Twenty years ago, blues-rock prodigy Joe Bonamassa opened for one of his idols, BB King, on the main stage at Wolf Trap. He also played at The Barns. On Saturday, he finally got his chance to headline at The Filene Center, thrilling the audience with his virtuosic guitar playing. It was something of a homecoming for Bonamassa, who, as he shared during his set, lived in DC for two years in the late ’90s and still has a DC area code on his cell phone. (He joked that no one answers his calls, because they think it’s the IRS or some other federal agency.)
A native of Utica, New York, where his parents owned a guitar store, Joe learned to play from the very respected, if perhaps a bit under-the-radar, Telecaster master Danny Gatton. After not too long, he was regularly playing around upstate New York. His first recorded music came as a member of Bloodline, a band made up of second-generation musicians. He released his solo debut, A New Day Yesterday, in 2000. In addition to his prodigious solo output — most recently Breakthrough, released earlier this year — he’s also made records with the hard rock band Black Country Communication and a couple albums of duets with Beth Hart.
Bonamassa isn’t shy about admitting that he plays to make his audience, and that may have been why he stuck to his older material and covers on Sept. 13. While most of the covers were classic blues songs — Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Twenty-Four Hour Blues,” Guitar Slim’s “Well, I Done Got Over It,” Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters’ “I Want to Shout About It,” Freddie King’s “Pack It Up,” and Bobby Parker’s “It’s Hard But It’s Fair” — he ended the main set with a hard-rock, playing Led Zeppelin’s “How Many More Times / The Hunter.”
Watch Joe Bonamassa perform “How Many More Times” by Led Zeppelin live for the British Blues Explosion Live on YouTube:
After walking out to the Bar-Key’s “Soul Finger,” Joe kicked off his set with a couple of his original songs, “Hope You Realize It (Goodbye Again)” and “Dust Bowl.” Later in the set, he played “Driving Towards the Daylight,” “The Last Matador of Bayonne,” and “The Heart That Never Waits.” For his encore, he did “Mountain Time” and walked off to Ethel Merman’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”
A pleasant surprise in this show was Reese Wynans, who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 as a member of Double Trouble — the backing band for Texas blues-rock legend Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of Bonomassa’s principial influences — playing keys. Bonamassa’s guitar work stood out, of course, making this a great night for anyone who loves the blues.
Here are some photos of Joe Bonamassa performing live at The Filene Center at Wolf Trap on Sept. 13, 2025. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Ari Strauss.
