Eric Andersen

Photo by Carol Rothman

Eric Andersen’s discography is impressive for not only its quantity but also for its quality. Andersen’s contribution to folk music is legendary. He played alongside the best of the best, including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. In fact, the story goes that Tom Paxton discovered Eric at a coffeehouse in San Francisco and invited him to join the singer-songwriter crowd in New York City. Shortly thereafter, Robert Shelton of the New York Times wrote a review where he called him “a writer and performer of the first rank… possessing that magical element called star quality.”

Eric’s career as a singer/songwriter and musician (playing guitar, piano and harmonica) spans 40 years and over 30 albums. Eric works within and without traditional song frameworks, wielding a vivid poetic skill, and a fearless approach to songwriting. He is a unique and enduring artist who has earned a broad and ageless audience. Many of his lyrics are considered philosophical or romantic and are enhanced by his rapid yet nimble fingerpicking.

The album “’Bout Changes & Things” contained some of his most accomplished songs such as “Violets of Dawn,” and “Thirsty Boots.” But “Blue River” is considered to be Eric’s masterpiece. By the time he recorded this album in 1972, he had successfully discovered how to merge various kinds of music like country, pop, and rock into his own special Eric Andersen type of music. Joni Mitchell accompanied Eric on the title song and the album was voted “the best example of 1970s the singer-songwriter movement” by Rolling Stone Magazine.

Eric’s appeal moved right into the 1980s when he released the highly acclaimed “Ghosts Upon the Road” and once again it was dubbed one of the best in this genre for that decade. The ’90s saw Andersen collaborate with friends like Rick Danko and Jonas Fjeld, producing four new albums. In addition to those have come re-issues of six of his earlier albums. One album, in particular, was one that all of Eric’s fans were quite eager to hear. Earlier in his career, a set of tapes were lost in a recording studio vault. In 1990 they were discovered and released as “Stage: The Lost Album.” It went on to win the New York Music Award for best album of the year.

On his 2004 release “The Street Was Always There,” Volume I of the Great American Song Series, Andersen presents the many creative facets on the ’60s Village-based songwriters, spanning a protest and personal approach that is truly timeless. Waves, Volume 2 of the Great American Song Series was released on Appleseed Recordings in 2005 and includes a collection of songs by his compatriots like Paxton, Ochs, and Dylan.

Joyce Andersen

Joyce Andersen happens to be a musical friend of Eric’s and has appeared on recordings with him. It seemed only natural to invite her down from Maine to play with him at the me&thee. Joyce headlined at the me&thee herself just last spring. Her latest CD, “Love and Thirst” has received high praise from radio programmers and the media. Her unmistakable sound comes through — magnificent violin and sweet-as-honey vocals and is a pure delight.

 

 

Andersen is the most elegant of singers. He is powered by the singular mix of irony and high romanticism that fuels his classic work. Paul Evans, Rolling Stone Magazine

One of the most creative and erudite lyricists of the ’60s folk revival (Vanguard has re-released the cream of his early material as “Violets of Dawn”), Eric Andersen balanced traditional Guthrie-esque travelin’ songs with a Kerouac-inspired sensitivity as well as anyone but Bob Dylan, and he sang with a gorgeous, buttery voice that connoted both intensity and warmth. He has continued to write excellent songs through the past few decades though he has never matched his early commercial success. . . “You Can’t Relive the Past” is Andersen’s most ambitious work in years. While it contains some lovely acoustic folk ballads (“Eyes of the Immigrant” echoes and expands his great early song “Thirsty Boots”), for the most part Andersen finds a densely textured blues-based sound similar in feel to Dylan’s “Time Out of Mind.” Michael Friedman, NO DEPRESSION