It’s hard for Joe Bonamassa to contain his enthusiasm for Fort Wayne. 

The Summit City was a major player in helping get his career started. He has never stopped trying to express his gratitude by making Fort Wayne a regular stop on just about every tour. 

The blues guitarist returns to Embassy Theatre on Nov. 17, where he will perform a night full of music that should solidify opinions on why he is considered by many to be the best blues guitarist in the world.

Longtime relationship with city

Returning to Fort Wayne is not only a joy for him, but also to his fans who continue to fill local venues.

“I was just talking about Fort Wayne, Indiana, on a podcast, because we were talking about Sweetwater,” Bonamassa told Whatzup during a recent phone interview. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve been coming to Fort Wayne since the start of my career, when I was 13 or 14, and I’ve seen that city transform into a modern beautiful city. It’s so nice to see the metamorphosis.”

Bonamassa said he has always enjoyed visiting here, but remembers when Fort Wayne didn’t feel like it had as much life as it does now. 

“It felt like the city had plateaued,” he said. “Now it feels like the city has grown into something really cool. Now you go there and it’s almost like what you see in Nashville (Tennessee) with the infrastructure. The place is hopping. You have to say a lot of that has to do with Sweetwater.”

Returning to Blues Deluxe

Touring in support of his newest studio album, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, which was released Oct. 6, Bonamassa said that when he released Blues Deluxe in 2003, there was no guarantee there would ever be a second volume. 

“That was our last shot,” he said. “Our backs were against the wall, and we were pretty much done. We had (longtime WXKE DJ) Doc West and his radio station in Fort Wayne, Indiana, behind us, but that was literally the only pocket of success that we had at the time.” 

The 20th anniversary of Blues Deluxe would have been a great time to re-release the album with a bunch of extra stuff for fans and collectors Bonamassa said. Unfortunately, he didn’t have anything new to offer. 

“We didn’t have any bonus tracks, and I didn’t want to just remaster it because that’s sort of the lazy way of selling the same record twice,” he said. “At the end of the day, I said we need to make another volume, so we did. We had a very specific vision for what we wanted to do and cut the whole thing in five days with the band and maybe one or two more days for the strings and horns.”

Bonamassa now has a catalog of 16 studio albums, but he has released just as many live albums. 

“More, I think,” he said. 

Asked why the blues lends itself to live shows and recordings so well, the guitarist said, “It’s the ultimate call and response, isn’t it? It’s really one of the last bastions of music that you can really believe in. You know that if it’s on stage being played, there are no tracks. There’s not a lot of shows that you can go to now where that is the case.”

Aiding independent artists

Bonamassa seems to always on be tour, but he finds time for other passions and loves giving back to the community. 

One such venture is his Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes music education and blues music by funding scholarships and providing music education resources to schools in need. 

Another venture, Journeyman Records, founded with longtime manager Roy Weisman, provides infrastructure in the hopes of jump-starting the careers of independent artists that are often overlooked by major labels and concert promoters. 

“We have signed two artists so far,” Bonamassa said about Joanne Shaw Taylor and Robert Jon & The Wreck . “I’m excited about that. 

“It’s hard for independent artists to get any traction. Take someone like Joanne Shaw Taylor (who played at Eagles Theatre in Wabash on Oct. 12), for example. I believe in my heart that she is an Embassy Theatre act, but it’s hard to get promoters to bet on her enough to put her in the Embassy Theatre. So, we’ll bet on her and put her in the Embassy Theatre. To grow into it. So, that’s what we do. It’s manifest destiny. If you build it, they will come.”

Record-setting artist

Blues Deluxe Vol. 2 is Bonamassa’s 27th record to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Album chart, an incredible accomplishment for any musician, let alone one that has yet to reach the age of 50. 

Asked what he would still like to accomplish in his career, Bonamassa gave a typically humble answer. 

“I’m pretty good,” he said. “I hold the all-time record for No. 1 Blues records on the Billboard charts, and I’m just happy making music.” 

When Bonamassa’s tour stops at Embassy Theatre, “We are going to be doing a lot off the Blues Deluxe records,” he said. 

The latest album features two originals and eight covers of classic tracks that influenced his style. 

“We have tons of our own songs, so we could do no repeat shows, but we’re going to rehearse up some of the Blues Deluxe stuff and get it out there,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it and I’m excited to come back to Fort Wayne. It’s always a blast at the Embassy.”