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Eric Andersen "Under the Shadows" music vido

Under The Shadows from Paul Lamont on Vimeo.

Eric Andersen Songs Sung By Others

Eric Andersen clips

Boston Globe feature (April 10, 2018)

Brooklyn Vegan item (March 23, 2018)

Pop Matters 8/10 review (March 30, 2018)

Pop Matters track premiere (March 26, 2018)

WFUV session (April 29, 2018)

SONGWRITING LEGEND ERIC ANDERSEN PLOTS GRAMMY MUSEUM Q&A AND PERFORMANCE MAY 3, MCCABE’S GUITAR SHOP SHOW MAY 5

‘THE ESSENTIAL ERIC ANDERSEN’ 2CD SET OUT FRIDAY ON SONY LEGACY / REAL GONE

Songwriting legend Eric Andersen, whose first career retrospective, the 2CD ‘The Essential Eric Andersen,’ comes out this Friday on Sony Legacy / Real Gone, will appear in a Q&A with Executive Director Scott Goldman and short set at the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles on May 3 and perform a full set at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica on May 5. Early buzz on ‘The Essential Eric Andersen’ has Brooklyn Vegan lauding his “impressive career” in posting “great song” “Violets of Dawn” and Pop Matters praising his “illustrious career.”

The NY Times has said, “Impressive… Very few songwriters have built a body of work as consistently strong as Mr. Andersen's.”

Bob Dylan said, “Eric Andersen is a great ballad singer and writer.”

Performers joining Andersen on the compilation include Joni Mitchell, David Bromberg, Leon Russell, Joan Baez, Richard Thompson, Rick Danko, and Lou Reed. Andersen and the late Phil Ochs duet on “Plains of Nebrasky-o.” Comprehensive liner notes by the songwriter himself and Rolling Stone and NY Times writer and Lou Reed biographer Anthony DeCurtis accompany the compilation. A press copy of the liner notes is here: http://bit.ly/2D5k63o

SONGWRITING LEGEND ERIC ANDERSEN TO MARK 75TH BIRTHDAY WITH ‘THE ESSENTIAL ERIC ANDERSEN’ (SONY LEGACY / REAL GONE) MARCH 30

GUESTS ON FIRST CAREER-SPANNING, MULTI-LABEL 2-DISC COMPILATION INCLUDE JONI MITCHELL, DAVID BROMBERG, LEON RUSSELL, JOAN BAEZ, RICHARD THOMPSON, RICK DANKO, PHIL OCHS, & LOU REED

RELEASE & TOUR MARKS FIVE DECADES IN MUSIC FOR MASTER SONGWRITER WHOSE SONGS HAVE BEEN INTERPRETED BY BOB DYLAN, JOHNNY CASH, JUDY COLLINS, LINDA RONSTADT, THE GRATEFUL DEAD, & GILLIAN WELCH

“Impressive… Very few songwriters have built a body of work as consistently strong as Mr. Andersen's.” – New York Times

“Masterwork… Andersen is the most elegant of singers.” – Rolling Stone

“Eric Andersen is a great ballad singer and writer.” – Bob Dylan

"Your song 'Violets of Dawn' got me started writing songs." Leonard Cohen confessed to Eric Andersen, seated side by side, legs in the pool, at the Landmark Hotel, Hollywood, California, in 1967.

Sony Legacy and Real Gone Music will release ‘The Essential Eric Andersen’ on March 30, marking the master songwriter’s 75th birthday as well as five decades in music, with a tour shortly to follow. Andersen’s songs have been interpreted by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, The Grateful Dead, Gillian Welch, Pete Seeger, Fairport Convention, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Eilen Jewell.

The two-disc, 33-track CD or 42 track digital-collection was recorded between 1964 and 2006 originally issued on Vanguard, Columbia, Folkways, Appleseed, Rykodisc, and Arista Records. Performers joining Andersen on the compilation include Joni Mitchell, David Bromberg,Leon Russell, Joan Baez, Richard Thompson, Rick Danko, and Lou Reed. Andersen and the late Phil Ochs duet on “Plains of Nebrasky-o.” Andersen’s version of Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” recorded in Nashville in 1971 with Bromberg, will see release for the first time. Comprehensive liner notes by the songwriter himself and Rolling Stone and NY Times writer and Lou Reed biographer Anthony DeCurtis accompany the compilation. A press copy of the liner notes is here: http://bit.ly/2D5k63o

Andersen was seemingly involved in every scene of counter-cultural significance, even as his songwriting bona fides mounted over the course of twenty-plus albums: seeing Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and The Everly Brothers in concert as a kid outside Buffalo, NY; spotting
John and Jackie Kennedy leaving a church in southern Massachusetts; playing and trading songs in Greenwich Village in 1964; opening for John Lee Hooker upon his arrival to NYC; meeting beat poets in San Francisco at City Lights and seeing them read the night JFK died; working to register black voters in Liberty, MS in 1965; being on the managerial roster of Brian Epstein (until his untimely death); starring with Edie Sedgwick in an Andy Warhol movie called Space; showing Joni Mitchell open G and D modal tunings on the guitar; playing on the legendary Festival Express (event and film) alongside The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, and Buddy Guy; recording in Nashville in the early ‘70s; being introduced to Cash by Dylan at Newport Folk Fest in 1964 and later appearing on TV’s The Johnny Cash Show; opening for The Doors, Elton John, and The Byrds; living in the Chelsea Hotel in the 1970s alongside Kris Kristofferson, Sam Shepard, and Leonard Cohen; moving to Woodstock in the mid-70s; playing on the first two shows of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour; co-writing with Townes Van Zandt and Lou Reed; moving to Norway and then the Netherlands; and singing with Rick Danko in the trio Danko/Fjeld/Andersen.

The album includes songs from ‘Stages: The Lost Album,’ whose masters were misplaced for two decades. A number of the sessions were produced by famed Nashville producer Norbert Putnam (who also produced Jimmy Buffet, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Dan Fogelberg, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez, and played bass for Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Jeff Walker) and featuring a list of ace Nashville session men such as Charlie McCoy, Kenny Buttrey, Eddie Hinton, and others.

“The Songpoet,” a full-length documentary film on Andersen is expected to be completed sometime later this year.
The New York Times music critic and author Robert Palmer said, “great American music from one of the masters.”

All Music called Eric’s music “timeless… The archetypal, literate romantic.”

Eric Andersen Tour Dates:

April 6 – Green Brook, NJ – House Concert
April 9 – New York, NY – City Vineyard at Pier 26
April 11 – Plainville, CT – Church of our Savior
April 12 – Boston, MA – City Winery
April 13 – Saratoga Springs, NY – Caffe Lena
April 15 – Piermont, NY – The Turning Point
April 16 – Buffalo, NY – Sportsmen’s Tavern
April 18 – Worthington, OH – Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza
April 19 – Cleveland, OH - Nighttown
April 20 – Oxford, NY – 6 on the Square
April 25 – Santa Ynez, CA – Tales from the Tavern
April 27 - Sacramento, CA - The Side Door at the Fifth String
April 29 – Soquel, CA – Michael’s On Main
May 3 - Los Angeles, CA - The GRAMMY Museum (Q&A and short set)
May 4 – National City, CA – AMSD Concerts
May 5 – Santa Monica, CA – McCabe’s
May 6 – Altadena, CA – The Coffee Gallery Backstage
May 11 – Portland, OR – The Old Church
May 12 – Grants Pass, OR – House Concert
May 24 – Marlboro, NY – The Falcon

'The Essential Eric Andersen' 2CD track list:
Disc 1
1.  Everything Ain’t Been Said
2.  Dusty Box Car Wall
3.  (We Were) Foolish Like The Flowers (featuring Bruce Langhorne)
4.  Dream To Rimbaud
5.  Secrets
6.  I Will Wait
7.  Waves Of Freedom
8.  Mama Tried (featuring David Bromberg – previously unreleased)
9.  Is It Really Love At All
10. Florentine
11. Blue River (featuring Joni Mitchell)
12. Pearl’s Goodtime Blues
13. Woman, She Was Gentle (featuring Joan Baez and Leon Russell)
14. Moonchild River Song (featuring Dan Fogelberg, Debbie Green Andersen, and Pete Drake)
15. Time Run Like A Freight Train (featuring Dan Fogelberg)
16. Wild Crow Blues (featuring Leon Russell and Pete Drake)

Disc 2
1.  The Blues Keep Fallin’ Like The Rain (featuring Tim Scott and Maria Muldaur)
2.  Thirsty Boots (Live at the Bitter End)
3.  Close The Door Lightly (When You Go)
4.  Violets Of Dawn (Live at the Bitter End)
5.  Messiah
6.  Belgian Bar
7.  Trouble In Paris
8.  Hills Of Tuscany (featuring Richard Thompson)
9.  You Can’t Relive The Past (featuring Lou Reed)
10. Rain Falls Down In Amsterdam
11. Keep This Love Alive (featuring Rick Danko and Fjeld Andersen)
12. Driftin’ Away (featuring Rick Danko and Fjeld Andersen)
13. Foghorn
14. Salt On Your Skin (Live featuring Inge Andersen and Michele Gazich)
15. Don’t It Make You Wanna Sing The Blues (Live featuring the Spoonful of Blues Band)
16. Under The Shadows (featuring a duet with Sari Andersen)
17. Plains Of Nebrasky-O (duet with Phil Ochs)

'The Essential Eric Andersen' Digital Album Track List:

1.  Everything Ain’t Been Said
2.  Dusty Box Car Wall
3.  (We Were) Foolish Like The Flowers (featuring Bruce Langhorne)
4.  Dream To Rimbaud
5.  Secrets
6.  I Will Wait
7.  Waves Of Freedom
8.  Come To My Bedside, My Darlin’
9.  Mama Tried (featuring David Bromberg – previously unreleased)
10. Is It Really Love At All
11. Florentine
12. Sheila
13. Blue River (featuring Joni Mitchell)
14. Pearl’s Goodtime Blues
15. Woman, She Was Gentle (featuring Joan Baez and Leon Russell)
16. Moonchild River Song (featuring Dan Fogelberg, Debbie Green Andersen, and Pete Drake)
17. Time Run Like A Freight Train (featuring Dan Fogelberg)
18. Wild Crow Blues (featuring Leon Russell and Pete Drake)
19. Be True To You
20. The Blues Keep Fallin’ Like The Rain (featuring Tim Scott and Maria Muldaur)
21. I Shall Go Unbounded
22. Thirsty Boots (Live at the Bitter End)
23. Close The Door Lightly (When You Go)
24. Violets Of Dawn (Live at the Bitter End)
25. Come Runnin’ Like A Friend
26. Messiah
27. Ghosts Upon The Road
28. Belgian Bar
29. Listen To The Rain
30. Trouble In Paris
31. Rain Falls Down In Amsterdam
32. Goin’ Gone
33. Hills Of Tuscany (featuring Richard Thompson)
34. You Can’t Relive The Past (featuring Lou Reed)
35. Keep This Love Alive (featuring Rick Danko and Fjeld Andersen)
36. Driftin’ Away (featuring Rick Danko and Fjeld Andersen)
37. Foghorn
38. Under The Shadows (featuring a duet with Sari Andersen)
39. Salt On Your Skin (Live featuring Inge Andersen and Michele Gazich)
40. Singin’ Man
41. Don’t It Make You Wanna Sing The Blues (Live featuring the Spoonful of Blues Band)
42. Plains Of Nebrasky-O (duet with Phil Ochs)

ALWAYS BECOMING: THE SONGS OF ERIC ANDERSEN

BY ANTHONY DeCURTIS
                   
“I don’t know if everything’s been said,” Eric Andersen sings on the heart-rending opening track of this deeply rich, career-spanning retrospective. It’s a characteristic declaration. Andersen is a seeker, and words are his method of conjuring the meaning of all that he encounters on his journey. In this song, Andersen is struggling to understand a relationship that has disintegrated, as so many do, for no discernible reason. He’s not asking for love, though he’s aching from its loss. What he desires is some kind of mutual understanding, a comprehensible answer to that haunting question: What happened to us? No such answer emerges, but, as Bob Dylan once sang, “a question in your nerves is lit,” and it simmers long after “Everything Ain’t Been Said” comes to a close.               
                               
Andersen recorded that song when he was twenty-one, and it appears on his debut album, Today is the Highway, which came out in 1965. In the more than fifty years since that time, Andersen has continued his search for meaning, drawing on folk, blues, country, rock, and jazz to provide the musical backdrop to what is something like a compelling musical autobiography. So many of the songs on this set summon images and themes of movement and travel, lyrical expressions of Andersen’s artistic restlessness. He has always loved to travel, and varying places and climes act as spurs to his imagination, as if all journeys are ultimately internal, all destinations a place inside your mind. Once they have been seen, they can become songs or, as Andersen memorably puts it, “interior documentaries.” “It was always the journey that mattered, never the destination,” he says. “Songs can be likened to diary entries, musical memories that can evolve and sharpen with time. I always believed writing was a way of ‘living life twice.’ It’s true. The meaning of songs can deepen like wine.”
                               
While Andersen first made his mark as a central figure in the folk revival that took place in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, he has always found the “folk singer” box constricting. One of the goals of this collection is to demonstrate how wide his musical interests have ranged. “I think some people may be surprised when listening to this album,” he says, “because some of it is unexpected musically and it shows that my work was never strictly coming out of a folk music milieu. I wanted to be a poetical and musical artist, and I never liked being labeled a folk singer. I got into this business because I wanted to be a writer and create something new, to mix it up a bit.” He also notes that he was never an overtly political songwriter, a so-called “protest singer,” as were so many of his peers back in his Greenwich Village days. “I preferred Village artists like Fred Neil and Tim Hardin,” Andersen says, citing two songwriters who shared his lyricism and his inclination to look inward for inspiration, rather than to current events. He adds, “I wanted to experiment lyrically and musically. I listened to the likes of Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Son House, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Charles Mingus when I was starting out. Those were my real musical roots.” Still, he notes that for any artist who cares about the world around him, “protest songs find you when you’re not looking.” A certain song performed in a certain context can take on political import. For example, Andersen performed his beautifully uplifting ballad “Waves of Freedom” in Mississippi churches when he accompanied progressive journalist Jack Newfield on a voter registration drive in 1965. And his chilling “Rain Falls Down in Amsterdam” documents the revival of Nazism in Europe in the Nineties, a development that, horrifyingly, continues in our own country and into our new century.
                   
To realize his songs, Andersen always called on the best and most empathetic players he could find. His collaborators on this set include the likes of Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Rick Danko, David Bromberg, Joan Baez, and Leon Russell. But whether Andersen is performing with a stellar group of players or simply accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, what comes through is the extraordinary depth, the endless suggestiveness, of his songs. His voice, too, is their perfect conduit. It has deepened and roughened over the years, but what has remained is its undeniable warmth and intimacy, the sense that Andersen is speaking directly to you, heart to heart, soul to soul.
                   
And that’s why these thirty-three songs, recorded over more than five decades and drawn from more than a dozen different albums, as well as live recordings, unfurl like one long song, shifting movements in an ongoing, lifelong composition. The energy of a rough-hewn early track like “Dusty Box Car Wall,” from 1964, animates a later art song like the dreamily evocative “Hills of Tuscany,” from his 1998 album Memory of the Future. “(We Were) Foolish like the Flowers” nestles comfortably next to “Dream to Rimbaud”—both are visionary transports in which the singer’s mind is “sailing without a sail.” Early classics like “Thirsty Boots” and the exquisite “Violets of Dawn” are presented here in later versions performed on stage, and Andersen revisits “Close the Door Lightly When You Go,” which was originally released in the mid-Sixties, more than a decade later.
                   
Andersen remains active as a writer and performer, and never enjoys indulging in the backwards glance. “You Can’t Relive the Past” one of his songs bluntly declares, and it’s a future-forward pronouncement that he sees as essential to living a creative life. Nostalgia is a kind of death. So combing through his life’s work to pull together this collection was not at all an effort that came naturally to him. “I wanted to run the other way,” he says when the prospect of an Essentials collection first came up. He initially didn’t want to be involved in it. “I thought others might have a better overview of my work than I did,” he says. Happily, “it dawned on me that that was not the case,” and good sense prevailed.
                   
Then Andersen got to work. He describes the process of selecting the songs for this collection as a “search,” an effort “to peer beyond the obvious and see the magic of overlooked material, songs that many fans had never heard before or even imagined I had written.” The emotional coherence, the sense of this collection expressing its own musical integrity, is no accident. Andersen set out with that goal in mind. “I didn’t want this set to be scatter-shot,” he says. “I wanted it to be a sincere listening experience that builds over a long span of time. I wanted it to be something people could enjoy musically in its own right. I confess I made some new discoveries—and I sometimes even surprised myself.” As one example, he cites the powerfully emotional “Keep This Love Alive,” which he wrote and recorded with Rick Danko, formerly of the Band. The performance is lled with conviction. “I found a lot of humanity and heart in that duet,” he says. That’s fitting, because it was when Andersen first visited the Band in upstate New York that he found the inspiration for what is perhaps his best-known song. While standing on a bridge gazing down at the owing Hudson, the spark for the gorgeous “Blue River” took fire in his mind.
                   
Ultimately, a mystery lies at the heart of so much of Andersen’s work, and perhaps in the core of all great art. Looking back provided many discoveries, but no final answers. And that’s all to the good. “It’s always been my belief that the artist or creator is only a medium,” Andersen says. “Truth be told, with some songs I don’t have a clue where they came from, or why or how I wrote them. Songs come as visitations and the writer becomes a mere stenographer, grabbing them out of the air. It’s almost an unconscious effort.
                   
“I’ve never been a craftsman hovering and sweating over a drafting table,” he concludes, “though I’ve always worked diligently to make my visions concrete. I’ve always held high standards and tried to build songs that could stand the test of time. After all, isn’t the goal of any true artist to attain a state of always becoming, to make the invisible visible? I wanted to write songs that I could listen to fty years down the line. And in most instances, I believe that to be true.”

Eric Andersen bio

"Eric Andersen is one of our finest singers and songwriters, in the most literal sense of that tradition… the most elegant of singers." David Fricke, (Rolling Stone Magazine)
'
“A singer and songwriter of the first rank.” (The New York Times)

“An American master.” Robert Palmer, Ghosts Upon the Road liner notes.

“Eric Andersen is a great ballad singer.” (Bob Dylan – live on stage at the Oslo Spektrum)

Eric Andersen first came to prominence as a performer in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s
and immediately became part of the Village folk and songwriter scene along with Phil Ochs, Tom
Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and was at the epicenter of the American Greenwich Village
singer-songwriter explosion.

Aside from his own classics, he’s co-written songs with Bob Weir (The Grateful Dead), Townes
Van Zandt, Rick Danko, and Lou Reed.

His songs have been covered by many artists including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Judy Collins,
Fairport Convention, Rick Nelson, John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, The Grateful Dead, Peter, Paul
& Mary, The Blues Project, Gillian Welch, Linda Thompson, and Rick Danko. Bob Dylan’s
version of Eric’s song “Thirsty Boots” was released as a single on Record Store Day and also
appears on the Dylan CD Another Self Portrait .

Over the past 50 years, Eric has toured the world and released over 30 CDs of original music
including Blue Rain (Appleseed Recordings) his first live concert recording in Oslo with the band
Spoonful of Blues, released in 2007.

In the early 1990s Andersen recorded 2 trio-harmony albums with The Band’s Rick Danko and
Norwegian singer Jonas Fjeld. He’s featured in the Joni Mitchell American Masters documentary,
the Wildflower Festival DVD with Judy Collins, Tom Rush, and Arlo Guthrie, the rock film
Festival Express and the documentary Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation.
In 1990 Eric won the New York Music Award for his album Ghosts Upon the Road,
in 1992 the Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammy) for “ Danko/Fjeld/Andersen ” and in 2003
The Premio Tenco award with Patti Smith in San Remo, Italy, which is an award given to
outstanding songwriters. Previous Premio Tenco awards have gone to Randy Newman, Tom
Waits, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Lou Reed.

The Eric Andersen and Friends Webcast was launched in June 2011 by Nevessa Productions
Woodstock with special guests Happy Traum, John Sebastian, Joe Flood and Inge Andersen.
Featured songs performed in the webcast were from his album The Cologne Concert (Meyer
Records) which was released on CD and Vinyl in April 2011. The live album features Eric’s wife
Inge Andersen on back-up harmonies and he is accompanied on violin by Michele Gazich.
Mingle With The Universe: The Worlds Of Lord Byron (Meyer Records) was released in May
2017 on CD and Vinyl formats. “Byron was a born songwriter whose ceaseless waves of rhymes presented an endless sea for the ships of song.” All songs on the album featured the romantic
poet’s stanzas with Eric’s music. Included are two original Andersen tracks: “The Curled
Darling” and “Albion” which describe for the listener a taste of Lord Byron’s controversial and
sometimes scandalous life, travels and writings.

In September, 2017 an expanded long-play version of the Birth of a Stranger: Shadow and Light of Albert Camus (Meyer Records) was released with two new tracks. The four-song EP was originallyreleased in 2014 on Vinyl and in 2015 on CD. Eric extrapolated new lyrics from Camus’ novels. Of the original EP version, he said in an interview, "From the rolling vineyards of Camus I tried to capture four bottles of good wine that tasted deep and true."

On March 30, 2018, Sony/Legacy Recordings issued THE ESSENTIAL ERIC ANDERSEN – a 42-track digital release and 33 track double CD release retrospective release covering fifty years of his recorded history from Today is the Highway to Blue River, and Ghosts Upon the Road and Beat Avenue and on to The Cologne Concert album and unreleased New York
recordings.

Work continues on The Songpoet – a new eight-year-in-the-making documentary about Eric
Andersen to be released in 2018. The Songpoet follows Eric’s remarkable 50-year journey in
America and Europe that continues today as he writes and records with a poetic passion. With
unprecedented access to Andersen’s life and his personal archives the film will be a study on the
culture of fame, the fragility of an artist’s career and the integrity of the artist as it reveals the
indestructible energy that drives the artist and writer Eric Andersen in short -- a glimmering
mirror and portrait of his times -- The Songpoet.

Eric Andersen’s poetical songs have entertained and captivated audiences worldwide. He plays
acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica and piano/keyboards in concert and often performs with
his great bands in America, Japan, and Europe. He performs songs which span across all his
albums, including his early classics “Thirsty Boots” “Violets of Dawn” and “Close the Door
Lightly,” as well as exciting new material from his recent projects like Camus and Lord Byron.

Eric Andersen artwork

click for high res, credit for all below: Paolo Brillo