Joe Bonamassa—the guitarist, collector, and overseer of Golden Age gear—first let cameras into his Nerdville museum in Reverb's 2016 Welcome to Nerdville mini-doc.
Over the following eight years, Joe's guitar safaris never slowed down. So he invited music gear marketplace Reverb back to hear fresh stories from his travels and check out his collection's latest gems in the new Welcome Back To Nerdville video released today.
“I don't buy guitars, I buy stories,” Joe says, and this video has some of the best—from a $200,000 Flying V found in a trash bag and a “cursed” Burst to the fire that almost took out Nerdville.
Highlights include:
A duffle bag of Joe Bonamassa's Burst money is buried somewhere in the desert. In Reverb's new mini-doc, Joe shares the story of a recent addition to his collection: a Burst that he says could be "cursed." The 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard was originally owned— and played extensively—by the late Tommy Bolin, guitarist of Zephyr, The James Gang, and Deep Purple in the '60s and '70s.
Joe was able to purchase it through some strange circumstances, which included a séance where the seller asked Tommy Bolin's spirit for permission to sell the guitar to Joe. Luckily, Tommy Bolin's spirit was said to be a fan. Soon after the deal, the seller buried the duffle bag of cash somewhere deep in the Utah desert, then unexpectedly died in a car crash. "If you're a treasure-hunter," Joe says, "I'd start in Moab."
A fire nearly destroyed Joe Bonamassa's Nerdville collection. While Joe was out of town to kick off a tour, a fire broke out in a bamboo patch that used to snake up the driveway to Nerdville. It was around 2 a.m., but a neighbor saw the blaze and called the fire department. (He also took cell phone videos of the flames inching closer and closer to Joe's home, which you can see in Reverb's video.)
"It was during the windy season and the dry season, where that shit could've swept right up the side [of Nerdville] and took the whole thing out." Turns out, one of the firefighters was a fan and was already going to an upcoming Las Vegas show, so Joe got the chance to publicly thank him for saving his collection.
Bonamassa—who sees himself as an overseer of classic, Golden Age, made-in-America guitars and guitar gear—said the event made this even clearer in his mind. "I'm responsible for this stuff, and the fire gave me a huge wake-up call."
Joe Bonamassa paid $200,000 for a Flying V found in a trash bag. The niece of a Bay Area gospel musician named Gino Landry didn't know what she had when she stumbled upon a guitar wrapped up in a trash bag among her uncle's belongings. She thought maybe it was worth $500. Joe Bonamassa knew differently.
The 1958 Gibson Flying V, a rarity from the original run of Korina Vs, needed a bit of work, but Joe brokered a deal at a more appropriate price-point: $200,000. Despite the handsome sum, he still affectionately refers to it as the "Trash Bag" Flying V.
