Black Country Communion’s New Album Is ’90 Percent Done’
Black Country Communion guitarist Joe Bonamassa was recently a guest of SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” and talked about the status of the supergroup (with singer/bassist Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath), drummer Jason Bonham (Led Zeppelin) and keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theatre, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol) and how close they are to finishing their new album, “It is not done. I’m actually, after I see you today, I’m gonna go to Sunset Sound [studios in Hollywood] and see Glenn. And I’ve gotta sing a little bit on it and redo one guitar part for [the record]. And he’s over there cutting vocals now. So we’re, I would say, 90% done, but the music’s done.”
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Bonamass continued, “The thing about Black Country Communion, whether you like the way we sound or not, when we all get together, it has a very specific thing that it does. Everybody brings a very specific thing to the table, and it’s a special band.”
As for the band’s songwriting process? “This was the same. I went over to Glenn’s house about six times and we hashed out some ideas — pretty rough, loose ideas. Nothing in stone. And so I had a playlist on my phone, voice memos, BCC 1 through 10. And that was it. So, so day one, we just [said], ‘Okay, let’s start with BCC 1.’ And we sat in the courtyard at Sunset Sound — they have this really nice courtyard with a bunch of chairs — and we sat out there with an acoustic guitar and a couple of things and we just bashed out the arrangement. We were, like, ‘Okay, that’s cool.’ We went in, played it three or four times and that was it. Nobody charted anything; we just kind of memorized it and did it. And we would go into the control room, listen a little bit, maybe tweak something, but once it fired up and after the second day, we really hit our stride, going, ‘Okay, the band’s back.’ ‘Cause we hadn’t played together in six years.”
Bonamassa said he was looking forward to performing with Black Country Communion again, “I’d like to do some live shows with ’em next year,” he said. “I think it would be really fun… Scheduling is the hardest thing, because of what everybody’s got [coming up]… [My solo band is] booked almost two years out. But next year, I really wanna at least set aside a week, maybe two weeks, where we can go out and do selected shows, do a couple here in the U.S., go to Europe, do a couple there. ‘Cause it is fun.”
Black Country Communion hasn’t played together since February 2018 (at the fourth edition of the Keeping The Blues Alive At Sea).
Cool to see they haven’t closed the doors on this band.
Pretty crushing supergroup. Which is your favourite?
