Audio Player
Set for release on November 20th will be Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019. The collection will be available as a triple-CD, six-LP, double-DVD and Blu-ray — and is available for pre-order now. The two-day event was held on September 21st and 22nd, in Dallas, Texas at American Airlines Arena. The show, which was Clapton's fifth Crossroads event, raised funds for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, the chemical dependency treatment and education facility that Clapton founded in 1998.
In addition to Clapton, the musicians appearing at the 2019 event included Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Joe Walsh, Jonny Lang, Bonnie Raitt, Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Jerry Douglas, Vince Gill, Buddy Guy, Sheryl Crow, Jimmie Vaughan, Keb Mo, Albert Lee, John Mayer, Andy Fairweather Low, Billy Gibbons, Jerry Douglas, Gary Clark Jr., Robert Cray, and Los Lobos, among others. PBS will be airing selections from the concerts in November.
Clapton said that he'll always be happy to raise money for the Crossroads center, but he'd like to remove himself a bit from the operation, as least as far as its public face is concerned: “They still need money. I think that's something that I'll probably always be fairly happy to plug into, and it is intriguing to think of different ways to raise the capital. But where I really want to be detached is in terms of my identity, or the fact that the place belongs to me, or anything like (that). I want, for it's own sake, for it to have its own whole identity, without my connection. And it's got there — it actually has reached that.”
Clapton told us he planned the festival so that a wide variety of musical styles would always be represented: “In very diverse ways, it started out with Pat Metheny, and B.B. King, and Dan Tyminski, and John McLaughlin, and people like that. But I think it needs to be incredibly eclectic, 'cause that's the way I, I look at music. The guitar has so many different faces, so it shouldn't just be a blues festival or anything — I mean, it should, it needs to be every aspect of the guitar.”
