Jason Bonham (Photo by Mike Corrado)

WHEELING — Jason Bonham has played music with a long list of superstars, a who’s-who of the industry’s Rock & Roll Hall of Famers.

He has played as a member in a band, or as a session musician, with many of the greats: Sammy Hagar, Nancy and Ann Wilson of Heart, Paul Rodgers of Bad Company and The Firm, Slash of Guns and Roses, and Foreigner. He also starred in the VH1 reality show “Supergroup” with Ted Nugent, Evan Seinfeld of Biohazard, Sebastian Bach of Skid Row and Scott Ian of Anthrax.

Oh, by the way, he is the son of the late, great Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. Yes, add the surviving members of that supergroup: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, to the list he has played with. Bonham is truly rock and roll royalty.

Bonham will bring the Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin Evening to the Capitol Theatre in Wheeling on Wednesday, May 7. Included in the playlist that evening is the entire Physical Graffiti album, considered by many the greatest Led Zeppelin album. Bonham said it’s a rarity for Physical Graffiti to be played start-to-finish, but this tour will do it because …

“We are going to give it a really good run of these ‘paying tribute’ shows,” Bonham said. “And it’s the first time we’ve ever done it in this format where we’ve picked an album which is celebrating 50 years of age which is Physical Graffiti, which is probably my favorite album of all time.

“I thought, can we do the show like this? I told my agent, and he went, ‘I don’t know, I think it’s kind of a select audience that would be into that.’ In hindsight, when we announced it, his phone was ringing non-stop. And now it looks like we have another 60 shows to add to this tour. It seems like people like the idea of us playing the whole album.”

With one of the recognized greatest drummers of all time as a father, did any doubt exist Jason would follow in his footsteps? Actually there was some early doubt. John Bonham allowed his son into his musical environment but didn’t push it on him. He gave Jason the room to learn his own path.

“For me to get involved with the music, it was just there from such an early age,” Bonham said. “The drum kit, from 5 years old, so that just became a natural thing to play drums. He would put the jukebox on. I don’t really remember any sit-down lessons where he would show me things. I just seemed to remember being able to play.”

According to Bonham, when he turned 9 or 10 years old, he found another love. He put down the drumsticks for dirt-bike racing, becoming heavily involved in racing for many years. Still one of his intense passions, Bonham felt racing was his own because “it was something that no one else in the family could do. I felt it was kind of my thing.”

Tragedy in the Bonham family brought him back to music. His father died in 1980, and about a year and a half later, when he was close to turning pro, “I put the bike down, I put it back in the garage for awhile and said I’m going to focus on the drums. At 17, that’s when I started my musical career, which was many years ago, in 1983,” Bonham said.

It’s a musical career with many turns along the way, with many bands formed and disbanded, many opportunities to play as a session drummer for other artists, and not-so-many opportunities to play with Plant, Page and Jones. He first played with the remaining members of Led Zeppelin in 1988 at the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary concert in New York City. He also played with them at his own wedding reception on April 28, 1990, performing five songs for the guests. And they reunited at London’s O2 Arena in December 2007 as part of an all-star tribute to Ahmet Ertegun.

“For me, the older I got, the more nervous I got,” Bonham said of playing with Plant, Page and Jones. “When I was a kid, and every time I’d see them and I’d jam with them, it was just they were dad’s buddies and that was it. I never looked at it past that really.

“It wasn’t until you have a time to reflect and look back and suddenly go, ‘do you know who your dad’s band was?’ And suddenly realize… And then I move to America of course. And living in America Led Zeppelin are the gods here.”

In 2010, he introduced Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening (JBLZE), packing venues coast-to-coast and supporting everyone from Heart to Kid Rock before touring worldwide in 2011.

“If you haven’t seen us before . . . if you love Led Zeppelin, come along, be open-minded and I hope — which has happened about 98 percent of the time that people come out to see us — after they see us they write to me or get a chance to talk to me, they say to me ‘I get it now. I totally get it.’

“Even people from the music industry that I’ve known all my life that are very dear friends of mine, they said, ‘I wasn’t too sure about you doing this until I came to see it.’ And you realize then the passion. You feel it. You feel that it’s heartfelt. It’s not just a bunch of guys playing Led Zeppelin music going through the motions. We play it as if we wrote it,” Bonham said.

Tickets to the Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin Evening at the Capitol Theatre are still available. They can be purchased by calling the box office at 304-233-7000, option 1, or by visiting the website at capitoltheatrewheeling.com. The show begins at 7:30 p.m.