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Eric Clapton: I Still Do

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Bushbranch/Surfdog Records
Released: 2016.05.20
Time:
 54:07
Category: Blues/Blues Rock
Producer(s): Glyn Johns
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.ericclapton.com
Appears with: Yardbirds
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Alabama Woman Blues (Leroy Carr) - 5:06
[2] Can't Let You Do It (JJ Cale) - 3:50
[3] I Will Be There [feat. Angelo Mysterioso (Paul Brady, John O'Kane) - 4:37
[4] Spiral (Eric Clapton, Andy Fairweather Low, Simon Climie) - 5:04
[5] Catch the Blues (Eric Clapton) - 4:51
[6] Cypress Grove (Skip James) - 4:49
[7] Little Man, You've Had a Busy Day (Maurice Sigler, Mabel Wayne, Al Hoffman) - 3:11
[8] Stones in My Passway (Robert Johnson) - 4:03
[9] I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (Bob Dylan) - 4:02
[10] I'll Be Alright (Traditional) - 4:23
[11] Somebody's Knockin' (JJ Cale) - 5:11
[12] I'll Be Seeing You (Irving Kahal, Sammy Fain) - 5:00

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Eric Clapton – Guitars, Tambourine, Vocals

Henry Spinetti – Drums, Percussion
Dave Bronze – Electric Bass, Double Bass
Andy Fairweather Low – Guitars, Vocals
Paul Carrack – Hammond Organ, Vocals
Chris Stainton – Keyboards
Simon Climie – Guitars, Keyboards
Dirk Powell – Accordion, Mandolin, Vocals
Walt Richmond – Keyboards
Ethan Johns – Percussion
Michelle John – Vocals
Sharon White – Vocals
Angelo Mysterioso – Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
 
Glyn Johns – Engineer, Record Producer
Martin Hollis - Engineer
Rowan Mclntosh - Mixing
Bernie Grundman - Mastering
Bob Ludwig - Mastering
Brice Beckham - Layout
Sir Peter Blake – Artwork
Matthew Gordon - Artwork
Catherine Roylance - Art Direction, Photography
Peter Blake - Cover Painting
Nick Roylance - Photography
Craig Stecyk - Photography
Simon Whitehead - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2016 CD Bushbranch 51279 
 
 
 
Eric Clapton's 21st century output has been erratic, but his best efforts have come from root-tending: his latter-day B.B. King collaboration Riding With The King, the mid-00's Cream reunion and Robert Johnson tribute, the late '00s tour with Blind Faith kin Steve Winwood, the 2014 J.J. Cale homage. Clapton's latest follows suit: a revival meeting with classic rock swami Glyn Johns, producer of his 1977 hit Slowhand, a set of swampy blues and well-chosen covers that finds fresh angles on the guitarist's perennial obsessions.
 
 "Alabama Woman Blues" makes that clear straightaway, a reading of Leroy Carr's 1930 recording that swaps Carr's piano-and-acoustic guitar arrangement for a full-on band, with Louisiana-tinged accordion and Clapton's raw electric tracing the Great Migration of Chicago Blues via less-travelled roads. Snarling, stabbing, and strutting, the sound is less laid back than just got laid, a welcome change from the supperclub blues and beachcomber reggae tones of 2013's apparent retirement postcard, Old Sock.
 
 Credit Clapton's long relationship with Johns, which had a rocky start – working on the Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert project in 1973, when the guitarist was fucked up on heroin, Johns essentially quit in frustration. They later reunited, and in the years since Tom Dowd produced Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, noone has balanced the rough and smooth of Clapton's music as well. See Skip James' "Cypress Grove" here, the accordion heaving like a fat man gone AWOL while Clapton hollers after it, guitar slithering like an Everglades highway python. Robert Johnson's "Stones In My Passway" goes to church with handclaps, squeezebox, and wicked slide; in context, it might be interpreted as the funkiest blues about kidney problems ever. There's some lightweight material here (the vocal duet "Catch The Blues"), but Clapton's sentimental tendencies can be deployed effectively, too; the 1930's parlor ballad "Little Man, You've Had A Busy Day," taken at a playful clip, is less cloying than touching.
 
Covers are the clear highlights, and Dylan's "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is the most surprising – it seems to imagine the skeletal John Wesley Harding original as a Basement Tapes session with The Band, who inspired Clapton to trade his psychedelic frocks for darker colors way back when. You hear those tones, deep and cutting, on Clapton's own "Spiral," a smoldering knock-off in which the singer declares "I'm just playing this song… you don't know how much it means to have this music in me." A shitload, clearly, and for the first time in a while, it sounds like it.
 
Will Hermes - May 19, 2016
© Rolling Stone 2016
 
 
 
Reuniting with producer Glyn Johns, the steady hand who guided Slowhand back in 1977, doesn't provide Eric Clapton with much of a jolt for his 23rd studio album, but it does provide the veteran guitarist with no small degree of nicely weathered warmth. Such mellowed good vibes are the calling card of I Still Do, which otherwise proceeds along the same path Clapton's records follow in the 21st century: he blends covers of well-worn blues standards with a couple of J.J. Cale tunes, a few old pop standards, a Bob Dylan chestnut, and original songs that draw upon aspects of all of these. "Spiral" and "Catch the Blues," the two EC originals that anchor the middle of the album, are handsomely crafted tunes that complement the rest of the record; they don't draw attention to themselves but rather show how hard "Cypress Grove" swings and how "Alabama Woman Blues" crawls, and reveal the lightness of "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" and "Little Man, You've Had a Busy Day." Although "I'll Be Seeing You" ends I Still Do on a bit of a wistful note, this album is neither melancholy nor some kind of summation. It is simply Clapton being Clapton, enjoying the company of his longtime band and songs he's loved, and here he's fortunate enough to be produced by Johns, whose expert touch gives this weight and color absent from the otherwise amiable Old Sock. That's enough to give I Still Do some resonance because Johns focuses not on the songs but the interplay: it's not a vibe record so much as it's an album about the interplay of old pros who still get a kick playing those same old changes years after they've become second nature.
 
Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide
 
 
 
With the passing of Glenn Frey, Prince, and David Bowie, the remaining stars of their level and era of rock music become that much more precious. Each record gains some vital gravitas, a reminder that it could be not only the last album from that particular legend, but of an entire generation of legends. Or, at least some semblance of logic would suggest that, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the latest from Slowhand himself, Eric Clapton. I Still Do, a sleepy, cover-heavy, forgettable batch of tunes, will fit pleasantly soundtracking Sunday morning coffee with a newspaper — and if you’re not old enough to be up on Sunday morning or reading a newspaper, it’ll likely be a hard pass.
 
To be fair, Clapton was never known for either mind-blowing songwriting or genre-busting experimentation. The title of his new album, could stand in for a reminder that he still does remember how to play the guitar, in case you’d forgotten — and, really, that’s what you’re listening for. “It goes straight from his heart to his fingers,” producer Glyn Johns explained of Clapton’s playing in a recent interview. “His brain doesn’t get in the way. And he’s playing and singing as well as he ever did.” It’s hard to argue with that. Now 71 years old, he hasn’t lost a step, driven home particularly well on the blues grooves of Leroy Carr’s “Alabama Woman Blues” and Robert Johnston’s “Stones in My Passway”.
 
(Read: The Top 20 Eric Clapton Songs)
 
It’s telling, though, that the two biggest headline-catchers from I Still Do relate to big names contributing to the record that aren’t Eric Clapton. The first is Johns, the man behind the boards for what is perhaps the guitarist’s most iconic album, Slowhand. Johns’ work here is clean, rich, and sparkly, sanding off any rough edges — not that there were likely many to begin with. The puzzle pieces he assembles were already incredibly clean, all top-tier musicianship and classic structures.
 
The second big name is, for the lack of a better word, more mysterious. “I Will Be There” features guitar and vocals from “Angelo Mysterioso,” a name similar to that which George Harrison once used to collaborate with other big names without stealing focus (L’Angelo Mysterioso). The rumor mill swirled prior to release, some guessing archival recordings of George would make the cut. Others have suggested that it could instead be another Harrison, George’s son Dhani. Whoever it is, and Clapton’s keeping mum, wraps some sweet vocals and acoustic guitar around Slowhand’s on “I Will Be There”. Clapton and co. could’ve picked any pseudonym for a guest, though, and picking one so close to the former Beatle’s implies a tie at the very least. “When times are hard and friends are few/ You need someone to help you through,” Clapton sings, either a fitting and sweet tribute to his long friendship with Harrison or a tune that just as well could be.
 
While there isn’t a ton of grit to Clapton’s blues these days, the songs that ditch what little that remains in favor of sweeter, more pop-friendly tunes suffer. Though it was never a ripper in the hands of Sarah Vaughan, Bing Crosby, or its countless other singers, the bouncy acoustic “Little Man, You’ve Had a Busy Day” sounds cut from the same cloth as Randy Newman’s Toy Story tunes, not a comparison point one might expect from a musician Rolling Stone called the second best guitarist of all time. Bob Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” similarly gets a Disney treatment, near-zydeco tones, smooth guitar filigree, and warm breeze taking the teeth out of the ballad.
 
Though his take on the standard “I’ll Be Seeing You” (popularized by Billie Holiday) won’t make any list of Clapton’s best performances, it carries some charm due to context. The septuagenarian could keep going forever, or this could be the end. “Just in case I don’t cut another record, this is how I feel,” Clapton has noted of this record. “I kind of might be saying goodbye.” It’s hard to fault anyone this late into a legendary career for wanting to say goodbye this easily, this softly, this sweetly. Much like the entirety of the last chunk of Clapton’s career, I Still Do acts as a pleasant reminder that he’s still around and to check out where he came from, both within his own guitar and those of the blues musicians that inspired him.
 
Adam Kivel - May 23, 2016
© 2007 - 2016 Consequence of Sound
 
 
 
Much of the talk prior to the release of I Still Do centered on how this 23rd studio effort reconnected Eric Clapton with Glyn Johns – producer of the guitarist’s well-regarded 1977 album Slowhand. Often lost in that conversation, however, was the fact that Johns also produced Backless, and Clapton’s less-heralded 1978 follow up actually serves as a better template for this new release.
 
Slowhand was a wonder of consistency and balance, with smartly chosen material across a spectrum of styles held together by a group of like-minded studio aces under the direction of Johns. Backless, on the other hand, sounded like a deep exhalation. Determinedly laid back, the album couldn’t have had a better cover image, as we see Clapton picking away on a comfy couch. He mixed songs by J.J. Cale and Bob Dylan, and a smattering of originals, with older blues cuts and an off-genre aside.
 
Same here. I Still Do simply replaces the Don Williams-sung country song that closes out Backless with the post-war songbook standard “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Otherwise, from mood to approach to pacing, this new album works like a long-lost sequel.
 
He returns to older gems by blues legends Skip James, Leroy Carr and Robert Johnson, adds a whisper of funk to “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” from Dylan’s similarly unruffled John Wesley Harding, finds room for not one but two JJ Cale songs (including “Somebody’s Knockin’,” which memorably opened his Slowhand at 70 concert), and rounds things out with a smattering of originals like the loosely improvised “Spiral.” Other than a few woodsy turns on mandolin and accordion by Dirk Powell, everything is of a piece with Backless.
 
The difference here has to do with expectations. Back then, Clapton was still trying to live up to something, or maybe more accurately to live it down. Once known as a guitar god, he’d handed over many of that era’s more intriguing moments to George Terry. It was easy to fret over a figure who seemed to dart away from fame every time it got close on albums like Slowhand.
 
I Still Do finds Clapton in a different place, in his career and in his life. What was largely dismissed as unfocused regression back then is clearly a matter of dogged perseverance now. This languid, reverie-filled figure was who he actually became, no matter our collective presumptions after his flinty tenures with the Yardbirds and Cream. That’s played out in a solo career that still looks for (and often finds) new meaning from slow-burn explorations of the old ways, whether that be in an original song or with a now-seemingly ubiquitous Robert Johnson cover.
 
Maybe back in the Backless era, Clapton only felt comfortable enough to portray this kind of assured calm after scoring a big hit. Thankfully, the days of chasing trends – something which found its zenith on albums like 1985’s Behind the Sun or 1998’s Pilgrim – are long gone. With I Still Do, Clapton sounds comfortable, finally, in his own skin. He’s not running anymore.
 
Nick DeRiso May 19, 2016 
ultimateclassicrock.com
 
 
 
Legendary musician Eric Clapton will release his 23rd studio album I Still Do on May 20 via his Bushbranch Records/Surfdog Records label. The new LP was produced by the famed Glyn Johns with the pair’s most famous collaboration being Clapton’s iconic Slowhand album, which is RIAA-certified 3x-platinum and topped charts globally.
 
“This was a long and overdue opportunity to work with Glyn Johns again, and also, incidentally, the fortieth anniversary of ‘Slowhand’!” said Eric Clapton in a statement announcing the upcoming release of I Still Do. The artwork for the album features an illustration of Clapton prepped by esteemed artist Sir Peter Blake, whose previous art includes the co-design of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album art. 
 
Scott Bernstein - Feb 18, 2016
© 2016 JamBase
 
 
 
I Still Do is the twenty-third solo studio album by the English rock musician Eric Clapton. It was released on 20 May 2016 through the independent Bushbranch Records/Surfdog Records label. The album features a combination of new material written by Clapton as well as classic songs, contemporary tunes and influences interpreted in his own style.
 
For the album, Clapton reunited with record producer Glyn Johns and had the album's artwork painted by Sir Peter Blake who also previously worked with Clapton. It is the follow-up to Clapton's global hit album The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale, released in the summer of 2014, his compilation album Forever Man, released in the spring of 2015 and also his commercially successful concert film and live album Slowhand at 70 – Live at the Royal Albert Hall released in late 2015.
 
The album I Still Do reunites Clapton with veteran record producer Glyn Johns, whose previous production credits include such classic albums as Who's Next (The Who), Sticky Fingers (The Rolling Stones), Mad Dogs and Englishmen (Joe Cocker) and Desperado (The Eagles). Johns also worked as the audio engineer for landmark albums by Led Zeppelin including their self-titled début album. Johns also produced releases by the Steve Miller Band, Humble Pie, The Clash and Rita Coolidge. Clapton and Johns also worked together in the late 1970s on the multi-Platinum selling albums Slowhand (1977) and Backless (1978) – two releases which contained Clapton favourites such as "Cocaine", "Wonderful Tonight" as well as "Lay Down Sally". According to a press release, Clapton said: "This was a long and overdue opportunity to work with Glyn Johns again and also, incidentally, the 40th anniversary of Slowhand".
 
Blake previously designed multiple pages of artwork for Clapton's 1991 million-selling live album 24 Nights as well as a photo book, containing all of his drawings of Clapton, his band and the Royal Albert Hall in which the album was recorded from 1990 to 1991.
 
A similar distinctive pseudonym entitled "L'Angelo Misterioso" was only used by the former Beatle George Harrison when he recorded anonymously a couple of decades ago with other, mostly prominent musicians. The first time Harrison used the nickname was on a recording with the British first-ever Rock supergroup Cream. The band and Harrison recorded the version of "Badge" which was later released as a single and on the band's Goodbye album in 1969. Clapton and Harrison stayed close friends and recorded several tunes together including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" for the Beatles' White Album as well as songs on Harrison's 1987 release Cloud Nine. The pair even recorded a whole live album together entitled Live in Japan (1992). When the former Beatle died in 2001, Clapton organised the Concert for George the following year.
 
Numerous publications including Billboard magazine, NME, Uncut magazine, Sky News, The Daily Beast and Contact Music reported the false message. Because both the general and the music press reported the subject very quickly and belief that Harrison would be on the album spread around the world within two days, it especially affected the news reports in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, continental Europe and South America. Only the American CBS Local Media company and Guitar World reported with a careful speculation rather than absolute conviction.
 
On 20 February 2016 Eric Clapton himself announced on his official Facebook page that it is not true that George Harrison will be performing or singing on the new studio album. In his Facebook post, Clapton wrote: "There is no truth to the rumour that George Harrison plays or sings on the forthcoming album 'I Still Do'". However, Clapton deleted the post from his official page a day after he posted the comment on the then current situation. Clapton's official publicist had refused to confirm or deny whether Harrison was on the album, when Clapton's management was asked about the event on 18 February 2016. After Clapton denied any official statement, the media began to speculate whether it might be Dhani Harrison playing on the new release.
 
A spokesman for Eric Clapton told Examiner.com on 2 March 2016 that neither Clapton himself nor his management or Clapton's record companies will be revealing the actual identity of "Angelo Mysterioso". In a brief statement, the spokesman wrote: "We aren't going to be saying who it is. Now or ever [...]". Also, it was never officially approved or denied if Dhani Harrison appears on the release.
 
In the 13 April 2016 concert held by Clapton at the Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Ed Sheeran showed off to play with Clapton himself the songs "I Will Be There" and "Cypress Groove".
 
I Still Do was announced on 18 February 2016. The is album is available as a digital download, on gramophone record (two vinyl discs, each with three songs per side and played at 45RPM for better audio) and on compact disc. There is also a limited edition vacuum tube shaped USB and CD release in a denim box with bonus materials. The bonuses include two exclusive tracks "Lonesome" and "Freight Train" plus 45 minutes of video featuring intimate interviews, behind the scenes clips of recording sessions, live performances and more, and 10 behind the scenes polaroid photo prints. Clapton's independent Bushbranch and Surfdog Records labels distribute the album to worldwide territories.
 
Jon M. Gilbertson, indicating in a review from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, opines, "'I Still Do' is not a dramatic statement, but it is sturdy enough to earn another alternate title: 'I'm Still Here.'"
 
Andy Gill of The Independent praised the album, stating:
 
Reuniting him with Slowhand/Backless producer Glyn Johns for the first time in four decades, I Still Do is Eric Clapton’s most assured album in ages, its understated poise and refinement reflecting the influence of his late compadre JJ Cale...
 
Wikipedia.org
 

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