Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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Sometimes an event has repercussions beyond its own timeframe. Festivals are intended to be entertaining, but sometimes that isn’t even the case. You need look no further than the Festival at Altamont to find an example of festival-dom gone seriously wrong, but occasionally the stars align in just the sequence, making an event feel special as it is happening, and continue to feel special after it is long over. Woodstock was like that. A few of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals have been like that, and the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival was also like that.
A few years ago, Eric Clapton helped to fund the opening of the Crossroads Centre, a treatment facility for alcoholism and drug addiction located in Antigua. Proceeds from the festival and the DVD benefit the Crossroads Centre, so the cause can make you feel good while the awesome music contained in this program can make you feel even better. Clapton pulled out all the stops on this one, inviting friends who he felt not only fit the bill musically, but also worked with the appropriate attitude of camaraderie and openness. The resultant mood is apparent from the minute the show starts, and it continues to the very end.
Sonny Landreth starts things off by performing one of his flashier numbers, called “Uberesso,” and he smokes it. Clapton then joins him and their duet is jaw-dropping in its execution. John McLaughlin follows (where the heck has he been?) as does Hubert Sumlin, Vince Gill, Jimmie Vaughan, Albert Lee, Robert Cray, Robert Randolph, Johnny Winter, Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson…and that is just disk one. Special mention should be made of the husband-wife team of Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, whose performance was so good that I felt myself tearing up. Tedeschi is under-rated and under-recognized, as her guitar/vocal performance here clearly indicates. Another touching moment occurs when B.B, King pays a tribute to Clapton’s sense of humanity before ripping into a devastating version of “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss.”
Disk two brings out the big guns like John Mayer, Los Lobos, Robbie Robertson and Jeff Beck. If you don’t know it already, Mayer capably proves that he belongs on the bill with such magnificent musicians, while Los Lobos and Jeff Beck fully live up to their reputations. At this point, Eric Clapton emerges for his set, and he is in full ‘Derek & the Dominos’ mode, with Derek Trucks playing like a virtual Duane Allman, while the double drumming rhythm section provides enough drive to thrust the band into the next county. The night is full of special guests and special moments, but perhaps the premier special moment happens when Steve Winwood joins Eric Clapton for a run through some of the material that they made famous together nearly forty years ago as Blind Faith. Buddy Guy closes the event, and he plays with such intensity and fire that you’d be forgiven to think it was his show.
All in all there’s approximately four hours of guitar-based music on these disks, and hardly a dull moment. ‘Crossroads’ is a must for all fans of blues-based rock and roll guitar, but it also required viewing for all fans of blues-based rock and roll.
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