Sonny Landreth recalls his favourite Crossroads Festival moment with Eric Clapton

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Louisiana slide-guitar wizard Sonny Landreth plays Vancouver's Electric Owl on January 30, along with local six-string ace Steve Dawson and his Black Hen Music Band. That's destined to be a killer gig, though probably no more so than the ones Landreth has lined up for April 12 and 13 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

      That's when he'll take part in Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013, on a bill that includes Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Vaughan, B.B. King, Albert Lee, and the Allman Brothers Band--plus Slowhand himself, of course.

      Landreth has opened all three previous Crossroads events--in 2004 at the Cotton Bowl in Texas and in 2007 and 2010 at Toyota Park in Chicago--and when I called him at his home in Lafayette, Louisiana, the other day, I asked him what his favourite moment from the festivals had been. He didn't hesitate. And yes, it involved "God" himself.

      "Well I tell you," Landreth enthused, "him leanin' into the solo the first time we played together. We did 'Hell at Home' the first time, and then we did 'Promised Land' the second go-round. And it's one thing to talk about doing something, but until you're in the middle of the moment, then the impact really lays to there, you know.

      "And at some I'm going, 'Wow, this is really happening'," he added. "He just tore it up. And then the band just went and took it to another level."

      The moment Landreth's referring to happens at the 2:10 point in this clip from the 2007 festival.

      For more from Sonny Landreth--including his thoughts on playing with Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson on his new all-instrumental album, Elemental Journey--see the story in the January 24 issue of the Georgia Straight. Read it on paper for that old-school Louisiana vibe.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Gary Dee

      Jan 14, 2013 at 9:43am

      Elemental Journey is one of the best slide guitar albums of modern times.Sonny's deft and skillful finger-picking soars to heights no others have dared before him. I recommend it to all guitar enthusiasts !