Crossroads 2004 Guitar Festival
"Box of Chocolates, Box of Blues"

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Well, even Eric Clapton didn’t know what he would get when he set out to put together this past weekend’s (June 4-6) Crossroads Guitar Festival in Dallas, Texas. For an estimated 40 thousand attendees, this was a dream come true and quite literally a once in a lifetime event. The three day guitar festival included over 50 artists spanning the spectrum of styles and ages.

Imagine this dream of dreams line up: B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin, Bo Didley, J.J. Cale, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Joe Walsh, ZZ Top, and Jimmy Vaughan to name a few. The best part? Many of these fine musicians jammed on stage together at the same time in a relaxed yet magical setting!

From other schools of music, we enjoyed James Taylor, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Jonny Lang, and John Mayer. For the jazzmen out there, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, and Larry Carlton showed how they earned their impressive reputations.

While the list of artists goes on and on, two things struck me the deepest:

1: The inspiringly raw passion that music lovers have. Over the course of the 2 days I attended, we met people from every corner of the US- Seattle, Los Angeles, Arizona Maine, NYC, Florida, and everywhere in between. That can also be punctuated by those who flew internationally for this event. I learned a great deal from sharing stories with fellow fans, and it gave me renewed hope to see parents out with their children- showing them what real music is all about. As it turns out, great music has nothing to do with Britney Spears, or showing your metallic studded breast at the Superbowl half time show! Who knew?

There were rumors around Dallas during the week that Jimmy Page might make an appearance. This spread like wildfire at the thought of Clapton, Page, and Beck on the same stage- a ‘real’ Yardbird’s reunion? In the end, Page was not there. The show, although running over the scheduled time, had no real grand finale. Many of the evening’s artists were planned for a jam session at the end. Billy Gibbon’s from ZZ Top even goaded the audience and asked if we were ready to see Clapton, Beck, and Santana back on stage. From an excellent source, Pete Townsend was already backstage ready to make a surprise appearance for the finale that did not take place! Sigh. However, it was impossible to walk away feeling cheated in any way.

2: The symbolism of the Crossroads extends beyond Eric’s Crossroads Centre for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction. Eric Clapton provided a real education to everyone- all different styles of guitar music coming together at the new crossroads. He pulled in artists that many would have never sought, or had exposure to on their own. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt flew in from India to play his beautiful instrument of 35 strings- as if 6 weren’t hard enough! Classical guitar, jazz, and country also shared the stage. For this writer, the unexpected surprise of the weekend was to see that the next guitar hero may not actually play the guitar. Robert Randolph plays the pedal steel guitar (sacred steel) unlike anything you have ever heard. No Hawaiian or country music here- who would have thought of combining a Pedal Steel and a Marshall stack! Robert played some traditional blues tunes, but he set the place on its ear when we heard the familiar scratch intro to “Voodoo Chile.” Unbelievable! Keep an eye out for Robert Randolph and His Family Band- he is entertaining, has great groove, and is a great musician.

As Joe Walsh said just as he started his set on Sunday afternoon, “What are we gonna do? Well…everybody plays lead, and we’ll stop when everything’s broken!”

A sincere thanks to EC for making this possible. Here’s to looking forward to making this an annual one in a lifetime event.

Manny A. Zayas