaimed Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa. The album will be released in the UK and Europe on Monday 26th September by Provogue Records.

Produced by Kevin Shirley (Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Black Country Communion), Don’t Explain is an intimate collection of hand-picked soul cover versions, as performed by celebrated artists, such as Gil Scott-Heron, Tom Waits, Etta James and Aretha Franklin.

Don’t Explain perfectly combines Beth Hart’s raspy soulful vocal with Bonamassa’s unique guitar sound, Kevin Shirley, who has produced Bonamassa’s last five albums, reflects on what it was like working with Beth for the first time – “Beth’s got a pretty heady voice, very reminiscent of Janis Joplin, she’s also got a lot of Etta James in her, but hadn’t really accessed it. With this material, there is a gentleness to the way she delivers the most heartfelt tunes that she hasn’t shown before. It’s very cool, she’s done a fantastic job.”

Bonamassa and Hart had crossed paths on the road numerous times, and played many of the same festivals in Europe.  In early 2010, Joe caught a show of hers in London – “It was killer,” says Bonamassa – and suggested they do a project together sometime.

“I was up late one night, I couldn’t sleep.  I was playing songs on my iPod from the reissue of Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, which included all the opening acts from that Stones show,” he recalls. “As soon as the Ike & Tina Turner tracks came on, I just said out loud, ‘Beth Hart.’  I emailed Kevin, saying, ‘Let’s do a soul covers record with Beth,’ and he replied back, ‘Actually, that’s a great idea.’”

Clearly humbled by the recording process, Beth Hart adds “Going into the studio with the level of players there, including Joe of course, I really had to rise to the occasion. I couldn’t do my best, I had to do better. That kind of focus was humbling, and it was great. We had such a good time making the record; I listened to all these songs over and over to learn them the best I could. I felt so much growth just by virtue of listening to these amazing singers. I hope some of those chops rubbed off.”

To back Hart up, Bonamassa assembled the ace band that was heard on his 2009 #1 Blues album The Ballad of John Henry: Anton Fig (drums, percussion), Blondie Chaplin (guitar), Carmine Rojas (bass), and Arlan Scheirbaum (keyboards). The sound evolved into a simmering mix of soul, jazz, rock, and blues, with Hart’s vocals confidently in the pocket of each and every groove. “Beth has been an absolute hidden gem,” says Bonamassa. “She has a beautiful voice.  She’s a fantastic singer, a lovely person.”