If you're tuned into the blues guitar scene in 2023, you know that the name Joe Bonamassa elicits all sorts of reactions. Some throw shade – not that Bonamassa cares – while others bask in the glory of his unorthodox take on the blues.
Giant of the genre that he is, it's hard to imagine Bonamassa as anything other than a seething beast striding across the stage. If we dial back to the early 2000s, though, he was staring down almost certain doom as he entered the studio to record 2003's Blues Deluxe – the album that would change his life.
