“I’m the most balanced guy in rock and roll,” Joe Bonamassa jokes over the phone. “I’ve got chips on both shoulders, OK?”

Bonamassa, age 46, has been on the cover of every guitar magazine you can imagine, sold millions of albums and topped the blues chart enough times it could be renamed in his honor. He lives in the SoCal artiste Shangri-La of Laurel Canyon, is financially secure for life and owns one of the world’s most drool-inducing guitar and amplifier collections.

Bonamassa hasn’t forgotten what it felt like to have his back against the wall, though. Or when it seemed like his career might be over before it really began.

“When you hand me a guitar and I go onstage, I still can summon the demons,” Bonamassa says during our recent interview. “And that’s the thing, you never want to just rest on your laurels. You always want to push yourself. I want to make the best shows possible. I want to make the best records possible.

“When we play festivals, we don’t play for second or third place — we play to win, and there’s no disrespect to any other act. It’s just we bring the best game we possibly can. If I’m up there mailing it in, I might as well go home.”

Last year, Bonamassa did go home, metaphorically, with the release of “Blues Deluxe Vol. 2.”

If you love the hot, sharp blues of B.B. King’s essential 1965 concert LP “Live at the Regal,” Bonamassa’s “Blues Deluxe Vol. 2″ conjures that kind of feel in a punchier studio recording, filtered through Joe’s heart and hands.

“Vol. 2″ is comprised mostly of covers of songs by artists ranging from Albert King to Fleetwood Mac to Kenny Neal. There also are two originals. One of those new songs, the simmering six-minute epic “Is It Safe To Go Home,” closes the album and might be the best thing on there.

“It was the last song we cut for the album,” Bonamassa says. He describes “Is It Safe To Go Home” as “our Gary Moore moment on the record” — referring to the late blues-rock lord and former Thin Lizzy member – “and we wanted to have that moment.”

“Blues Deluxe Vol. 2″ is a sequel to the album that tilted Bonamassa’s destiny back upwards.

By age 12, the Utica, N.Y., native was a blues phenom opening shows for B.B. King. Later, in his teens, he joined Bloodline, a major-label group featuring the sons of jazz giant Miles Davis, Allman Brothers bassist Berry Oakley and Doors guitarist Robby Krieger.

Bonamassa’s debut solo album, released in 2000 at age 23, was produced by Tom Dowd, the revered studio ace known for helming classic albums by the likes of the Allmans, Derek and the Dominos, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Southern rock singer deluxe Gregg Allman, who Bonamassa had toured with, lent his vocals to the hook for “If Heartaches Were Nickels,” a song penned by Allmans/Gov’t Mule guitar hero Warren Haynes.

Yet just a few years later, Bonamassa was dropped by his record label. Dropped by his booking agent, too. Back then, nu-metal, post-grunge and “the garage rock revival” were the hottest sounds in guitar music.

This was the dire situation under which Bonamassa cut his third album. Released in 2003, the classic “Blues Deluxe” was named after a 1968 track by the Rod Stewart-fronted Jeff Beck Group. Bonamassa also covered that song for his album. To date, his excellent, rootsier version has been streamed more than 21 million times on Spotify.

Upon its release, the “Blues Deluxe” album was a critically acclaimed, blues-chart success — thanks to Bonamassa’s cheetah-legato licks, soul-shredding vocals and an ungimmicky production. It was an impressively advanced and authentic sounding blues album made by a dude in his mid-20s during the “American Idol” era. In a post-Stevie Ray Vaughan world in need of a new young hotshot, the blues had one.

Still, two decades later, on “Vol. 2,” Bonamassa can hear all the ways his playing and singing have evolved. “I sing better now,” he says. “Higher, more melodic. And I play less notes on the guitar. When you’re 25 or 26 and you’re trying to get noticed, every solo you’re trying to hit it over the wall, and you don’t need to do that.”

Since then, many of Bonamassa’s heroes have become collaborators. In 2009, Eric Clapton sat in with Bonamassa at the storied Royal Albert Hall for a tear through “Further On Up The Road,” a ‘50s Bobby Bland song Clapton made his own in the ‘70s.

With Clapton on a Stratocaster and Bonamassa a Les Paul, they traded vocals and intertwined solos on the same London stage where Clapton’s power-trio Cream did their final concert in 1968. The resulting sparks brought many smiles to their faces and brought down the house.

Recalling that night, Bonamassa says, “Clapton’s my favorite singer, songwriter and guitar player, and just to watch him work, everything is in slow motion. He’s not in a hurry to do anything. Same thing when you play with [ZZ Top guitarist] Billy Gibbons – he’s not in a hurry to do anything. That is a real skill that’s only developed by having, you know, 30,000 hours on a stage.”

We talk for a sec about how underappreciated Clapton is as singer. “He’s one of a kind, you know?” Bonamassa says.

Recently, Bonamassa completed the recording of a new album with Black Country Communion, his supergroup also boasting former Deep Purple singer/bassist Glenn Hughes, Led Zeppelin scion Jason Bonham on drums, and Derek Sherinian, keyboardist for stars like Alice Cooper and Billy Idol. Titled “V,” the Black Country Communion album is preceded by hippie hard-funk single “Stay Free.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like Drake,” Bonamassa says with a laugh about the upcoming LP. “We’re not looking for pop hits. To be honest with you, it shocked me: When I listened to the whole thing done, you know what, this is the best f—in’ one we’ve done. The songs and performances on this record are really stellar. It’s almost like our debut album and it’s our fifth — I’m really proud of it.”

During his career, Bonamassa’s guested on records by personal touchstones from Ginger Baker to Mark Knopfler. Two of the three Grammys that Bonamassa’s been nominated for, he ended up losing that award to artists whose albums he played on, including Bobby Rush and Edgar Winter.

“I’m just honored that my heroes think enough of me to ask me to be on their records,” he says. “When you agree to do something and you put a solo or a vocal on a record, I’m not the producer, I’m not the protagonist, I’m not the artist. And it’s up to them to do what they want with it — you know what I mean? You can use as much of it as you want. You can use as little of it as you want.”

The aforementioned Stevie Ray is another of Bonamassa’s heroes. Since Vaughan’s fame was elevated by lending his bluesy guitar to pop chameleon David Bowie’s 1983 hit album “Let’s Dance,” I ask Bonamassa if there’s a current pop singer he’d be interested in laying down leads for in the studio.

“I get some requests and things from artists I’d never expect to even be on their radar,” he says. “But everything is song-specific, you know? I just feel that, you know, whatever collaboration you do, it’s got to make sense. It can’t just be like, ‘What’s better than one celebrity? Two celebrities! What’s better than two celebrities? Three celebrities!’ And it adds up to nothing. There’s so much content now, it’s just a deluge of songs and records coming out every single day. So it’s like, let’s think about it and make sure it’s cool.”

Last year, in addition to “Blues Deluxe Vol. 2,” Bonamassa dropped the live album “Tales of Time.” It became the 26th album of his career to top the blues chart, an all-time record. Highlights of that release include the soul-prog of “The Heart That Never Waits.”

“Generally,” Bonamassa says, “live albums, you absolutely see who the artist is at that point in their life. It’s not a product of, ‘Is this short enough for a single?’ Allmans ‘At Fillmore East’ or ‘Frampton Comes Alive,’ Humble Pie ‘Rockin’ the Fillmore,’ all these great live records, it’s the band and the artist being themselves. And usually they’re a little rough and tumble, they’re not too polished and overblown or overdone.

“That was the style of the ‘70s. You couldn’t go to social media to hear them [the artists] live, if they were coming to your town. You couldn’t just look them up on YouTube and see where the bodies are buried. Live records were an essential part of rock and roll back then.”

Drugs and alcohol abuse are a well-chronicled music-biz tarpit. Since Bonamassa’s been in the business since he was a tween, I’m curious why he’s never been known to have wrestled with those demons.

“Because I’m too f—ing pragmatic,” Bonamassa says. “Generally, when artists fall into the entrapments of the business or the road or both, it’s when there’s enablers and there’s nobody around to say, ‘Hey, this is a bad idea.’ And the first band I was in [Bloodline, mentioned above] was dysfunctional and I saw that as a teenager and was like, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ It’s too hard to get on radio. It’s too hard to be in this business for 35 years, let alone if you defeat yourself.”

As a guitarist, Bonamassa has hellhounds in his fingers. Yet with his unassuming offstage look of ballcaps, T-shirts, sneakers and other everyman wear, he can be just another face in the guitar-geek crowd.

Which is exactly how I encountered him three years ago, at local guitar-shop when he was in my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama for a show. It’s hard to imagine another guitar-hero of his level being able to being able to blend in like that in a guitar shop.

Onstage and on album covers, Bonamassa does slap on some shades and a suit. “But I’m not that guy 24/7,” he says.

Bonamassa’s current live band, in addition to his vocals and guitar, features: keyboardist Reese Wynans (formerly of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Double Trouble), guitarist Josh Smith, drummer Lamar Carter (credits include Demi Lovato, Mick Jagger, Carrie Underwood), bassist Calvin Turner, and backup singers Jade MacRae and Dannielle De Andrea.

Bonamassa says, “Every year, there’s a new song that comes in and it surprises you and works really well in the set. The coolest compliment anybody could ever give me is, ‘I went to your show, and I had a really good time.’ Because that means all that effort, all the work that we put into it was worth it.”

On social media, Bonamassa often shares images of the museum-worthy instruments in his personal collection. So his answer to a hypothetical question of which guitars he’d save if his house was on fire and burning down, catches me off guard.

“I’d probably grab a picture of my great grandfather in 1920 and his trumpet,” says Bonamassa, whose grandfather and father also made a living in the business. “Because that’s the DNA of the Bonamassa hundred-and-four-year legacy in music.”

Joe Bonamassa and his band play the Von Braun Center Mark C. Smith Concert Hall 8 p.m. March 11 in Huntsville. Tickets are $59 and up (plus applicable fees) via the VBC Box Office, address 700 Monroe Street, and ticketmaster.com. More info at jbonamassa.com.

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