While everybody is chattering about the Bonnaroo 2010 Festival line-up announcement this week, folks in our little fringe corner of the music world are dismayed by the distinct lack of...well, a lack of blues and blues-rock artists at the Tennessee festival. Other than Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Jeff Beck, the wonderful Carolina Chocolate Drops, and the garage-blues sound of the Black Keys, our favorite kind of music is conspicuously missing from Bonnaroo's fifty-artist line-up.
Fret not, blues lovers, 'cause Eric Clapton, old Slowhand himself, has booked his third Crossroads Guitar Festival for June 26th, 2010 at Toyota Park in Chicago, Illinois, and the all-star event will features a veritable "who's who" of guitar talents, with the scales definitely tilted towards the blues end of the musical equation. Of course, Clapton and his band will headline the event, and friends like Jeff Beck, B.B. King, Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, ZZ Top, Robert Randolph, and Sonny Landreth will return to perform for their third Crossroads Guitar Festival.
Clapton has included a diverse range of artists for the 2010 event, including the Allman Brothers Band, bluesman Keb' Mo', British folk guitar legend Bert Jansch, Chicago blues giants Buddy Guy and Hubert Sumlin, former Elvis sideman James Burton, blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa, David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, and Brazilian bossa nova legend Joao Gilberto, who is making a rare stateside appearance. You can find the complete list of performers on the Crossroads website.
The Crossroads Guitar Festival is a benefit show for the Crossroads Centre, the addiction-treatment facility founded by Clapton on the Caribbean island of Antigua in the early-1990s. Clapton has held two previous festivals - a two-day event in Dallas, Texas in 2004 and a one-day event in 2007 in Chicago. Both festivals resulted in best-selling DVDs of the performances, and with this year's impressive line-up of talent, expect the 2010 festival to perform equally well when it's released on disc. This summer, forget about Bonnaroo, and make plans to travel to the Chicago area in late June for the Crossroads Guitar Festival.
Eric Clapton & Sonny Landreth at the 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival - photo by Tasos Katopodis, courtesy Getty Images
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