A New Day Yesterday

1	Cradle Rock 3:50
2	Walk in My Shadows 3:27
3	A New Day Yesterday 4:45
4	I Know Where I Belong 5:38
5	Miss You, Hate You Rock Radio Remix 3:39
6	Nuthin' I Wouldn't Do (For a Woman Like You) 5:10
7	Colour and Shape 5:03
8	Headaches to Heartbreaks 4:56
9	Trouble Waiting 3:25
10	If Heartaches Were Nickels 7:51
11	Current Situation 3:35
12	Don't Burn Down That Bridge 4:21
13	Miss You, Hate You Bonus Track / Original Full Length Version 6:04

Barnes & Noble

Contemporary blues rock owes much to the British musicians of the 1960s who injected rootsy American blues with rock 'n' roll energy and heavy doses of electricity. Bands like Cream, Fleetwood Mac, and the Jeff Beck Band formed their own important heritage; their heavy sounds returned to our shores and have been a crucial influence ever since. It's a pleasure, then, to find a young guitarist and singer like Joe Bonamassa paying explicit homage to his U.K. blues rock bretheren. On his debut recording as a solo artist, this hotshot guitar picker and gritty vocalist -- formerly with Bloodline -- puts a modern spin on still-vital material by such iconic British artists as Rory Gallagher ("Cradle Rock"), Free ("Walk in My Shadows"), and even Jethro Tull ("A New Day Yesterday"). There's also plenty of good old American blues rocking to be found here , à la Johnny Winter, Mountain, and the Allman Brothers. Bonamassa pulls off the vintage material with aplomb and loads of spirit but also devotes energy and intensity to his idiomatic originals. It doesn't hurt to have veteran producer Tom Dowd behind the boards; decades after his vintage work with Derek and the Dominos and the Allman Brothers, Dowd can still extract the maximum juice from a steaming blues rock act. Bonamassa's instrumental and vocal skills are in full flight here, but he knows where his roots can be found -- blues rock heroes Leslie West, Rick Derringer, and Gregg Allman all make special guest appearances alongside the talented upstart. William Pearl

All Music Guide

Named after the early Jethro Tull classic, which he expertly covers here in a jaw-dropping performance, A New Day Yesterday is a fine debut by guitar ace Joe Bonamassa. And though his record company tried to ride the coattails of teenage guitar prodigies like Kenny Wayne Shepard and Jonny Lang and position him (misguidedly and much too late) as a straight-up prodigal blues kid, Bonamassa is really much more than a traditional bluesman. Rather, as best exemplified by the Jethro Tull number cited above, his bluesy take on Free's "Walk in My Shadows," or his hard boogie romp through Al Kooper's "Nuthin' I Wouldn't Do (For a Woman Like You)," this excellent debut places the guitarist's influences as much in classic '70s hard rock as in the blues. Along with his deceptively age-wearied vocals (he was only 22 at the time of this recording), this unusual combination translates into the aggressive, soulful crunch heard on Bonamassa's many original compositions. Among these, the jolting double whammy of "Miss You, Hate You" and "Colour and the Shape" (note the Anglicized spelling) are the most obvious standouts, but the guitarist also makes the Warren Haynes-penned "If Heartaches Were Nickels" his own with a tense, riveting performance. All in all, a promising debut. Eduardo Rivadavia