Joe Bonamassa Breakthrough

Blues-rock titan Joe Bonamassa is back with Breakthrough, his powerful new studio album dropping July 18th.

Joe Bonamassa carries the torch for old-fashioned, guitar-driven blues-rock, but he's far from a traditionalist, delving into proggy psychedelia, swaggering hard rock, and working with Nashville songwriters on the way to establishing himself as more than just a skilled player of the blues.

Beth Hart emerged in the 2010s as a formidable singer and songwriter on the contemporary blues scene. Her rise to stardom was a long time coming. Hart first made inroads as a contestant on Star Search in 1993 and had a brief period where she was pushed as a possible adult alternative act, landing a slot on the 1996 Lollapalooza tour. A series of bad business breaks and personal troubles kept her on the margins throughout the 2000s, but in 2011, she teamed up with blues guitar hero Joe Bonamassa for Don't Explain and the collaboration rejuvenated her career.

In 2014, something unusual happened. On the strength of their breakthrough album Too Many Roads, Denmark's Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado went global. Now it's one thing for an artist from Copenhagen to enjoy success at home and in a few adjacent countries. But the release of Too Many Roads saw the seven-piece combo fronted by singer and guitarist Risager gaining widespread notoriety in the U.S. and being invited to play in locales as far away as Mumbai, India. The album took home the Danish Music Award as the Top Blues Album of 2014 and also earned Germany's illustrious "Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik," but perhaps even more impressively, it was selected as one the year's best by Britain's influential The Blues magazine, right alongside international stars like Robert Cray, Walter Trout and Joe Bonamassa. Clearly, Risager and his mates had taken their exhilarating mix of blues, soul and rock 'n' roll to the next level. Early in 2015, Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado celebrated that triumph by returning to one of their favorite nightspots - the Harmonie in Bonn, Germany. They would treat local fans to a one-of-a-kind spectacle, hitting the stage as a ten-piece mini-orchestra.