Crossroads Guitar Festival
2004.06.05
Guitar Center Village
Fair Park
Dallas TX
2004.06.06
Cotton Bowl
Dallas TX
Mid Valley Records
MVR 303/304/305/306/307
plus bonus DVD
BACKGROUND INFO:
Crossroads Guitar Festival (from the Slowhand Tourography website):
Eric Clapton was the headliner and driving force of the three-day Crossroads Guitar Festival taking place Friday, June 4 through Sunday, June 6 at the Texas State Fairgrounds in Dallas. This one-time event, created for music enthusiasts around the globe, raised money for Crossroads Centre Antigua, the treatment and education center founded in 1997 by Eric Clapton and now an independently run entity.
This unique event launched on Friday, June 4 with the opening of the Guitar Center Village, the national retailer of musical instruments. The festival was the first of its kind to create a unique bridge between fans and musicians via leading guitar manufacturer exhibits and guitar clinics. The festival allowed attendees once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to be in an intimate setting as artists gave fans the ultimate look into their craft. The festival also showcased a selection of Eric Clapton's guitars along with instruments donated by his musician friends, being up for the auction on June 24 at Christie's in New York. Eric Clapton appeared on June 4, just watching the Blues Clinic set with Honey Boy Edwards, Robert Lockwood Jr., and Duke Robillard, though he didn't play himself.
The Guitar Center Village activities continued on Saturday, June 5 and included live music performances on three stages. Sirius Satellite Radio, as a supporting sponsor hosted one of these stages and broadcast from the Festival. Eric Clapton watched from the side of the Guitar Center Village main stage the sets of Eric Johnson, Dan Tyminski, and Doyle Bramhall II before getting up and joining J.J. Cale for his entire set. Closing out the festival's second day was an all-star blues jam in tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan, hosted by Eric Clapton jamming with Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Randolph, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin, and Buddy Guy.
Sunday, June 6 started with continuing clinics and live performances at Guitar Center Village. The Crossroads Guitar Festival culminated with an All-Star special benefit concert event at the Cotton Bowl Stadium, located in the State Fair Park. The concert, beginning at noon and continuing through Sunday evening included performances by all the big acts (see below for the complete list of artists). Eric Clapton joined a loose jam with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, and John Mayer. He later showed up joining Carlos Santana for a rousing version of "Jingo", before performing his own set of rock and blues classics, accompanied by his European touring band. The much-anticipated pairing of Eric with Jeff Beck was reduced to "Cause we've ended as lovers", because of storms blowing in. The stage then was cleared for ZZ Top. The announced finale with ZZ Top, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck did not happen. There was a major storm on the way, lightning flashing, the wind picking up, causing the show to be closed early.
Slowhand Tourography is © by Ekkehard Mueller.
Slowhand Tourography website: http://www.ectours.de/
SETLIST & BAND LINEUPS:
Saturday June 5th 2004
Guitar Center Village
Fair Park
Dallas TX
CD 1: The All-Star Blues Jam
01. The Dirty Girl (featuring Jimmie Vaughan)
02. Five Long Years (featuring Eric Clapton)
03. The Twelve Year Old Boy (featuring Robert Cray)
04. Killing Floor (featuring Hubert Sumlin & Robert Cray)
05. Going Down Slow (featuring Eric Clapton)
06. Sweet Home Chicago (featuring Buddy Guy)
07. My Time After A While (featuring Buddy Guy)
08. Six Strings Down (featuring Robert Randolph)
09. Early In The Morning (featuring Eric Clapton)
10. Hoochie Coochie Man (featuring Buddy Guy)
Total time: 1:11:25.08
Sunday June 6th 2004
Cotton Bowl
Dallas TX
CD 2: B.B. King with Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Jimmie Vaughan and John Mayer
01. Introduction
02. Every Day I Have The Blues
03. Jam
04. Key To The Highway
05. I Can't Be Satisfied
06. Rock Me Baby
07. Dirty Old Man Jam
08. Blues Jam
09. Five Long Years
Total time: 1:09:45.47
Band Lineup:
B.B. King - Guitar
Jimmie Vaughan - Guitar
George Rains - Drums
Bill Willis - Hammond B-3 Organ, Bass
Billy Pitman - Rhythm Guitar
Special Guests
Eric Clapton - Guitar
Buddy Guy - Guitar
John Mayer - Guitar
CD 3: J.J. Cale with Eric Clapton
01. After Midnight (Soundboard Source 1)
02. Cocaine (Soundboard Source 1)
03. Call Me The Breeze (Soundboard Source 1)
04. After Midnight (Soundboard Source 2)
05. Cocaine (Soundboard Source 2)
06. Call Me The Breeze (Soundboard Source 2)
07. Call Me The Breeze (Soundboard Source 3)
08. After Midnight (Soundboard Source 3)
09. Reality (Audience Source)
10. Ride Me High (Audience Source)
11. Call Me The Breeze (Audience Source)
12. Cocaine (Audience Source)
13. After Midnight (Audience Source)
14. Travellin' Light (Audience Source)
Total time: 1:05:48.51
CD 4: Carlos Santana
01. Venus
02. Upper Egypt
03. Nomad
04. Victory Has Won
05. Incident at Neshabur
06. Sonny Sharrock
07. Jingo (featuring Eric Clapton) (Soundboard Source 1)
08. Jingo (featuring Eric Clapton) (Soundboard Source 2)
09. Green Light Girl (featuring Doyle Bramhall II)
Total time: 0:57:36.16
Band Lineup:
Carlos Santana - Guitar
Dennis Chambers - Drums
Chester Thompson - Keyboards
Benny Rietveld - Bass
Karl Perazzo - Timbales, Percussion
Special Guests
Eric Clapton - Guitar on "Jingo"
Doyle Bramhall II - Guitar on "Green Light Girl"
CD 5: Eric Clapton
01. Me And The Devil Blues
02. They're Red Hot
03. Milkcow's Calf Blues
04. If I Had Posession (Over Judgment Day)
05. Kind Hearted Woman Blues
06. I Shot The Sheriff
07. Have You Ever Loved A Woman
08. Badge
09. Wonderful Tonight
10. Layla
11. Cocaine
12. Cause We've Ended As Lovers (with Jeff Beck)
Total time: 1:12:40.27
Band Lineup:
Eric Clapton - Guitar, Vocals
Nathan East - Bass, Vocals
Chris Stainton - Keyboards
Steve Gadd - Drums
Doyle Bramhall II - Guitar, Vocals
Billy Preston - Keyboards, Vocals
Sharon White - Backing Vocals
Michelle John - Backing Vocals
Special Guest
Jeff Beck - Guitar on "Cause We've Ended As Lovers"
Bonus DVD / Christo and Buckminster:
01. Crossroads Guitar Festival
02. Tsunami Relief Cardiff - January 22, 2005
03. Tsunami Aid - A Concert of Hope - January 15, 2005
04. Jools Holland Hootenanny - December 31, 2004
LINEAGE:
CDs: various unk sources > ? > Mid Valley silver CDs > EAC > FLAC (level 8)
DVD: various unk sources > ? > Mid Valley silver DVD > VIDEO_TS file folder
EDITORIAL COMMENTS:
Geetarz Comments (from the Geetarz website):
The Crossroads Guitar Festival was an amazing, unique event. Plenty of effort was put forth to record the event for posterity as well as to distribute the event worldwide, live, via internet streams. Later, there was even a miserable official DVD release of portions of the event. Lots of press was generated about the recording and distribution of the event - notably, electronics manufacturer AMD even ran a prominent series of advertisements touting their association with the event.
There was only one real problem with all of this: most of the available recordings sound like crap! In this reviewer's opinion, the Crossroads Guitar Festival stands alone as the worst-sounding professional recording from an outdoor event in the 21st century. Granted, many of the recordings suffer as they were taken from internet streaming audio or lossy satellite radio transmissions, but this obscures the fact that even the officially released material just does not sound very good, or at the very least doesn't compare to audio professionally recorded at other events of its size in recent years. It's a mystery to me and I'm not sure if the problems are in the equipment used or perhaps in post-processing techniques that may have been applied to the recordings.
With that said, Mid Valley set out to do the best they could with the materials available and have once again hit a home run. They have obtained many of the various sources for some of the performances, and grouped them here to listeners can pick their favorites - for the JJ Cale / EC set alone one can choose between three different soundboard and one audience source. *This* is the way box sets should be done. Many of the recordings still suffer from the problems inherent in their nature, but at least they are provided here in as good a quality one will find anywhere. Recommended.
One small note: the cover art lists the performance dates as "June 4-6 in Fair Park, Dallas" and this was indeed the scope of the CRGF; however the recordings included on this set only encompass those found on June 5 and 6.
Geetarz Comments are reproduced with the kind permission of Cody Husky.
Geetarz Comments are © by Cody Husky.
Geetarz website: http://www.geetarz.org/
ARTWORK:
Included. Artwork is for a 6CD jewelcase with a tray insert for the fron and a tray insert for the back.