Claptons Guitar Festival

Ok I'll start of by saying never in a million years did would I imagine one of the greatest concerts ever would come to Dallas Texas of all places but I'm glad it did. If you don't know what I'm talking about I'm referring to the Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Music Festival. Some of the Featured artists included: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Santana, Steve Vai, Joe Walsh, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Jimmy Vaughn, ZZ Top, Sonny Landreth, Vince Gill, Bo Diddley, James Taylor, Neal Schon w/ Jonathan Cain, Robert Cray and some others I'm forgetting. Brian May was supposed to be there also but he had to cancel at the last minute for some reason which was really unfortunate because most likely I'll never get to see him play live now.

Anyways....I figured I would briefly touch on the main highlight of the concert. B.B. King was on stage doing his set and was up there accompanied by some backup musicians. After he's up there for a while, Eric Clapton comes walking onto the stage (the first time anyone has seen him all day) and the crowd errupts into cheers. Clapton starts playing the blues with BB king and I though that was all the crowd was gonna get...but there was more. Jimmy Vaughn gets up on stage and joins BB and Eric in some improvised blues. A minute or two latter Buddy guy gets on stage...so you have 4 guitar greats all up on stage playing the blues. BB King stuck mostly to vocals but filled on on guitar from time to time. BB would point to clapton and clapton would solo for a bit...then he would point to Jimmy Vaughn who would solo for a bit..then BB would point to Buddy Guy who chime in with another solo. This pattern went around several times and was such a treat for the audience. You could tell it was totally improvised because the musicians would at time whisper to each other, inbetween their huge smiles, to try and figure out what they were going to do next. After a while, John Mayor who really didn't belong up on stage with the rest of the guys came walking up with his electric guitar in hand. He plugged in...and BB King was like "Johnny...play the blues kid" and John Mayor started playing some generic blues licks. He looked totally scared up there on stage with those legends which was kind of cool. His playing wasn't great..but he definately didn't embarass himself up there. He could play alot better then I ever thought he could. He was only on stage for about 3 minutes before unplugging his guitar and bowing to Buddy Guy and walking off the stage while Buddy Guy continued playing. I would say their little improvised jam lasted somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. Luckily I had floor admission and I was about 20 feet away during all this. This description probably came off as a bit wordy it's just hard to describe how neat it was to witness that performance as it was happening. The whole concert was about 12 hours long and I'm sure there will be a DVD in case you weren't there because there were like 20 trillion cameras everywhere.

In addition to the actual show, there was a huge area set up with vendors selling all sorts of guitars and collectable stuff. They also had a Christie's acution featuring a bunch of famous guitars and stuff. The guitars were on display to the general public and you could walk within a few feet of them. Claptons "Blackie" guitar was on display and they estimated value they are going to get for it is $150,000 - $200,000 if anyone has some money they are looking to burn. They guitars won't actually be auctioned until I believe June 24th but I could be wrong about the date.

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