Joe Bonamassa fires up the blues at the Royal Albert Hall

Wearing a sharp three-piece blue suit and opening a set of scorching blues with the powerful chugging ‘This Train’, from his current album ‘Blues of Desperation’, JoBo got the evening’s boogie and blues set purring into gear and motoring along nicely.

The veteran effortlessly beguiled his devoted fans out of their seats to lap up his incendiary guitar artistry.

He followed up by injecting a sunny feel to an original re-working of Eric Clapton’s ‘Mainline Florida’ before pulling out all of the stops with the show-stopping heavy drama of current album title track ‘Blues of Desperation’ and its darker and more brooding atmospheric guitar work.

If his singing doesn’t quite match the pain and desperation of his cherished blues idols, Bonamassa certainly proves he is not just a one trick guitar pony. Guitar licks as sharp as a scalpel cut through the venue’s pristine acoustics.

With a versatile crack band of well-seasoned blues players watching his back and effortlessly supporting his every move, he turned a throwaway Led Zeppelin cover of ‘Boogie with Stu’ into a good time swing version.

This was a masterstroke. Reese Wynans on keyboards, Michael Rhodes on bass and Anton Fig on drums pumped the joyous audience up out of their seats with superbly slick rhythmic interplay. 

In a well-judged set, Bonamassa covered a huge terrain of styles from ballads to full-on blues bluster, with an astute ear for cover versions mixing in with his self-penned originals. 

He also swapped guitars at least the seven times that I counted.

Certainly impressive, but Bonamassa tends to fall into a self-indulgent trap of getting carried away with playing too many guitar solo’s for a tad too long. Not that his adoring audience minded, judging by the adulation that they heaped on him after every searing extended burst from his magic fingers. 

This was best illustrated by an epic take on another Zeppelin and Howlin’ Wolf inspired cover of ‘How Many More Times’ with its bouncing riff, and quiet noodling section, firing up to a blazing sonic finale.

Bonamassa ended a beautifully paced two and quarter hour set of top drawer blues with the classic ‘Hummingbird’ popularised by BB King. This was fitting, since King originally took the 12-year-old guitar prodigy Joe under his wing and started him on his journey with the blues. 

It was a moving acknowledgement of a true legend from one who is making his own giant strides towards legendary status. 

With an album of original material already recorded with his supergroup Black Country Communion slated for release later this year and three more night’s at the Royal Albert Hall already confirmed for 2019, JoBo is firing sweetly on all six strings.