Joanna Connor (born August 31, 1962) is an American Chicago-based blues singer, songwriter, and an epic guitarist. Connor was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States, and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1984, she was drawn to the Chicago blues scene, eventually sharing the stage with James Cotton, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, and A.C. Reed. By 1987, she had started her own band, and recorded her first album for Blind Pig Records in 1989. In 2002, Connor left Blind Pig and signed a recording contract with the small independent record label, M.C. Records.
Joanna and band shared stages with Blues, Rock, and Jazz greats, including Luther Allison, BB King, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Robben Ford, Danny Gatton, Robert Cray, Jimmy Page, ZZ Top, Joe Cocker, Etta James, and others.
Joanna signed endorsement deals with Gibson Guitars, Victoria Amps and Orange Amps.
In 2005, she took a hiatus from touring to spend time at home raising her young daughter. Two 15-plus year residencies at the House of Blues and The Kingston Mines, honed Joanna’s considerable guitar and vocal chops even further.
While working continuously in Chicago, a handful of videos of her incendiary slide guitar solos went viral creating quite a sensation and garnering attention from media and established musicians alike. Joe Bonamassa sought her out and offered to produce the kind of record he felt Joanna had always had in her and should deliver to the world. 4801 South Indiana is this record, a blues record that delivers all the raw emotion, passion, and fire that made the Blues so compelling from its inception. Joe Bonamassa did not merely produce, arrange, and play on the record, he enabled and inspired Joanna to pull from deep within her all of what her life in music had given her. While steeped in tradition, the recording is no museum piece, it is alive and it is kicking, once-in-a-lifetime Blues.
