PERFORMANCE NOTES
“REDEMPTION”
Joe Bonamassa
THE TITLE TRACK from Joe Bonamassa’s 2018 studio album, this earthy, downtempo song features the guitarist in a serious, soul-searching mood, with swampy, drop-D-tuned acoustic and electric riffs, impassioned vocals and a fiery guitar solo. (The three-part female background vocals are great too!)
Joe makes great use of a slide in the song’s repeating two-bar intro riff, crafting a haunting low-register melody that’s based on the D minor pentatonic scale (D, F, G, A, C), with the added B note at the end of bar 2 implying a warm-sounding G/B chord and adding a D Dorian-mode flavor (D, E, F, G, A,) and alternate between placing the slide against the strings and lifting it off them to sound the open-string notes, use a light touch with the slide and take care not to inadvertently cause the strings to “fret out” and “clank” against the frets, which is all too easy to do down in the lower positions, especially if your guitar has low action at the nut. (Guitars that are set up specifically for slide playing typically have higher action at the nut, for this very reason.)
