00:11Hey guys, Joe Bonamassa here. I just got off the road with Black Country Communion, my band with Jason Bonam
00:17on drums, Glenn Hughes on vocals and bass, wonderful bass player, and singer as always, voice of rock, and the
00:28master of the keyboards, Mr. Derek Cheney.
00:30And, you know, the subject came up in our conversations about, what's the difference between, like, what you do in
00:35your day job and when you play with Black Country Communion? And, well, you know, there is a couple of
00:41differences. One of the things that, it's the approach, and I, you know, with heavier chords and music, sometimes, you
00:49know, you don't need tons of gain. I don't play a lot of, I don't play with a lot of
00:55gain with that band.
00:56You're like, well, that's kind of like a, it seems like a paradox. Well, I mean, everybody's distorted. Glenn's bass
01:04is distorted. Derek's keyboards are distorted. The Hammond. And so my job is to kind of play cleaner, and it
01:12makes this big, heavy thing. You know, we have this song called One Last Soul.
01:28And if you can tell through the phone, or the, you're listening through a phone, I'm recording it on a
01:34phone, and Apple's responsible for the audio.
01:38But you can tell, it's not as distorted as you think.
01:44And I really, you know, enjoy, like, when I first heard, like, free, you know.
02:15And his, Paul Kossoff's voicings on all that stuff made it really heavy, and really, you know,
02:21and really sparse, you know.
02:30So you're not really, you're not playing the full chord, you know.
02:34You're playing roots, five, root, you know.
02:37You know.
02:50You know, you're like, well, Joe, it doesn't sound like mashuda.
02:53Well, I know, you know, but it's the same kind of approach.
02:57You know, when you're playing the context of a heavy band, you want to be able to differentiate yourself
03:01and not take up too much bandwidth, because it sounds heavier and sounds deeper
03:05if you kind of, like, scale back all the voices, you know.
03:10Like, you know, Leslie West, one of the heaviest, you know.
03:13You know.
03:17You know, I mean, that's a heavy riff, you know.
03:19Like, you know.
03:31And all that stuff and all those chord voicings are really important in making the band and the music and
03:39the song.
03:40And that's when I approach writing a song like that.
03:42And I try to, like, you know, subtract extra notes that I don't need.
03:48Like, the cool trick is this E.
03:50This is a full E chord, but you don't play the third, you know.
03:56Or you can play it here.
04:08Because you don't want to play it.
04:16You're actually muting that major third.
04:18You're muting the G string all together just by kind of collapsing the chord, you know.
04:23Same thing with the Paul Kossop chord, which is the best tuning chord out there, which is this A.
04:31With an extra root.
04:32And a five.
04:36You can go to the sus.
04:42And you can leave the open strings as drones, but, you know, you want the other ones to poke out.
04:58And you can mute.
05:00You want to mute.
05:18And you'll find that your music will get a little bit heavier if you approach it from that point of
05:25view.
05:25Again, I'm not a high-gain player, and I don't live in that world.
05:30But when I play with Glenn Hughes and Derek Sherinian, my role is to find a place, you know.
05:38And I don't want to take up too much bandwidth, and you want to hear everybody.
05:42And it goes back to that concept of listening.
05:45And so that's how I approach being in a band.
05:47So thank you very much.
