Eric Andersen is best known for “Thirsty Boots,” “Violets of Dawn” and “Blue River” — three songs that are masterpieces. A new three-CD release, Tribute to a Songpoet, Songs of Eric Andersen, contains 42 songs by other artists and reveals what his most devoted fans have long known: Andersen’s catalog is filled with many other great songs, and he stands as one of music’s best songwriters.
Romantic, poetic lyrics are what has always set him apart from other songsmiths. The poetry is immediately apparent on the tribute album’s opening track when Bob Dylan sings the opening verse to “Thirsty Boots.”
You’ve long been on the open road
You been sleepin’ in the rain
From dirty words and muddy cells
Your clothes are soiled and stained
But the dirty words and the muddy cells
Will soon be hid in shame
So only stop to rest yourself and you’ll go off again
It’s the less-known songs, though, that show the depth and brilliance of Andersen’s extensive catalog. Consider the imagery of “Moonchild River Song,” a song on 1975’s Be True to You album that’s performed by Dan Navarro on the tribute release.
Take the quiet like a river, like the silver streams that sing for you.
Love will make it better and I’m sorry that you saw me blue.
I’ll tell you of the sunrise on a Texas plain so long ago.
I looked into your sad eyes and I couldn’t say I loved you, so.
But I love you like the mountains, I love you like the sea.
I love you like this highway, that always comes for me.
I love you like the forest, the quiet of the trees,
I love you darling, like a river now that runs deep in me.
Andersen’s writing and musicianship dates back to the folk-music heyday in New York’s Greenwich Village, San Francisco and Boston in the 1960s, when he released his 1965 debut album and hobnobbed with lots of folk musicians, including Dylan, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton and Fred Neil. Many acclaimed solo albums followed, particularly 1972’s Blue River, which featured Joni Mitchell providing vocal accompaniment on the title cut.
The song “Blue River,” covered by Amy Helm on the new tribute album, is always a concert highlight as Andersen puts down his guitar and plays the beautiful tune on piano. On the 1972 album, Mitchell’s celestial vocals vividly color the chorus.
Blue River keep right on rollin’
All along the shore line
Keep us safe from the deep and the dark
Cause we don’t want to stray too far
For decades, I imagined that Andersen’s Blue River was a snaking body of water in a scenic, unpopulated area in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho or somewhere in the West. But a few months ago at a concert at the Falcon in Marlboro, New York, Andersen revealed the river’s identity. Atop the Tappan Zee Bridge — about 27 miles north of Manhattan — Rick Danko yelled at Andersen to stick his head out their car’s window and look at the mighty Hudson River. He almost immediately turned his visions and impressions into a song.
Danko, the Band’s bass player and vocalist who sings a live version of “Blue River” on the tribute album, was arguably Andersen’s closest friend before his death in 1999. They were neighbors in Woodstock, New York, and, after Andersen moved to Norway, the two joined with Jonas Fjeld in a trio, Danko Fjeld Andersen, in the early 1990s.
“All the musicians in Woodstock were one big, tight family,” Andersen, who now lives in the Netherlands, tells me. He then cites his closest musical friends who lived there: Danko; two other members of the Band, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson; Paul Butterfield; Pat Metheny, and Artie and Happy Traum.
I ask him who was a closer friend — Danko or Phil Ochs?
Danko “was more a player,” and Ochs was a writer, Andersen responds.
“I spent more time musically with Rick,” he adds. “Phil was my ‘big brother’ who introduced me to everyone in the Village in ’64.”
Janis Ian, another member of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, covers Andersen’s 1998 song, “Hills of Tuscany,” on the tribute album. Other musicians performing Andersen’s songs on the 42-song album include Linda Ronstadt, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Buskin and Batteau, the Kennedys, Lenny Kaye, Larry Campbell, Willie Nile, John Gorka, Richard Shindell and Elliott Murphy.
Andersen’s years in the Village and his life and career are chronicled in The Songpoet, a stellar 2019 documentary by filmmakers Paul Lamont and Scott Sackett. The documentary reveals that Andersen was on the verge of international fame when his fortunes were derailed in 1967 by the death of Brian Epstein, his newly acquired manager who also managed the Beatles. Another major setback occurred in 1973: the disappearance of master tapes for a new album primed to follow the commercially successful Blue River. Seventeen years later, the tapes were found.
Despite the setbacks, Andersen expanded his circle of musical friends to include, among many others, Patti Smith, Townes Van Zandt and Lou Reed, and continued to release many top-quality albums filled with creative, rhythmic lyrics and poetic imagery. Andersen, who will celebrate his 80th birthday on Valentine’s Day, hasn’t let age deter his work. He released three imaginative, ambitious albums 2014-2017: Shadow and Light of Albert Camus, Mingle With the Universe: The Worlds of Lord Byron and Silent Angel: Fire and Ashes of Heinrich Böll.
With so many albums under his belt, I ask Andersen what are his favorite albums by other artists.
He mentions Folk Singer by Muddy Waters; Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy; John Coltrane’s Blue Train; ‘Round About Midnight by Miles Davis, and “anything” by Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Ella Fitzgerald and the Staple Singers.
“They bleed stories and tell truth,” Andersen says.
What artists influenced him most as a musician and songwriter?
“Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon helped me out of a dry spell,” Andersen responds. “Hank Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins informed me as writers. Along with Rimbaud and Baudelaire came the delta blues singers. Fred Neil’s voice always moved me. He was the best white male singer outside of Sinatra, George Jones and Pavarotti.”
Which were the best concerts Andersen attended?
The best ones, he says were a gold-suited Elvis Presley at Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo in 1957, Miles Davis and his Kind of Blue band in 1961 at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo and Jacques Brel at New York’s Carnegie Hall in the mid-1960s. Then he adds Crosby, Stills and Nash in Brussels, Belgium, in 2015, and West Coast shows by Richard and Linda Thompson when they were on the verge of a marital breakup.
“Great drama and great bands,” Andersen says. “Every one.”