Eric Clapton Tour 2011 – Rose Garden Arena, Portland – Monday February 28 2011

Eric Clapton Tour 2011 – Rose Garden Arena, Portland – Monday February 28 2011

Setlist
01. Key To The Highway
02. Going Down Slow
03. Hoochie Coochie Man
04. Old Love
05. I Shot The Sheriff
06. Driftin’
07. Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out
08. River Runs Deep.
09. Same Old Blues
10. When Somebody Thinks You’re Wonderful
11. Layla – seated Gibson ES 335
12. Badge
13. Wonderful Tonight
14. Before You Accuse Me
15. Little Queen Of Spades
16. Cocaine
17. Crossroads

The band
Guitar, Vocals – Eric Clapton
Bass Guitar – Willie Weeks
Keyboards – Chris Stainton
Drums – Steve Gadd
Backing Vocals – Sharon White
Backing Vocals – Michelle John
Keyboards – Tim Carmon

Support
Los Lobos

Photos
robert windel photography

Videos

Layla

Cocaine

Crossroads

Reviews
WNEW.com: Concert Review: Eric Clapton (Fan Review)

Here is the OregonLive.com review by Ryan White.

Review OregonLive.com: Eric Clapton hits most of the right notes at the Rose Garden

Can you play the blues in brown leather docksiders? It’s just a thought that popped into my head while watching Eric Clapton play the blues in brown leather docksiders at the Rose Garden on Monday night. Another thought would be that I probably shouldn’t have been paying any attention at all to Eric Clapton’s shoes.

He was, after all, also wearing a guitar, and if you have a choice between focusing on the way Clapton wears his shoes or the way he plays his guitars, well that’s really no choice at all.

But they were comfortable looking shoes worn by a comfortable man playing comfortable songs, and it’s that comfort that makes this all so complicated, because there’s a fine line between comfortable and easy listening.

Clapton will turn 66 later this month, and he’s unquestionably one of the all-time great players, and those fingers still work. There were moments Monday night where the tone he pulled from his Stratocaster warped time. It was the 1960s and this was the guitar sound of Cream and the Yardbirds. It was the 1970s and that was “Slowhand.”

There were moments. During “Going Down Slow,” from 1998’s “Pilgrim,” when Clapton built to a frenzy. During the Cream classic, “Badge.” During the chugging blues riff that opens “Before You Accuse Me,” the Bo Diddley song that closed Clapton’s 1989 “Journeyman” record.

Clapton has, in recent years, moved from songwriter toward interpreter. With mixed results. Blues? The guy can play the blues. But on his latest record, last year’s “Clapton,” he partly offers tribute to New Orleans. He recorded there. He brought in local heroes (and national treasures) like Allen Toussaint and Wynton Marsalis and Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews. All the parts were there for it to be really good. Instead it sounded like trespassing.

Monday night, a song like the Harry Woods number “When Somebody Thinks You’re Wonderful,” with Clapton having pulled up a seat, seemed not to even rise to the level misdemeanor mischief. It was just kind of dull.

And while he had the seat, he went for the other version of “Layla,” the version made famous by MTV’s “Unplugged,” the version that exists to make people think they can play some version of “Layla” on their guitar. It’s the only explanation for the popularity of that particular take.

But then these aren’t the first misses of a five decade career and such length means you’ve earned the right to pull up a chair and chase an idea or two and it’d be pointless to try and pass himself off as a young man with a young man’s ambitions.

Eric Clapton is the dignified elder statesman, the guy who picks his spots. But in those spots, when he so smoothly leans into a song, with such perfect tone and exceptional taste, in those moments, there’s nothing on stage but a legend and his guitar.

Read more: OregonLive.com

Another Review: OregonMusicNews.com