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I first spotted Eric Andersen in the Kettle of Fish, a bar and folksinger’s hangout on Greenwich Village’s MacDougal Street, in the summer of ‘65. I was fresh from the deep South and had been in New York City for all of a couple of hours when a friend suggested visiting the Kettle of Fish to "meet the gang." I seem to remember Dylan being in and out, and I know I met David Blue and the Holy Modal Rounders. I didn’t get to meet Eric that night, but he was hard to miss. Six feet tall, rail thin, long dark hair, deep brown eyes- Eric was a striking-looking dude, a fact that was not lost on the ladies who were hanging at the Kettle of Fish that night. I knew who the guy was; I’d been playing his early songs in a folk-rock band, and "Violets Of Dawn" was a special favorite. Only every time I got the notion to go over and strike up a conversation, Eric was surrounded by women. That part hasn’t changed much in the intervening years. But as Eric would say, "we won’t go into that." What we can and should go into is who Eric Andersen is, where he’s been, and what he’s contributed to the crazy-quilt of American vernacular music. In the sixties, Eric’s involvement in the Cambridge, San Francisco and Greenwich Village folk scenes resulted in his being tagged a "folksinger." Later, in the seventies, classic albums like Blue Riveron Columbia got him lumped with the likes of James Taylor in the singer-songwriter bag. By the late seventies, folkies and singer-songwriters were perceived as being out-of-fashion. Like so many artists before him, Eric travelled to Europe, where he has released a number of albums, scored a film, written a playand some stories, and, always, worked on new songs. And now Eric Andersen is back. The craft, emotional depth, and unmistakable honesty of Eric Andersen’s songs, old and new, are the measure of the man. Musical fads and media attention have come and gone. But early in his life, Eric "dreamed my life would roll on forever, like some great plain in the west," and he has held on to that dream throughout his life of constant motion and creativity. The songs are Eric Andersen’s made flesh. Eric’s birthday is Valentine’s Day. (It’s fraught with no irony," he maintains.) He grew up mostly in Amherst, New York, where his early musical inspirations were first-generation rock-and-rollers. "I saw Elvis Presley in Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, wearing his gold suit, " Eric remembers. "The Everly Brothers came to my highschool for a hop. So in the beginning my real fascination was through those guys. But then we went into folk music-type things. In high school I had a little folk quartet. We did Weavers stuff, Woody Guthrie stuff, Cisco Houston. We played dances. But we were all literary freaks, too, so we were reading Baudelaire, James Joyce, Rimbaud. " In his brutally honest autobiographical song "Ghosts Upon The Road," Eric puts these early folk and literary influences in perspective. "Ramblin’ Jack was wild," he sings, "but Lowell Jack was first/ and I still shiver from the words." Following Kerouac’s example, Eric dropped out of college and hit the road supporting himself "mowing lawns and jukin’ in a band" and living in a succession of beatnik crash pads and abandoned buildings in Cambridge, the San Francisco Bay area, and then, New York’s lower easr side, where, his song "Ghosts" tells us, "my soul felt like an empty lot," and one night, "I almost jumped from a sixth floor roof." Many of the friends he made in those years failed to make it to middle age, but Eric survived to chronicle his wanderings. He began to first attract attention as a singer and songwriter in New York, where he recorded his seminal first albums, Today is the Highway and Bout Changes n’ Things, for Vanguard. The latter album included "Violets of Dawn" which rapidly became a folk-rock standard. There were rave reviews in folk and general interest publications, including The New York Times, whose critic Robert Shelton called Andersen "a writer and performer of the first-rank... Eric Andersen has that magical element called star quality." Bout Changes n’ Things, Eric’s second album, included one of his most enduring tunes, "Thirsty Boots," which became an anthem of the mid-sixties civil rights movement and was recorded by Judy Collins. Other early Andersen songs were recorded by Judy Collins. the Blues Project, Peter Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, Fairport Convention, Linda Ronstadt, John Denver, Rick Nelson, Pete Seeger, and the Grateful Dead. This heterogeneous list of performers suggests that Andersen was never really a folk singer in the classic sixties topical-poet sense. "Thirsty Boots" notwithstanding, his writing was always personal and introspective, concerned with living, feeling, thinking, basic human emotions and humjan values. This quality helped him make a smooth transition from the acoustic-style Vanguard albums to full-blown folk-rock (most notably on the classic 1973 Columbia lp Blue River) and country-rock (preserved on severalseventies albums recorded in Nashville). But when the original folk scene fragmented, so did Eric’s original audience. Music business moguls began suggesting to him that his timeless songs and straightforward performing style were out of date. Undaunted, Eric just kept writing and performing. But imposed stereotypes can take on a life of their own. When I finally did meet Eric Andersen, in New York City’s blues club Tramps in the early 80’s, I still thought of him as a sixties folk troubadour. I wanted to talk about "Violets of Dawn." He wanted to talk about African rhythms, jazz pianists, the fine points of intonation, and a film scoring project he was working on that entailed writing for a combination of Middle Eastern instruments and European symphony orchestra. The score was for the Belgian film "Istanbul," starring Brad Dourif. It’s sweeping string lines (recorded by the string players of the Belgian Symphony Orchestra) and overlay of Turkish stringed and percussion instruments served notice that Eric’s musical sensibility was wide-ranging, complete in itself, and utterly beyond catagory. Midnight Son and Tight in the Night, albums he recorded in Europe in the 80’s with electric band backing, confirmed this impression. Andersen’s experiences in Europe have profoundly affected his personal and musical outlook, as his new album, with songs like "Trouble in Paris," "Spanish Steps," and "Belgian Bar," so eloquently attests. Two successful Japanese tours have also had an impact. But Andersen’s early influences and the cosmopolitan wanderlust of his later life have only strengthened his sense of himself as a profoundly American artist. One night in Eric’s Greenwich Village apartment, where he lives when he isn’t on the road or at his second home in Norway, he interrupted a songwriting session with the brilliant Texas tunesmith Townes Van Zandt to clarify just this point. " I have this song about New Mexico," he explained, "but I wrote it in Norway. And sitting there looking out on all the snow, somehow that made the experience of travelling of travelling from Sante Fe to Taos that much more real to me. I started to think I could actually feel the sunlight on my arms, the heat, the dust. I could see the shadows, the color of the rocks. Europe is good for me as a writer, because you’re not distracted by all the things that happen to you- in New York especially. I thought I knew Eric Andersen’s music pretty well after listening to his performances, skull sessions, songs in progress. But this new album, conceived largely in Europe, recorded in New York, has handily exceeded my expectations. There’s a hard-won focus, and a deeply-felt commitment, evident in every performance, every finely-tuned lyric line. And there’s the almost feverish intensity of an obsessively creative man who’s spent his life living up to his own high expectations, rather than following fads or taking cues from the way other people perceive him. In "Ghosts Upon the Road," Eric sings about resisting to "the need to give everything a name," and we would do well to take the hint and forget folk, rock, pop, and other labels. This is great American music from one of the masters. And it’s about time. These CD's are available on line
at the
The Songbook can Be ordered from:
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Driftin'
Away
"These three friends and musical soul-mates have forged
their disparate backgrounds into a shared vision. Like the best bands,
they reach out to us with one voice, and with a depth of feeling that seems
to well up from the heart."
"Danko Fjeld Andersen is ultimately,
no matter what style its singers choose, soul music of deep and lasting
appeal."
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Driftin Away
"Danko Fjeld Andersen celebrates
the best qualities of American music. The result is far greater than the
sum of its already impressive parts."
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Newly Remastered and Reissued, 1999 Is It Really Love At All
"Eric’s finest hour."
"Best example of the 70’s songwriter movement."
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Moonchild Riversong
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Violets
Of Dawn
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Today's The Highway
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Belgian Bar
"This
is great music from one of the masters."
"Music of rare intelligence and finesse; the autobiographical ten-minute title track is narrative songwriting at it’s richest- and the entire set stands as one of the best albums of the 1980’s." Rolling Stone Record Guide. Four 1/2 stars Rolling Stone. |
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Baby I’m Lonesome
"Stages, the legendary ‘lost
album,’ reveals itself indeed as a masterwork."
"It is an impressive record."
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Tin Can Alley, Pt. 1
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My Land Is A Good Land
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Foghorn Rain Falls Down in Amsterdam Blue Heart Goin Gone Memory of the Future Sex With You Chinatown No Man's Land When I'm Gone Hills of Tuscany Album release: November 19,
1998
"Eric Andersen is one of our finest
singers and songwriters, in the literal sense." David Fricke, Senior
Editor Rolling Stone Magazine,
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Boot of Blue
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