Jason Bonham, Joe Bonamassa and Glenn Hughes form Black Country

How is that for a bit of news? First of all let me explain something about the band name “Black Country”, the Black Country is an area in the West Midlands in England near Birmingham, I know because I was born and lived there for 27 years. The Black Country was so called because by the late 19th century it was an industrial area with Coal Mines and Iron Foundries and Steel Mills that used the local coal to fire their furnaces, produced a level of air pollution. However, according to Wikipedia, historians suggest that it is more likely that the name existed even before the Industrial Revolution; outcroppings of black coal scarred the surface of the local heath, and the presence of coal so near the surface rendered the local soil very black.

So, now you know a little about the Black Country you are probably wondering why on earth Joe Bonamassa, born in New York, is in a band about a small are of England. Well, Jason Bonham as you should know is the son of the legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham who was actually born in Redditch but spent a lot of time in the Black Country seeing as Robert Plant was born in West Bromwich which definitely IS in the Black Country. Jason himself was apparently born in Dudley, not sure if that is true but that is about 5 miles from where I grew up and the back cover of Led Zeppelin IV actually shows a pretty bleak shot of some 60’s tower blocks in Dudley which were recently demolished.

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