Eric Andersen's grandfather emigrated from Norway.[2] Eric Andersen was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Snyder, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. Elvis Presley made an impression on him when 15-year-old Andersen saw him perform.[3] He moved to Boston and then San Francisco, where he met Tom Paxton, finally settling in New York City at the height of the Greenwich Village folk movement.[4]
Andersen was at one point married to former Cambridge folksinger Debbie Green,[5] who contributed guitar, piano, and backing vocal performances to various records Andersen released between 1965 and 1975. He was a resident of Woodstock, New York, between 1975 and 1983. He then moved to Oslo, Norway, and maintained a residence in New York City.[6] He was cohabiting and has four children with the Norwegian visual artist Unni Askeland.[7] He currently lives in the Netherlands. He married Dutch social scientist and singer Inge Andersen in 2006. He has a daughter Sari (with Debbie Green), who contributed backing vocal performances to his Memory of the Future album.
In the early 1960s, Andersen was part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City.[1] His best-known songs from the 1960s folk era are "Violets of Dawn", "Come to My Bedside", and "Thirsty Boots" (the latter recorded by Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, and John Denver amongst others).[9]
In 1964, Andersen made his debut at Gerdes Folk City in a live audition for Vanguard Records. In 1965 he released his first Vanguard album Today Is the Highway.[2] In 1966 he made his Newport Folk Festival debut. The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein was in the process of becoming his manager when he died.[3]Joni Mitchell cites Andersen as the source of her open tunings.
Andersen signed with Columbia in 1972 and issued his most commercially successful album, Blue River, on that label. From that album, the song "Is It Really Love At All?" is the most popular.[10] The master tapes of his follow-up album Stages were lost (until 1989) before the album could be released, resulting in the loss of much of the momentum he had gained with Blue River.[1]
Andersen parted ways with Columbia and recorded sporadically for a number of labels throughout the remainder of the 1970s and into the early 1980s. In 1975 he performed with Arlen Roth at the opening show of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue at Gerde's Folk City and again in Niagara Falls.
In the late 1970s, Andersen was also a member of the Woodstock Mountains Revue, a folk group that also featured Artie Traum, Happy Traum and John Sebastian.[11]
1980s: Europe
Andersen fell into obscurity for a number of years for audiences in United States. After moving to Europe, he recorded three albums, including Midnight Son, Tight in the Night and Istanbul. Andersen established his own company, Wind and Sand Records, to sell his music through mail order.[2][12]
Andersen reemerged in 1989 with a new album, Ghosts Upon the Road. Though the album did only modestly well, it was widely praised and placed on a number of critics' year-end "best of" lists.[3] The title track was a 10 1/2-minute autobiographical song that Andersen wrote about when he lived in Beacon Hill, Boston, and moved to New York City in 1964.[6]
Stages: The Lost Album
The Stages tapes were found nearly two decades after they had been lost. Forty boxes consisting of the original master tapes were found October 1989 in the vaults at Columbia Records in New York. The album was recorded after Blue River and featured guest artists Leon Russell, Joan Baez and Dan Fogelberg, among others.[13] It was issued in 1991 as Stages: The Lost Album.[14]
1990s: Danko/Fjeld/Andersen
At this point in his career, Andersen was living in Oslo, Norway, and, in the early 1990s, he joined the trio Danko/Fjeld/Andersen, with Rick Danko (the Band) and the Norwegian singer-songwriter Jonas Fjeld. The trio recorded three albums and performed together for nine years.[15][16]
1998–present: Late solo work
Andersen in 2013
In 1998, Andersen released his first solo album in a decade, Memory of the Future. Praised as "dreamy and introspective", the album was followed two years later by You Can't Relive The Past, which included original blues numbers as well as a selection of songs co-written with Townes Van Zandt.
A double album, Beat Avenue, followed in 2003. Besides mostly rock-dominated ballads, the album's 26-minute title track is a jazzy beat poem relating his experiences among San Francisco's beat community of artists on the day of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
In 2011, Andersen released his second live album, The Cologne Concert, with it:Michele Gazich (Mary Gauthier, Mark Olson) on violin and Inge Andersen (his wife) on backing vocals.
In 2013, Andersen performed in Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation,[17] a feature-length documentary about the Greenwich Village music scene, which was issued on DVD in November.
In August 2014, Andersen released a limited-edition double 10" vinyl record, "Shadow and Light of Albert Camus", featuring it:Michele Gazich on violin and piano, with cover design paintings of de:Oliver Jordan.
In April 2017, Andersen phoned Joni Mitchell, who was at home recovering from a serious long-term illness, and suggested bringing his band to her house for some music-making. (Andersen was the guitarist who had taught Mitchell open-G tuning.) Mitchell was greatly cheered by having music in her home and in her life again, and as a result of Andersen's visit was inspired to start hosting regular music sessions, which became known as "Joni Jams". The music sessions assisted her recovery, and she was able to return to live performance in 2022.[18]
In May 2017, Andersen released his album Mingle with the Universe: The Worlds of Lord Byron, featuring Inge Andersen (backing vocals), it:Michele Gazich (violin), Giorgio Curcettie (oud, bass, guitar), Cheryl Prashker (percussion) and Paul Zoontjes (aka nl:Simon Keats, piano) with cover design paintings of de:Oliver Jordan. In December 2017, the album Silent Angel: The Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll was released celebrating the centenary of the writer Heinrich Böll's birth.
In March 2018, Sony/Legacy Recordings issued The Essential Eric Andersen, a 42-track double CD release covering fifty years of his recorded history from Today is the Highway on to The Cologne Concert album and unreleased New York recordings.
A documentary about Eric Andersen, entitled The Songpoet, premiered at The Copenhagen Music Film Festival on September 13, 2019. Set against the cultural landscapes of his 50-year artistic journey, the film depicts an intimate portrait of Andersen—writing, recording, and performing today and reflecting on his life's work. The film was produced by Toward Castle Films and Skipping Stone Pictures. Beginning in April 2021 The Songpoet was made available for TV broadcast in the United States by American Public Television,[19] and a free stream of the full documentary became available at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website.[20]
In February 2023, Appaloosa Records issued Foolish Like the Flowers, a live album recorded in Spaziomusica, Italy featuring Scarlet Rivera on violin, Paolo Ercoli on dobro,Cheryl Prashker on percussion and Inge Andersen on backing vocals.
In November 2024, EARecords issued Eric Andersen In (Spoken) Pieces. The album is a collection and assemblage of his past and present longer-spoken (song) narratives.
Richard Harrington, music critic for The Washington Post, wrote, "No other songwriter born in the generation between World War II and Korea has better explored the insistence of love, whether it be sensible or hopeless, beseeched or betrayed."[21]
Awards
In 2003, Andersen won the Premio Tenco award with Patti Smith in San Remo, Italy, the country’s most prestigious songwriting award.[22]
Writings
In 1999 Andersen wrote an essay entitled "My Beat Journal" for the Rolling Stone Book of the Beats. That same year he published an article in National Geographic Traveler entitled "Coastal Norway" .
In 2009, Andersen contributed an essay entitled "The Danger Zone" to the Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays, a book volume edited by Oliver Harris and Ian MacFadyen devoted to William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, considered one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature.
Andersen wrote the lyric texts, composed music, and recorded songs for the painter Oliver Jordan's Albert Camus exhibition called "Paintings out of Revolt". This exhibition first took place for the Camus centenary in Aix-en-Provence in 2013, and was at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Germany, during mid-2014.
In 2013, Andersen wrote the liner notes for The Essential Pete Seeger for Sony/Legacy Records.
Non-album single: Sitting In The Sunshine (co-written by Carole King and Toni Stern)/Sunshine And Flowers (1970) (Warner Brothers)
Non-album single: Born Again/Rocky Mountain Red (written by Michael Chain) (1971) (Warner Brothers) – ("Born Again" was performed on "The Johnny Cash Show" in 1971.)
Be True to You / Sweet Surprise (re-issue) (BGO, 2017)
Mingle with the Universe: The Worlds of Lord Byron (Meyer, 2017)
Silent Angel: The Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll (Meyer, 2017)
The Essential Eric Andersen (Sony/Legacy, 2018) (2 CDs)
Rolling Coconut Revue Japan Concert 1977 - live (Super Fuji Discs, 2020)
Woodstock under the Stars (Y&T Music, 2020) (3 CDs)
Tribute To A Songpoet: Songs of Eric Andersen (Y&T Music, 2022) (3 CDs)
Foolish Like the Flowers - live (Appaloosa Records, 2023)
Eric Andersen In (Spoken) Pieces (EARecords, 2024)
Covers
Is It Really Love At All - Jericho Harp (United Artists, 1977)
Filmography and DVD appearances
In 1965, Eric Andersen starred in the Andy Warhol movie Space, in which he sang.[3]
In 1974, Andersen appeared in the Les Blank documentary A Poem is a Naked Person, which covered three years in the life of rock star Leon Russell. The film remained unreleased for forty years but was finally released in 2015.
In 1984, Andersen appeared as a guest in a film documentary about Phil Ochs called Chords of Fame and sang the Ochs' song, "When I'm Gone".[24]
In 1985, Andersen wrote original music for the movie Istanbul, starring Brad Dourif.
In 2011, filmmakers Paul Lamont and Scott Sackett began production on The Songpoet, a documentary exploring Eric Andersen's uncompromising 50-year artistic journey. The film has been finished in February 2019 and had its premiere at The Copenhagen Music Film Festival, September 13, 2019.
The Band was a Canadian-American rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, in 1967. It consisted of Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, and American Levon Helm. The Band's music combined elements of Americana, folk, rock, jazz and country, which influenced artists such as George Harrison, Elton John, the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton and Wilco.
Judith Marjorie Collins is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning seven decades. An Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records, for her social activism, and for the clarity of her voice. Her discography consists of 36 studio albums, nine live albums, numerous compilation albums, four holiday albums, and 21 singles.
Richard Clare Danko was a Canadian musician, bassist, songwriter, and singer, best known as a founding member of the Band, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
The Last Waltz was a concert by the Canadian-American rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The Last Waltz was advertised as the Band's "farewell concert appearance", and the concert had the Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including their previous employers Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, as well as Paul Butterfield, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Emmylou Harris, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Neil Young. The musical director for the concert was the Band's original record producer, John Simon.
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.
Danko/Fjeld/Andersen is the first of two albums featuring the multi-national folk trio of Rick Danko (Canada), Jonas Fjeld (Norway) and Eric Andersen. The album melds elements of folk, rock, country and blues.
The Gaslight Cafe was a coffeehouse in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Also called The Village Gaslight, it opened in 1958 and became a venue for folk music and other musical acts. It closed in 1971.
Ridin' on the Blinds is the second and final album by the folk-rock trio of Rick Danko, Jonas Fjeld and Eric Andersen, released in 1994.
Harry Peter "Happy" Traum was an American folk musician who started playing around Washington Square in the late 1950s. He became a stalwart of the Greenwich Village music scene of the 1960s and the Woodstock music community of the 1970s and 1980s.
"I Shall Be Released" is a 1967 song written by Bob Dylan.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
Patrick Sky was an American musician, folk singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was noted for his album Songs That Made America Famous (1973). He was of Irish and Native American ancestry, and played Irish traditional music and uilleann pipes in the later part of his career.
Stages is an album by folk rock musician Eric Andersen. The album was recorded in late 1972 and early 1973, as the intended follow-up to Andersen's successful Blue River album, but before it could be released, the master tapes were somehow lost in the Columbia vaults. It wasn't until 1990 that the tapes were discovered, at which time the album was finally released. In addition to the original 1972–73 recordings, Andersen included three newly recorded songs. Guest musicians from the 1973–73 sessions included Leon Russell on organ, piano and guitar, Rick Danko on bass and background vocals, and Garth Hudson on accordion, with Dan Fogelberg and Joan Baez supplying background vocals. Shawn Colvin was a guest vocalist on the 1990 sessions.
Arthur Roy Traum was an American guitarist, songwriter, and producer. Traum's work appeared on more than 35 albums. He produced and recorded with The Band, Arlen Roth, Warren Bernhardt, Pat Alger, Tony Levin, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Maria Muldaur, Eric Andersen, Paul Butterfield, Paul Siebel, Rory Block, James Taylor, Pete Seeger, David Grisman, Livingston Taylor, Michael Franks and Happy Traum, among others. Traum's songs were featured on PBS, BBC, ESPN, CBS, and The Weather Channel. He toured in Japan, Europe and the U.S.
Appleseed Recordings is an American folk music record label founded by Jim Musselman in 1997.
"Thirsty Boots" is a civil-rights-era folksong by American singer-songwriter Eric Andersen that first appeared on his 1966 album 'Bout Changes 'n' Things. According to the album's liner notes, the song "was written to a civil rights worker-friend. Having never gone down to Mississippi myself, I wrote the song about coming back."
Terje Lillegård Jensen, commonly known by his stage name Jonas Fjeld, is a Norwegian singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known in the English-speaking world for two albums recorded by Danko/Fjeld/Andersen, a collaboration with Canadian Rick Danko of The Band and American singer-songwriter Eric Andersen. Fjeld also recorded three albums with the American bluegrass group Chatham County Line.
Audun Erlien is a Norwegian jazz musician, known from several albums in various genres.
Tom Paxton is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is noteworthy as a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.
Winter Stories is an album by American singer Judy Collins and Norwegian musician Jonas Fjeld backed by American blugrass group Chatham County Line. It was released on November 29, 2019 on the Cleopatra label and reached number one on the Billboard Top Bluegrass Albums chart, becoming the 80-year-old Collins' first ever American number one album on any chart, as well as the first for Fjeld and the third for Chatham County Line.
References
1 2 3 4 Strong, Martin C. (2000). The Great Rock Discography (5thed.). Edinburgh: Mojo Books. pp.22–23. ISBN1-84195-017-3.
1 2 3 Babad, Michael (November 8, 1985). "'60s folk singer returns to the road". United Press International.
1 2 3 4 Elder, Bruce (January 16, 1990). "Good Voices, Great Songs, Wrong Attitude; Folk". Sydney Morning Herald. p.11.
↑ Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney (1994), and later to Norwegian artist Unni Askeland, with whom he has 4 children.Baby, Let Me Follow You Down: The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years (2nd Ed.). University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. p. 229.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
