ERIC ANDERSEN: Blue Rain

Eric Andersen

Blue Rain

© 2007 Appleseed Recordings

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One of the great singer-songwriters of our time paints his repertoire in shades of blues with an electric band on the first live album of his four-decade-plus career.

notes

Eric Andersen has never been one for standing still. His restless travels from continent to continent, from innocence to experience, have shaped his songs into cinematic vignettes of troubled love and existential unease simmering in a dark and haunting blend of folk, blues, jazz and other roots music.

For the first-ever live album in his career, which encompasses more than forty years and over two dozen albums (including six previous Appleseed releases), Andersen chose to enlist a Norwegian blues band to help him shake off the “acoustic troubadour” tag he outgrew so long ago and to give his songs “a new, different kind of edge.” His gentle, early standards from the ’60s such as “Thirsty Boots” and “Violets of Dawn” won’t be found on this CD. "Blue Rain," recorded at an Oslo club in June 2006, focuses mostly on Andersen compositions dating back to the title song of his 1972 masterwork, "Blue River," presented in elegantly brooding electric arrangements.

Andersen is hardly a blues novice. He accompanied harp-player J.C. Burris on San Francisco street corners in 1963 and watched Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and many other legendary musicians work their primal magic in Greenwich Village clubs in the mid-’60s. He’s covered or written blues songs as far back as his first album in 1965, and half of his 2000 CD, "You Can’t Relive the Past," was recorded with hardcore North Mississippi bluesmen. Even so, he’s wise enough to avoid contorting his material on Blue Rain into a standard 12-bar format – he takes care of the genre’s traditions here with a raucous, uptempo version of Jimmy Reed’s “Shame, Shame, Shame,” and a slow-burning take on “Losing Hand,” first popularized by Ray Charles.

Andersen’s own songs, and the cover version of Fred Neil’s “The Other Side of This Life” that opens the CD, are hypnotically well-served by Andersen’s gruff but sensuous baritone, the hovering tremolo of his electric guitar, and the exquisitely attuned support of lead guitarist Morten Omlid, bassist Jens Haugland, and drummer Eskil Aasland, three-fourths of Norway’s Spoonful of Blues band. Despite only one previous performance together (at the 2005 Notodden Blues Festival in Norway) and a few rehearsals, Andersen and the Spoonful musicians fit together seamlessly – the noir-ish intimacy and ache of songs like “The Blues Keep Falling Like the Rain,” “Trouble in Paris” and “Sheila” are retained and enhanced by Omlid’s alternately spiky and coiling guitar and the unobtrusive push of the rhythm section. The volume climbs on the torrid, desperate “Runaway” and the muscular, seething rendition of “You Can’t Relive the Past” (a Lou Reed co-write) that closes the CD, while Andersen, Omlid and guest Scandinavian bluesman Vidar Busk all contribute stinging guitar solos to “Losing Hand.” Andersen varies the mood by playing piano on two tracks, including the appropriately titled “Don’t It Make You Wanna Sing the Blues,” a poignantly weary, previously unrecorded original ballad.

"Blue Rain" proves conclusively that there’s more than one way to sing the blues – Andersen himself describes the CD as “bluesy folk-soul,” which perfectly captures its essence. Whatever it’s called, this is lasting music from one of the finest singers and songwriters of our time.

About ERIC ANDERSEN:

Eric Andersen has spent most of his life roaming Beat Avenue. It isn’t a street that’s led to fame and fortune – too full of left turns, both deliberate and involuntary – but it’s enabled him to follow his muse into a unique songwriting style that combines the poetic and the plainspoken, the throb of an open heart and the cynical second glance of the betrayed lover, the perpetual motion of a soul on fire. It’s been a long journey to get where he is, and he hasn’t stopped moving yet.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1943, Eric grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., where he taught himself to play guitar and piano. In his teens, he formed folk groups to perform the political songs of Woody Guthrie and The Weavers and immersed himself in the writings of Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and the Beat Generation of writers and poets Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso.

Eric embarked on Beat Avenue by embracing the movement’s “no rules” outlook and rootless freedom, which still dominates his creative outlook and lifestyle. He hitchhiked West in 1963 to meet and mingle with his idols and inspirations in San Francisco’s North Beach and Berkeley, an experience figuring prominently in the 26-minute genre-defying title song of his 2003 "Beat Avenue" 2-CD set.

After his “discovery” as a performer by the touring Tom Paxton, one of the earliest of the New York-based urban folksingers to write his own material, Eric relocated to Greenwich Village, the hub of the blossoming
folk scene, and started writing his first classics – “Violets of Dawn,” “Thirsty Boots,” “Come to My Bedside” – which helped set the template for the poetic, introspective singer-songwriter movement that blossomed in the late Sixties. Andersen’s circle of contemporaries included Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Fred Neil, and David Blue, among others – he paid eloquent tribute to them on his two most recent CDs, 2004’s "The Street Was Always There (Great American Song Series Volume 1)" and 2005’s "Waves (Great American Song Series Volume 2)," performing vibrant versions of some of their signature songs.

Andersen’s own skills as a songwriter have long been recognized by critics and fellow performers alike. The late Robert Shelton of the New York Times presciently described an early Andersen composition as “typical of the new language and poetic patterns of what will one day be called ‘an Eric Andersen song’.” The distinctive qualities of “an Eric Andersen song” have subsequently been captured on about two dozen original albums and in cover versions by artists including Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, Peter, Paul & Mary, Grateful Dead, Fairport Convention, and the Blues Project. Among the songwriters he directly influenced: Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Andersen was also the only solo singer-songwriter to take part in the legendary 1970 trans-Canadian train tour featuring Janis Joplin, the Dead, and The Band, later immortalized in the “Festival Express” movie and DVD.

Despite a career studded with heartbreaking near misses – Eric was almost signed by Beatles manager Brian Epstein before the latter’s death; the follow-up CD to his 1972 commercial breakthrough, "Blue River," was mysteriously lost by Columbia Records (eventually rediscovered and issued in 1991 as "Stages: The Lost Album"); he joined Dylan’s historic 1975 Rolling Thunder Tour for only a date or two – he has fearlessly expanded his musical and poetic vocabulary to encompass a bruised realism in his imagery, incorporating scenes from his constant international travels and collaborating with the likes of Lou Reed and the late Townes Van Zandt. Although rarely performing with a backing band, Andersen forged an award-winning recording and touring partnership in the early Nineties with former Band bassist Rick Danko and Norwegian country-oriented performer Jonas Fjeld that yielded two CDs, including the One More Shot live/studio set on Appleseed. In the last several years, Andersen has been joined on some concert stages by harmony singer Inge Bakkenes, whom he married last year; on the heels of "Blue Rain," Eric plans to play concerts and festivals using an electric band.

In recent years, Andersen has released a steady stream of acclaimed CDs on Appleseed and maintained a touring schedule that regularly touches down in the U.S., Canada, Japan, France, the Netherlands, Norway, and elsewhere. He’s performed at a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame tribute to Phil Ochs, at a celebration of Joni Mitchell in Central Park, appeared on the Bravo cable TV channel’s series of artist interviews and has been the subject of several XM Satellite Radio specials. In 2003, Eric traveled to San Remo, Italy, to receive the country’s most prestigious songwriting award, the Premio Tenco; fellow songwriter, poet and longtime friend Patti Smith was the co-recipient of the award. In February 2007, Eric was one of the recipients of a “Superstar” award during a five-day “20th Anniversary Tribute to the Life and Legacy of Andy Warhol” presented by New York’s Gershwin Hotel. Andersen appeared in the 1966 movie “Space” by Warhol, another native of Pittsburgh who, like Eric, chose to follow the unconventional Beat Avenue to a daring, unpredictable, and completely individual future.

reviews

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  • Excellent
    author: Garry Brooks

    More rocking and bluesy than Eric Andersen's other albums, but excellent nonetheless. Losing Hand" is, for me, the stand-out track, but there are quite a few gems apart from this song

  • Sweet Blue Rain
    author: Greg Dennis

    Lovely music, well recorded. Captures him at his mellow bluesy best. Andersen was uneven in performance the 2x I've seen him over the years -- but this is terrific show. Great to see him captured "live."

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