5-Time Grammy Nominee Suffers Concerning Ear Injury

One blues rocker is facing the music after an unfortunate injury has forced him to cancel shows.

Five-time Grammy-nominated blues artist Joe Bonamassa, who started his musical career at age 12 when he opened shows for B.B. King, suffered an ear injury known as acute acoustic trauma late last month in Austin, Texas. The injury forced him to cancel a show in Shreveport, Louisiana on November 23.

The National Library of Medicine describes the condition as “sudden sensorineural hearing loss caused by exposure to intense impulse noise, such as blasts or gunshots, typically exceeding 140 dB for less than 0.2 seconds.”

Bonamassa is one of the biggest names in blues, thanks to his five Grammy nominations. Most recently, his album Breakthrough was nominated for the Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 68th Grammy Awards.

In an Instagram post from last month, he detailed the ear injury.

“Last night during the latter half of the Austin show at @acllive ( Not their fault!! A really great venue and crew!) my right ear pretty much lost 80 percent of its high end,” he said. “For audio folks it approximately ranges from 600 hz to about 12k-ish. The advice the doctors both local to Shreveport and my trusted/ legendary ENT Dr. Joseph Sugarman in Los Angeles gave me was not to be around any loud noises until cleared to do so again.”

One good thing did come out of the injury, however.

“The silver lining was being able to spend a few low volume, non amplified, limited ‘right side hearing’ hours with a life long inspiration and friend and @rockhall member Mr. James Burton and his family in Shreveport this afternoon,” he said, next to a photo of Burton, who is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted musician that famously led Elvis Presley’s TCB Band. “A national treasure and a world class human being.”

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In a later Instagram video, he detailed that he was back to normal and the show must go on.

“Tour is going ahead as planned,” he wrote. “And no I don’t have a black eye. It’s just a shadow or maybe it was caused by the bar fight I got into in Abilene.”

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