Eric Andersen
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
After emerging from the Northeast folk-club circuit, Andersen began to record in 1965 with Today Is the Highway. His second album, Bout Changes & Things, contained some of his most accomplished writing, including the highly poetic Violets of Dawn, Thirsty Boots, and I Shall Go Unbounded. All were sung in Andersens flexible tenor (he shaded toward a baritone later), backed by rapid, intricate fingerpicking. In the late 60s and early 70s, Andersen experimented with country, pop, and rock music, settling on an amalgamation by the time of his masterpiece Blue River in 1972. This was also his most commercially successful album, but Andersen, like friends Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt, was always too serious-minded for the mainstream. In the 70s and 80s, he recorded sporadically while playing folk clubs around the U.S. and especially in Europe, where he took up residence. His later material, including 1989s Ghosts Upon the Road, recalls his work in the 60s as it ruefully reflects on that decade. The 90s saw Andersen collaborate with friends like Rick Danko and Jonas Fjeld on Danko/Fjeld/Andersen, as well as release a solo album, 1998s Memory of the Future; Andersen also oversaw the release of Stages: The Lost Album as well as a 1999 re-issue of Blue River. You Cant Relive the Past followed early the next year. Beat Avenue from 2003 was an ambitious double CD while 2004s The Street Was Always There nostalgic look back at the music of the New York Greenwich Village scene of the early- to mid-60s. Waves from 2005 was another album of covers, but with broader material.
