Eric Clapton is having a jam session with more than a dozen of his favorite guitar-playing pals, and everyone is invited.

Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, scheduled July 28 in Chicago, will benefit Crossroads Centre, the drug-rehab facility he founded in Antigua a decade ago. Tickets go on sale Saturday.

Scheduled performers include B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Sheryl Crow, Jeff Beck and John Mayer, among others — and Clapton is already excited about spontaneous collaborations.

“Some of it’s mapped and some of it isn’t,” he said Wednesday by phone from Winnipeg, where he is on tour. “We have to leave a little bit of it to chance.”

This will be the second concert Clapton has held to raise funds for the Caribbean rehab facility, which now includes a halfway house and community-education program. The first concert was in Dallas in 2004.

Many performers plan to return — “A great testament to how much everybody loves Eric Clapton,” said Gill, who played at the first Crossroads fest. Establishing the rehab centre fulfilled a personal dream, Clapton said.

“I haven’t had a drink or drug for quite a long time and it’s changed my life completely. That’s something I want to pass on and share with other people,” he said. Clapton said clinics such as Crossroads are “very necessary.”

“I think it’s suffered a little bit in some of the recent publicity with the celebrities who go there,” he said. “It’s a bit of a witch hunt going on in some of the news channels about rehabs in general. It’s a little scary because … the last thing we want is to lose any of the rehabs.” The 62-year-old guitarist is set to wrap up his world tour in April and “have a little break in England” with his family before the Crossroads concert.

“Then I’m going to disappear for a year or two,” he said, “and have some fun.”

Crossroads: http://www.crossroadsantigua.org

Canadian prog-rock mainstays Rush are taking their new record Snakes and Arrows on the road.

Making records since the mid-seventies Rush has established themselves as a rock force to be reckoned with, with several Junos, platinum records and a spot in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Their most recent record Snakes and Arrows is set to hit stores on May 1 in North America, and will release on April 30th in the UK. The first single off of the record is “Far Cry”, which hit radio stations earlier this month.

The band will take to the road in June and travel all over North America ending off in Canada at the end of September.

Snoop Dogg and Sean “Diddy” Combs were forced to scrap a tour of Britain after authorities denied Dogg a visa, according to a statement Tuesday.

The duo, currently on a European tour, had been expected to play five dates in Britain.

Tour organizers had said the concerts, starting with one at London’s Wembley Arena on Wednesday, would go ahead without Dogg.

British Home Office rules state that foreign citizens can be barred from entering the country if there were concerns about their presence.

In April 2006, Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, and five other men were arrested on charges of violent disorder and starting a brawl, and spent the night in jail after trouble flared when some in the rapper’s party were denied entry to British Airways’ first-class lounge at Heathrow Airport.

Seven officers received minor injuries — mainly cuts and bruises — and one suffered a fracture to the hand.