Ok so the weather was nice today, my legs felt pretty good, so I thought it would be a good day to stretch it out a little and go for a long run. I decided on a 10k course that I laid out last year. It includes a couple of hills within the first 2.5 miles but after that it’s pretty flat. The only problem was I left my headphones at work! Now I don’t know what it is, but ear buds do not stay in my ears, but they were all I had so I set out with them in and Mark Lucas new CD Uncle Bones. cued up! Well the buds stayed in for the first track “Uncle Bones” and then for the next mile or so, lines from “Uncle Bones” played in my head. Anyway, the run went well, I averaged aroun 10:15 mile pace over the six miles! 
So since the run’s projected soundtrack Uncle Bones will have to be the soundtrack on Tuesday’s run, I’ll write about another album that was the soundtrack for a run last week and has been in heavy rotation last night and today and that would be Joe Bonamassa’s latest Driving Towards the Daylight. Now I just discovered Joe’s music a few years ago, sometine around 2009 or so I checked out Live from Nowhere in Particular and was hooked. Since then I’ve loved his solo releases and his work with Black Country Communion and Beth Hart. Driving Towards the Daylight debuted on Billboard’s Blues Chart at No. 1 and is high on the charts worldwide!! But that’s to be expected from Guitar International’s 2011 Guitarist of the Year!
The eleven tracks on the album are a mix of Bonamassa originals like “Dislocated Boy” and the title track, both of which are about living out of hotels and other locations that are not your home, and covers from blues masters like: Willie Dixon “I Got All You Need”, Robert Johnson “Stones in My Passway”, and Howlin’ Wolf “Who’s Been Talkin’ – the neat thing on that track is that they play a short track of Howlin’ talking about the beat of the song and it sounds like he’s directing the band! There’s also a great cover of Tom Wait’s “New Coat of Paint” But on all these tracks Bonamassa takes the song and turns them inside out and makes them his own! His soaring guitar is great, but the rhythm section particularly the drumming throughout the album also stands out! While all the songs are great I am impressed everytime “A Place in My Heart” comes on – what a great track! Uh, “Heavenly Soul” is playing now and it’s not too shabby either! Here’s a link to a great video talking about the making of the album here.
Overall, this could be my favorite album from Joe, so check it out! What I have to do is go back and check out his early catalog, the problem is that Joe is so prolific that there’s always something new!!
Here’s a recent performance of “Driving Towards the Daylight”