"Limitless pleasures for any guitar-minded person": The stars shine on Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023 collection

Two nights, four CDs, one six-string feast

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Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023 cover art
(Image: © Rhino)

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Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival was expanded to a two-day event at LA’s Crypto.com Arena last year, now condensed(!) to a 4-CD (or 6LP) set, providing limitless pleasures for any guitar-minded person on their next lengthy journey.

There’s a bluegrass flavour early on with Del McCoury, Jerry Douglas, Bradley Walker and Sierra Hull before Eric Gales, Samantha Fish and Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram introduce the blues with a rocked-up Smokestack Lightning.

Eric Clapton - Makes No Difference (Live) [Crossroads 2023] - YouTube Eric Clapton - Makes No Difference (Live) [Crossroads 2023] - YouTube
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From there it branches every which way, mixing in less familiar names – Citizen Cope, Molly Tuttle, Marcus King, H.E.R. and Brazilian duo Daniel Santiago and Pedro Martins – alongside old friends like Gary Clark Jr, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Bonamassa, Taj Mahal, Roger McGuinn, Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin.

Clapton makes intermittent appearances throughout and closes the show with Stevie Wonder.

Hugh Fielder
Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.