Jagermeister
06-28-2010, 03:49 PM
Not sure why this authur refers to rock starts as Mr.
By JON PARELES
Published: June 27, 2010
BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. — Close-ups of strings, fretboards and guitarists’ callused fingers filled the video screens on Saturday at Toyota Park here, a stadium just outside Chicago, where Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival presented some two-dozen guitar-slingers during a sold-out, 11-hour concert.
Carlos Ortiz for The New York Times
Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, at Toyota Park, outside Chicago, the third guitar marathon Mr. Clapton, left, has organized. More Photos »
Joining Mr. Clapton among the headliners were B. B. King, Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Buddy Guy and Vince Gill. Mr. Clapton attended the whole show before leading his own band, with Mr. Beck and Steve Winwood as guests. He sat in during the concert’s noontime opening, set by the rip-roaring Louisiana slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, and later appeared with Sheryl Crow.
It was the third Crossroads guitar marathon Mr. Clapton has organized; the others were in 2004 in Dallas and in 2007 here. While the concerts are benefits for Crossroads Center, Antigua, a nonprofit addiction-treatment clinic that Mr. Clapton founded in the Caribbean, they are also rallies for what sometimes seems to be an endangered species: the guitar hero, the kind of player who can seize and hold an audience with chorus after chorus of an instrumental solo.
Punk set out to overthrow the guitar hero decades ago, seeing long solos as pointless indulgences. It damaged the concept, but the species survives. Over the course of the day the gathered musicians used their electric guitars for tickle and twang, for keening and roaring, for funk rhythm and airborne melody, for conversation and competition.
Crossroads was a decidedly old-fashioned rock event. Every note, give or take an echo effect, was played by hand. And nearly every band welcomed guests during its set, implying that musicians can still reach back to a common foundation in the blues, even after decades of niche marketing and genre fragmentation. It wasn’t a blues festival — Chicago already has one — but largely a blues-rock festival, with Mr. Clapton, Mr. Beck, ZZ Top, Johnny Winter and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, who were once students and transformers of the blues, now appearing as forefathers.
Their elders and idols, like Mr. King and the 78-year-old Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime guitarist, played laconic, teasing, subtle solos. The blues-rockers were flashier and more brazen, qualities that long ago propelled their music into big rooms. The Robert Cray Band and Cesar Rojas and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, showing just their bluesy side at Crossroads, soaked up blues-rock along with its blues sources when they got started in the 1970s and now sound rootsy themselves.
Funk rhythms, brittle and kinetic, are fully embraced by the youngest contingent, including Mr. Mayer, the gospel pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph and the fierce Texas blues-rockers Doyle Bramhall II and Gary Clark Jr. Mr. Beck was up to date with them, leading a band with a thumb-popping funk bass player and using futuristic guitar-synthesizer tones in his solos, although the lessons of electric blues — the searing phrases, the tension in a melody line — have never left his playing. (He went back to unadorned blues in his spot with Mr. Clapton.)
For many of the musicians the concert’s historical sweet spot was the late 1960s and early 1970s. When not playing their own songs, they drew on Jimi Hendrix and Mr. Clapton himself. The Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Band summoned the heaving, gospelly, two-drummer thrust of the Allman Brothers Band; Mr. Trucks and a guest guitarist, Warren Haynes, are both current members of the Allmans, who had to cancel their Crossroads appearance because Gregg Allman received a liver transplant last week.
There were round-robin solos, multiguitar collisions and multigenerational colloquies. There weren’t many women among the headliners: just Ms. Crow, who played songs from her coming album, and the singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi. Mr. Guy, the 73-year-old blues guitarist no one should challenge, was flanked by the 29-year-old Jonny Lang and by Mr. Wood, 63, of the Rolling Stones. Mr. Lang emulated Mr. Guy’s wailing high notes and bursts of speed, making guitar-hero faces, only to be shown moments later by Mr. Guy, wearing a sage expression, how to make them signify pain, suspense, pride and rage rather than technical skill. (Mr. Wood, wisely, stayed on the sidelines, playing his own terse, splintered blues leads.)
Guitar geeks could appreciate Mr. Mayer, whose power-trio songs demand rhythm, lead and noise virtually simultaneously. There were also guitarists to delight aficionados: Mr. Landreth; Mr. Sumlin, who still sang with gusto despite the oxygen tubes in his nose; the rockabilly pioneer James Burton, who could make his guitar lines chicken-peck or swoop like a pedal steel guitar, and the British progressive-folk guitarist Bert Jansch (from Pentangle), who picked meditative, syncopated, multitiered counterpoint on acoustic guitar.
Mr. Gill, a Nashville country virtuoso, had his band back up four other guitarists, the bluesman Keb’ Mo’, the pop-jazz guitarist Earl Klugh and the country guitarist Albert Lee, and matched them idiom for idiom, responding to Keb Mo’ with blues and to Mr. Lee’s bluegrassy twang with equally quick-fingered runs. (Mr. Gill also shared vocals with Ms. Crow on a Clapton hit: “Lay Down Sally.”)
Mr. Clapton’s own set mostly puttered along until Mr. Beck and then Mr. Winwood, one of the day’s most cogent soloists, forced him to push himself. Mr. King was in a strange, long-winded mood, joshing while the band vamped and Mr. Clapton uncomfortably indulged him. But when he finally sang or played, he was still pithy and improvisatory. The indomitable Mr. Guy, rightfully, led off the tangled all-star finale: “Sweet Home Chicago.”
Near the end of the concert a smiling Mr. Clapton announced the possibility of another Crossroads: “This was going to be the last one, but I don’t think it will be.” He has other people to invite, he said, and he does. There are many eligible blues-rockers — the Dead Weather, Them Crooked Vultures, the Black Keys — and guitar-loving jam bands. Mr. Clapton could easily add guitarists and guitar bands from outside that blues-rock home turf, who still cherish the instrument but exploit it in other textural and cultural ways: Wilco, Sonic Youth, Dirty Projectors and the indie-rock guitar dynamo Marnie Stern; the Indian slide guitarist Debashish Bhattcharya; and the Brazilian bossa nova master João Gilberto (who was initially announced for this Crossroads but was not in the final lineup) and countless others.
While guitar heroes may be scarcer now, the guitar endures.
By JON PARELES
Published: June 27, 2010
BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. — Close-ups of strings, fretboards and guitarists’ callused fingers filled the video screens on Saturday at Toyota Park here, a stadium just outside Chicago, where Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival presented some two-dozen guitar-slingers during a sold-out, 11-hour concert.
Carlos Ortiz for The New York Times
Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, at Toyota Park, outside Chicago, the third guitar marathon Mr. Clapton, left, has organized. More Photos »
Joining Mr. Clapton among the headliners were B. B. King, Jeff Beck, John Mayer, Buddy Guy and Vince Gill. Mr. Clapton attended the whole show before leading his own band, with Mr. Beck and Steve Winwood as guests. He sat in during the concert’s noontime opening, set by the rip-roaring Louisiana slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, and later appeared with Sheryl Crow.
It was the third Crossroads guitar marathon Mr. Clapton has organized; the others were in 2004 in Dallas and in 2007 here. While the concerts are benefits for Crossroads Center, Antigua, a nonprofit addiction-treatment clinic that Mr. Clapton founded in the Caribbean, they are also rallies for what sometimes seems to be an endangered species: the guitar hero, the kind of player who can seize and hold an audience with chorus after chorus of an instrumental solo.
Punk set out to overthrow the guitar hero decades ago, seeing long solos as pointless indulgences. It damaged the concept, but the species survives. Over the course of the day the gathered musicians used their electric guitars for tickle and twang, for keening and roaring, for funk rhythm and airborne melody, for conversation and competition.
Crossroads was a decidedly old-fashioned rock event. Every note, give or take an echo effect, was played by hand. And nearly every band welcomed guests during its set, implying that musicians can still reach back to a common foundation in the blues, even after decades of niche marketing and genre fragmentation. It wasn’t a blues festival — Chicago already has one — but largely a blues-rock festival, with Mr. Clapton, Mr. Beck, ZZ Top, Johnny Winter and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, who were once students and transformers of the blues, now appearing as forefathers.
Their elders and idols, like Mr. King and the 78-year-old Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime guitarist, played laconic, teasing, subtle solos. The blues-rockers were flashier and more brazen, qualities that long ago propelled their music into big rooms. The Robert Cray Band and Cesar Rojas and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, showing just their bluesy side at Crossroads, soaked up blues-rock along with its blues sources when they got started in the 1970s and now sound rootsy themselves.
Funk rhythms, brittle and kinetic, are fully embraced by the youngest contingent, including Mr. Mayer, the gospel pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph and the fierce Texas blues-rockers Doyle Bramhall II and Gary Clark Jr. Mr. Beck was up to date with them, leading a band with a thumb-popping funk bass player and using futuristic guitar-synthesizer tones in his solos, although the lessons of electric blues — the searing phrases, the tension in a melody line — have never left his playing. (He went back to unadorned blues in his spot with Mr. Clapton.)
For many of the musicians the concert’s historical sweet spot was the late 1960s and early 1970s. When not playing their own songs, they drew on Jimi Hendrix and Mr. Clapton himself. The Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi Band summoned the heaving, gospelly, two-drummer thrust of the Allman Brothers Band; Mr. Trucks and a guest guitarist, Warren Haynes, are both current members of the Allmans, who had to cancel their Crossroads appearance because Gregg Allman received a liver transplant last week.
There were round-robin solos, multiguitar collisions and multigenerational colloquies. There weren’t many women among the headliners: just Ms. Crow, who played songs from her coming album, and the singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi. Mr. Guy, the 73-year-old blues guitarist no one should challenge, was flanked by the 29-year-old Jonny Lang and by Mr. Wood, 63, of the Rolling Stones. Mr. Lang emulated Mr. Guy’s wailing high notes and bursts of speed, making guitar-hero faces, only to be shown moments later by Mr. Guy, wearing a sage expression, how to make them signify pain, suspense, pride and rage rather than technical skill. (Mr. Wood, wisely, stayed on the sidelines, playing his own terse, splintered blues leads.)
Guitar geeks could appreciate Mr. Mayer, whose power-trio songs demand rhythm, lead and noise virtually simultaneously. There were also guitarists to delight aficionados: Mr. Landreth; Mr. Sumlin, who still sang with gusto despite the oxygen tubes in his nose; the rockabilly pioneer James Burton, who could make his guitar lines chicken-peck or swoop like a pedal steel guitar, and the British progressive-folk guitarist Bert Jansch (from Pentangle), who picked meditative, syncopated, multitiered counterpoint on acoustic guitar.
Mr. Gill, a Nashville country virtuoso, had his band back up four other guitarists, the bluesman Keb’ Mo’, the pop-jazz guitarist Earl Klugh and the country guitarist Albert Lee, and matched them idiom for idiom, responding to Keb Mo’ with blues and to Mr. Lee’s bluegrassy twang with equally quick-fingered runs. (Mr. Gill also shared vocals with Ms. Crow on a Clapton hit: “Lay Down Sally.”)
Mr. Clapton’s own set mostly puttered along until Mr. Beck and then Mr. Winwood, one of the day’s most cogent soloists, forced him to push himself. Mr. King was in a strange, long-winded mood, joshing while the band vamped and Mr. Clapton uncomfortably indulged him. But when he finally sang or played, he was still pithy and improvisatory. The indomitable Mr. Guy, rightfully, led off the tangled all-star finale: “Sweet Home Chicago.”
Near the end of the concert a smiling Mr. Clapton announced the possibility of another Crossroads: “This was going to be the last one, but I don’t think it will be.” He has other people to invite, he said, and he does. There are many eligible blues-rockers — the Dead Weather, Them Crooked Vultures, the Black Keys — and guitar-loving jam bands. Mr. Clapton could easily add guitarists and guitar bands from outside that blues-rock home turf, who still cherish the instrument but exploit it in other textural and cultural ways: Wilco, Sonic Youth, Dirty Projectors and the indie-rock guitar dynamo Marnie Stern; the Indian slide guitarist Debashish Bhattcharya; and the Brazilian bossa nova master João Gilberto (who was initially announced for this Crossroads but was not in the final lineup) and countless others.
While guitar heroes may be scarcer now, the guitar endures.