Eric Featured On The New Buddy Guy Album!
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Ellen Kristjansdottir Opened Reykjavic, Iceland show for EC Friday
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Category: Music

EC and his band performed in Reykjavic, Iceland on the evening of August 8 2008.

The opening act was Ellen Kristjansdottir.  Her myspace page is myspace.com/ellenkristjans

Eric's set list was as follows:

Tell The Truth
Key To The Highway
Hoochie Coochie Man
Here But I'm Gone
Outside Woman Blues
Isn't It A Pity
Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad
Driftin'
Nobody Knows You
Motherless Child
Travelling Riverside Blues
Running On Faith
Motherless Children
Little Queen of Spades
Before You Accuse Me
Wonderful Tonight
Cocaine

The encore song was Crossroads

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Eric Clapton Opened European Tour In Norway Aug 6 - Plays Iceland Tonight
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Category: Music

After a few weeks break in July, Eric Clapton's 2008 Summer Tour picked back up with a sold out concert at The Koengen in Bergen, Norway on 6 August. The European Leg, consisting of 11 dates, ends on 23 August in Monte-Carlo. This is the third and final leg of the Summer Tour which launched on 3 May in Tampa Bay, Florida. Dates in the U.S., Canada, Ireland and England happened in May and June.

Typical of a "first show" after a break in touring, Eric and the band held a sound-check earlier in the day. They ran through "Here But I'm Gone," "Isn't It A Pity," "Outside Woman Blues," and "Driftin'." "Driftin'" was rehearsed by Eric alone on acoustic guitar. "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" was run through twice - first as an electric shuffle and then as an acoustic number.

Following an opening set by Grande, a popular Norwegian blues-band, Eric hit the stage at 8:30PM. As the show began, the sky turned black and it started to rain heavily. But, it stopped as quickly as it started and didn't rain again during the outdoor concert.

Eric opened the show with "Tell The Truth". In addition to the songs performed during sound check, the audience was treated to fan-favorites like "Before You Accuse Me", "Runinng On Faith" and "Key To The Highway" as well as a cover version of George Harrison's "Isn't It A Pity" which featured a great solo from EC. During the show, "Nobody Knows You" was performed by the full band, with EC on acoustic guitar. Highlights were the classic blues "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad," (from Eric's days with Derek & The Dominos) and "Motherless Children" from his 1974 album, "461 Ocean Boulevard." Chart blockbusters "Wonderful Tonight," "Layla" and "Cocaine" closed the main part of the show.

Despite the lay-off, the band sounded tight and all were in a great mood, witnessed by the smiles and laughter on stage. Eric and the band played for two hours.

Although the set list was similar to the concerts performed in Ireland and England in June, "Rockin' Chair" was dropped from the show and "Crossroads" was once again featured as the encore number, as it was .. dates earlier in the tour. Also, unlike the earlier dates, "Driftin'" was performed with the full-band, rather than EC alone with his acoustic guitar.

On stage with Eric were Doyle Bramhall II (guitars / backing vocals), Willie Weeks (bass), Abe Laboriel Jr (drums), Chris Stainton (keyboards), Sharon White (backing vocals) and Michelle John (backing vocals).

The band and crew now move on to Iceland for a gig on 8 August in Reykjavic.

Eric Clapton Concert Set List for 6 August:

01. Tell The Truth
02. Key To The Highway
03. Hoochie Coochie Man
04. Isn't It A Pity
05. Outside Woman Blues
06. Here But I'm Gone
07. Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad
08. Driftin' (acoustic / entire band)
09. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
(acoustic / entire band)
10. Motherless Child
11. Travelling Riverside Blues
12. Running On Faith
13. Motherless Children
14. Little Queen Of Spades
15. Before You Accuse Me
16. Wonderful Tonight
17. Layla
18. Cocaine

Encore:
19. Crossroads

Eric Clapton Sound Check Songs On 6 August:

01. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out (electric shuffle - full band)
02. Here But I'm Gone (full band)
03. Isn't It A Pity (full band)
04. Outside Woman Blues (full band)
05. Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out (acoustic - full band)
06. Drifting Blues (acoustic - full band)

6:56 AM - 9 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Clapton - The Autobiography
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Category: Music

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – NOW IN PAPERBACK

Eric Clapton: The Autobiography

"One of the very best rock autobiographies ever."—Houston Chronicle

"A glorious rock history."—New York Post

"Clapton is an absorbing tale of artistry, decadence, and redemption."—Los Angeles Times

"This book does what many rock historians couldn't: It debunks the legend…puts a lie to the glamour of what it means to be a rock star."—Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

"Like the bluesmen who inspired him, Clapton has his share of scars…in this compelling memoir, Clapton discusses it all…a soulful performance."—People

"Charming and surprisingly candid."—Entertainment Weekly

"Strong stuff. Clapton reveals its author's journey to self-acceptance and manhood.  Anyone who cares about the man and his music will want to take the trip with him."—Rolling Stone

10:42 AM - 142 Comments - 205 Kudos - Add Comment

Crossroads DVD Available NOW!

Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival DVD was released and is now available for only $29.99 by clicking here.

Don't miss out on this 2-disc DVD full of behind-the-scenes footage and 38 video tracks! For more information on this DVD release, go to the official crossroads site

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Notes and Photos From Crossroads Guitar Festival
Category: Music

"I do this for fun," Eric Clapton confessed in an interview the day before he hosted and headlined the second Crossroads Guitar Festival, an eleven-hour marathon of solos and joy, on July 28th for 28,000 people at Toyota Park in Chicago. The sold-out event was held to benefit the Crossroads Centre, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility Clapton founded on the Caribbean island of Antigua in 1997. (Sales of the two-DVD set filmed at the inaugural Crossroads, a three-day affair in Dallas in 2004, have raised about seven million dollars for the Centre.)
But the true theme of the day was Friends and Idols. The heart of Clapton's hour-and-a-half set was a dynamic reunion with singer-organist-guitarist Steve Winwood. Together, they revived four songs from their 1969 album as Blind Faith. Clapton also paid tribute to a lifelong friend who couldn't be there, George Harrison, with an electrifying version of "Isn't It a Pity" from Harrison's 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass.
Clapton generously stacked the bill with players who have been his deep influences, close companions and frequent collaborators — many of them all at the same time, such as B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck and Robbie Robertson. Doyle Bramhall II, who has played with Clapton on records and the road for several years, and Derek Trucks, who has been a sensational addition on slide guitar to Clapton's latest touring band, both got their own afternoon sets, as did more recent Clapton friends and favorites John Mayer and sacred-steel fireball Robert Randolph.
(Read on for a full report and David Fricke's six Crossroads highlights featuring Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughan with Robert Cray, Johnny Winter with the Derek Trucks Band and more.)
Clapton made sure he did not miss any of the fun. He was there at noon, joining the show's host Bill Murray for a brief, comic duet on Van Morrison's "Gloria" and personally introducting the first act of the day, Louisiana slide-guitar marvel Sonny Landreth. And when Clapton wasn't stepping out to jam — as he did with Landreth, Sheryl Crow (a version of J.J. Cale's "Tulsa Time") and, in the Chicago-blues finale, Guy, Mayer, Jimmie Vaughan and Hubert Sumlin — he was at the side of the stage, drinking in the virtuosity and smiling gratefully at the thanks and tributes offered by the performers throughout the show. The highlight of B.B. King's appearance, with an all-star crew including Vaughan, Sumlin and Robert Cray, was the bluesman's touching, gentlemanly toast to Clapton.
"I'll probably embarrass him, but I just need to do it, Eric," King said, lifting his red plastic cup of water. "I've been around the world, I've met kings and queens. But I've never met a better man, a more gracious man — my friend Eric Clapton. May I live forever," added King, 81. "But may you live forever and a day. Because I don't want to be here if you're not around." The crowd roared its approval.
The thrills started while the parking lot was still half empty — Clapton and Landreth's dueling Cajun-fire solos in "Hell at Home" — and are too numerous to recount here. You will be able to do that later; the show was filmed for DVD release. What follows is six of the day's highs, one for each of the strings on Clapton's Stratocaster:
1) Johnny Winter with the Derek Trucks Band, burning fret wood on Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited." Trucks later said that Winter had missed soundcheck the day before, and the closest thing to rehearsal they had was a short runthrough in Winter's Winnebago just before the set. But on stage, Winter, sitting on a chair and hunched over his guitar, tore off squealing lines with his metal slide that meshed viciously, and perfectly, with the vocal-like shriek of Trucks' bottleneck responses.
2) Jimmie Vaughan with Robert Cray, swapping Strat sting in the uptempo instrumental shuffle "Six Strings Down." You could clearly hear, in the Texas bite of Vaughan's soloing, the inspiration Clapton found and treasured in the Lone Star electric blues of Freddie King and, later, Vaughan's brother, Stevie Ray.
3) The U.S.-U.K. country-picking summit of Vince Gill and Albert Lee, who played two songs with such jaw-dropping speed and spiked-treble precision that Sheryl Crow, who then joined them on stage, remarked in amazement, "I can't do anything that fast."
4) Jeff Beck's entire set, a near-hour of instrumental fusion napalm. The details in Beck's attack — the high strangled notes, the seagull-cry feedback, the rubbery, shivering growls — are pure amp tone and natural string-bending. It was worth watching the close-up shots on the video screen to see him finger-picking the strings while manipulating his vibrato bar with the same hand. His closing number, the Beatles' "A Day in the Life," has become a fixture of Beck's live shows, and rightly so. At Crossroads, his exquisite transformation of the original recording's psychedelic grandeur into pure, arcing melody and English-blues viscera would have brought the roof down, if the venue had one. As one fan put it to me after Beck's set, "You have to tell everyone Jeff Beck burned the place up!" There, I did it.
5) Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood soloing in knotty, heavy-rock tandem in Blind Faith's "Had to Cry Today." With the doubled tumble behind them of drummers Ian Thomas and Steve Jordan, you could have sworn Ginger Baker had snuck onto the bandstand when no one was looking.
6) Clapton dedicating "Isn't It a Pity" to George Harrison ("This is for someone I wish was here"), then giving Derek Truicks long solo time after the last verse, with Trucks taking off on a searing — and soaring — break that sounded like heated prayer. On a day full of extraordinary solos, this was true rapture.
Check out the Crossroads Photo gallery Here

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