Eric Andersen

Eric Andersen born February 14, 1943 is a singer/songwriter. Born in Pittsburgh, Eric Andersen belonged in the early sixties together with Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan to the Greenwich Village folkscene in New York. His best-known songs from that time are “Violets of Dawn,” “Come to My Bedside” and “Thirsty Boots” (the latter was recorded by Judy Collins and several others). In 1966, he made his debut at the Newport Folk Festival and that same year he starred in the Andy Warhol movie Space. In 1970 he took part in the Festival Express tour across Canada with the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band and others. In 1972 he issued his most successful (and sold) album Blue River. The tapes of his follow-up album Stages got lost, but were found back more than a decade later and issued in 1991 as Stages: The Lost Album. In 1975 he performed at the opening show of the Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, at Gerde's Folk City in New York, and again in Niagara Falls. After several albums (country/rock/folk), he issued Ghosts Upon the Road a highly recognized album in 1988. In the early 1990s, Andersen teamed with Rick Danko (The Band) and Jonas Fjeld to form the trio Danko/Fjeld/Andersen and three albums were released, Danko/Fjeld/Andersen (1991), Ridin' on the Blinds (1994), and One More Shot (2001). It lasted nine years before his next solo album Memory Of The Future (1998) was issued. This "dreamy and introspective music" album was followed by You Can't Relive The Past (2000), which contains some blues songs and a selection of songs co-written with Townes Van Zandt . A double album Beat Avenue followed in 2003, which contains a series rock dominated ballads and includes a 26-minute title track (a jazzy beat poem), which represents his experiences among San Francisco’s beat community of artists (see 'Beat Generation') on the day of president John Kennedy’s assassination. On his last two albums The Street Was Always There (2004) and Waves (2005), both produced by the multi-instrumentalist Robert Aaron, he presents (amongst own songs) new versions of classics and of his sixties contemporaries and friends David Blue, Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin, Peter La Farge, Fred Neil, Phil Ochs, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Paul Siebel, Patrick Sky, Tom Paxton, Richard Farina, John Sebastian, Happy Traum, Tom Rush and Lou Reed . His next album Blue Rain, released in 2007, was his first live album. It was recorded in Norway and contains a blend of blues, jazz and folk. 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 Burroughs’ masterpiece the Naked Lunch, considered one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature.