The long awaited Black Country Communion album is released here next Monday. It’s already number one on the Amazon pre order chart and is garnering excellent  reviews.

The band will be conducting a live interview on Nicky Horne’s show on Planet Rock this Sunday ahead of the album’s launch.

See http://www.planetrock.com/

In an exclusive interview with Dave Lewis for the TBL magazine,  Joe Bonamassa revealed how quickly the album was recorded.

‘’The one thing you can say about this album is that there was no danger of it being over thought. It was three takes and we are done and that’s the way it was recorded. So it’s very organic even though it was recorded on pro tools but it’s not cut and paste. It was just as it went down, so there’s not a lot of bells whistles or tricks and that’s the kind of record I wanted to make with these guys. As for Kevin Shirley he did a great job in capturing the energy – he was the guy who put it all together and he deserves a lot of credit for this band.’’

Joe’s past admiration for Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham was more than evident throughout the interview.

‘’I’ve followed Glenn for years. One of my favourite videos is the California Jam with Deep Purple. I used to watch that all the time,  long before I knew Glenn Hughes. He is such a powerful singer and then there are the Trapeze records which I love. He’s always been a singer I’ve looked up to. He’s a singer who can do anything with his voice. He just feels it and sings it. As for Jason, well for a while he was busy with a band you may have heard of called Led Zeppelin and he was also busy with Foreigner. We hadn’t played to together for about four years and any opportunity to play with him I’d jump at it. There’s not another drummer on the planet like him. He is very unique. Not only does he play like his father but he has his own style too so he’s not just a clone.’’

Talking about how the band recorded a version of the Trapeze classic Medusa,  Joe revealed how he captured the guitar sound.

‘’The amazing thing about Medusa is that I used Mel Galley’s guitar on that.  Glenn has Mel’s original Les Paul and he brought it down to the session. I mean it’s THE guitar, the black Les Paul custom. We re- strung it for that song so that guitar has now been on the two versions of that song. I used some tremolo effects and I tried to put my own stamp on and also pay tribute to Mel and the Trapeze legacy. It helps of course to have one of the original members of the band there, so I could say to Glenn ‘’Am I doing anything sacrilegious here ‘’. I love that track.’’

One of the stand out tracks on the BCC album is Song Of Yesterday which is something of a Bonamassa showpiece.

‘’Song Of Yesterday was maybe the one of those things you could say might be on a solo album but it was written specifically for the band – it wouldn’t have sounded the same on my solo album. That was a riff I wrote on a garage band demo. Put it on email to Kevin and he flipped on the riff and said ‘’Lets add some more’’. We had the structure and Jeff did the string arrangements on it. I flipped when I first heard it as we did three takes of the song. I did the solo live- didn’t even have time to hear it back.  It was like ‘’My god how did we do that!’’. I’m very proud of the song one. It’s the best pieces of writing I’ve done in a while.”

Asked if the BCC project would get in the way of his own career Joe explained  ‘’If anything I think it will help my playing and get me into certain segments of  the listening public that generally don’t but my albums, or quite frankly haven’t heard of me. , So that I think will be great.  Am I in any danger of having any time to myself or not being busy? Er no! But it’s a good thing. We are looking forward to performing live. We want to also stamp our own mark,  so we want to get the album out so people can hear the songs.”

The full interview with Joe Bonamassa – plus further interviews with Glenn Hughes and Jason Bonham, will appear in the new issue of the Tight But Loose magazine due at the end of September.

For more info on Black Country Communion visit

http://www.bccommunion.com/

Joe Bonamassa begins a UK tour in Folkstone on October 9th

Joe Bonamassa and Dave Lewis  – post TBL interview London June 29th 2010