The latest edition of “Guitar Player” magazine is a great big S.O.S. for rock and blues music. “Who will save the guitar?” the cover asks, offset by an image of a high schooler crowdsurfing amongst a sea of his dead-eyed peers. The magazine’s editor-in-chief Michael Molenda, citing studies that show 90 percent of teens quit playing guitar after a year of owning the instrument, calls the trend a “potential extinction-level event.”
JOE BONAMASSA When: 8 p.m. March 10 & 11 Where: Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State Tickets: $72.50-152.50 Info: thechicagotheatre.com
While many will continue to either scoff at or painstakingly discuss the lifeline of rock and blues in light of shifting tastes, staunch guitar ambassadors like Joe Bonamassa aren’t wasting any time doing something about it.
The blues-rock guitarist, singer and songwriter, one of the most prolific of his era with 16 albums all ranking in the No.1 spot on the Billboard blues charts, founded the nonprofit Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation several years ago. Its mission is to “pass the torch” to a new generation, with scholarships and music programs reaching more than 30,000 students each year.
Though it’s not all solely based on blues formats, the point is to get kids playing music, “which to me is the magic,” Bonamassa says, especially with the threat of arts defunding in public schools. “Music gives kids a positive outlet and something creative, and we can see the benefits of those programs in real time.”
Bonamassa estimates the foundation has collectively raised about $500,000 in the last five years through corporate sponsorships with Guitar Center and Ernie Ball and an annual “Blues Alive at Sea” cruise alongside self funding from Bonamassa’s own record sales and tours, including his latest stop at Chicago Theatre this weekend. The two dates are in support of his latest fusion zinger, “Blues of Desperation” that pairs moody solos on songs like “Drive” and steely ballads such as “The Valley Runs Low” with the fiery gristle of “Distant Lonesome Train” and the jazz serenade of “Livin’ Easy.”
Bonamassa speaks from experience. He was just four years old when he picked up his first guitar and just 12 when he got his big break, opening for the legendary B.B. King in 1989 at a festival in his home of upstate New York. Bonamassa would also tour that same year with the late guitarist, each night playing his beloved 1972 Fender Telecaster named “Rosie.”
“When I was that age, you could buy the Smokin’ Joe Bonamassa Band for $750 on Friday or Saturday or Sunday afternoon — because naturally I had school. B.B. came out and saw me play, and I got to meet him that night. It began a 25-year friendship in which B.B. was not only generous with me but people like Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd [both of whom also started as pre-teens] and the other blues musicians of our generation. We owe him a debt of gratitude,” says the now 39-year-old who so happens to share a birthday with blues godfather Robert Johnson.
Bonamassa also counts Jimi Hendrix doppelganger Gary Clark Jr. and 17-year-old guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan, a protege of Buddy Guy, as part of this new class. Bonamassa himself has also done much to help promote artists like Beth Hart, working with her on the 2011 covers album “Don’t Explain” and the hair-raising, Grammy-nominated “Seesaw” in 2013.
“It seems like there’s a bit of the blues community coming round again, but we need like 500 of those guys,” Bonamassa says. “The more competition there is in a genre, the healthier the genre is for everyone.”
Even so, he admits, there will probably never again be a yearbook that could match up to the iconoclasts like Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James, Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy who largely traveled from the oppressive South in the 1950s and ’60s to the doors of Chess Records at 2120 S. Michigan Avenue to record impassioned work songs and rooted spirituals. Their incredible prowess of the electric guitar was what inspired acts like Jimi Hendrix and a whole legion of British rock bands like the Stones and Zeppelin that largely stole their playbooks.
“A lot of this stuff is coming to the very end of an era, and these icons are not being replaced at the level that we’re losing them, which is terrifying to me, especially as a history buff,” says Bonamassa. He has thoughts on recent editorials in Crain’s pondering why Chicago has been negligent for promoting its cultural heritage as the home of the blues. In particular, stalling on a celebrated museum for the landmark Chess Studios in a way that Memphis champions Sun Studios.
“I think there’s a real need for a Chicago blues museum with real memorabilia, but that’s the hardest thing,” says Bonamassa, himself a massive guitar, amp and keepsake collector whose “daily addiction” has amassed upwards of 700 pieces of inventory. “The hardest thing to find is the artifacts, they’re either all in the family or they’re lost. So it would be a difficult task and would take somebody like a modern-day Alan Lomax to do it correctly. But I think it would be really well served in the community. If they ever get it together I’d love to help them. … We have to preserve history.”
Selena Fragassi is a freelance music writer.
