The biggest hits of Stevie Winwood’s long and varied career were the gooey late-'80s pop confections "Roll With It" and "Higher Love," vapid stabs at blue-eyed soul that were more successful as green-eyeshade commercial calculation.

Winwood is ignoring those songs, and almost everything else associated with the albums "Arc of a Diver" and "Talking Back to the Night" on his current arena tour with Eric Clapton, which stops at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul this evening. But on some of the tour stops he is performing a venerable blues standard, "Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out," which he sang with shocking depth and empathy as a teenager with the Spencer Davis Group in the late '60s. (Here is the group lip-syncing the recording on a silly video; don’t be fooled, that really is Winwood singing. And here is the rendition Winwood performed with Clapton last week at the opening of their tour in New Jersey.)

The point is, these longtime friends and masterful musicians are playing what they want to play, plumbing the source of the passion that brought them into the limelight in the first place. The entire first side of the eponymous disc from Blind Faith, the supergroup made up of Clapton, Winwood and drummer Ginger Baker, is given a workout, as are indelible Traffic songs such as the instrumental "Glad," and a rousing "Dear Mr. Fantasy" that is frequently the encore.

Clapton, too, revisits his blues roots (he also recorded "Down and Out" with Derek and the Dominos) via Sam Myers' "Sleeping in the Ground" (which Blind Faith covered), or Big Maceo's "Tough Luck Blues," and occasionally even "Rambling on My Mind" from his own teenaged stint with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Perhaps best of all, the duo indulge their mutual love of, and connection to, Jimi Hendrix, with resplendent renditions of the Hendrix ballad "Little Wing" (which Derek and the Dominos also covered) and the scorching "Voodoo Chile" Winwood played keyboards on that classic from "Electric Ladyland.") Clapton’s ongoing debt to songwriter J.J. Cale is also acknowledged via performances of "After Midnight" and “Cocaine.”

The band, which contains former Joe Cocker keyboardist Chris Stainton and the great rhythm section of drummer Abe Laboriel Jr. and bassist Willie Weeks, rounds out what promises to be that rare arena show that transcends nostalgia and the make-a-buck mentality (although at $75 to $150, there are plenty of bucks required for attendance). Recent gigs have exceeded two hours.

Eric Clapton and Stevie Winwood at the Xcel Energy Center, tonight at 8 p.m., tickets $75-$150.