eTown On-Stage Interview with Eric Andersen

Yeah, he told me that story. Yeah, let's see. You've been playing in a Cuban band and a guy drove up in a green car and it was Bob Dylan in a green car. That's it. When she's walking with long red hair and her violin, and the rest is history.

Yeah, exactly. Well, listen, I was almost exhausted from reading all the things that you've done. The scope of all those things has a lot of stuff in there. Yeah, you know, I saw some cuts. I mean, I even realized I don't know where I got all this stuff. It was amazing.

Yeah, you know, I had a lot of... I had to tell myself a lot of super aids with the... I didn't ever develop on me. He didn't... the sky... Parliament development. I had pictures. I had some of Joplin at the Landmark Hotel and Warhol at the top of Canada Hotel and wanted to turn his guitar stuff like that. Yeah, last time I saw Nick was with Rick Danko when he was doing his show thoughts in Kingston, kind of along the lines of cleaning up the Hudson River, if I recall. He was detail taping.

Oh, well, you know, you think so? I was actually in pre-med school. Would you like to be operated on by me? Not maybe not now, but out of anesthesia, imagine you have to be comfortably nominally. That's wild. That's wild. And thinking about all those times, you know, especially the things like doing voter registration in Mississippi and going to be with the striking coal miners again. I mean, there's a lot of pressure going on, there's a lot of tension going on like in the village during the sixties all over the place because of the Vietnam War was happening, you know, the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution was happening. This is like a real boho time in some ways, and I was kind of in between the crack between the beats and the hippies, you might say. And you saw all these things go down. Then you wanted to, you know, did the good guys lose? That's the thing. And you have to fight, you know. You've seen a lot too. You got Blue Reid and Laurie Anderson married. Yeah, think about that. He did. I did that. Yeah, that's right. But that's not... that doesn't... that's... government tension. Music and culture kind of leading the way. And in some ways, do you see that? Do you see it that way?

Yeah, it was Wade's line. That was Wade's line. Yeah, we were talking about a friend of ours, Wade Davis, who was in town this weekend and he saw... he's always good. He's just a traveler, you know. He's just educating ourselves and coming to another culture with some empathy and some understanding and some curiosity and looking behind the sensationalism and saying, 'Oh yeah, these are people. They love their kids, they struggle, and they want a better life.' And no matter where they are, family, people. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it's like all this kind of fear feeds into psychopathic behavior. And when you think about people have Twitter accounts with 16 million people and they're armed to the teeth, it gives you pause. Thought yeah, this is a really depressing conversation. You don't even have to talk. Just saying, be what you asked for.

I think you got to get up in the morning and just look around and do a realistic assessment of what your skills and gifts are and figure out a way to make a difference every day. That's all. And you try and you don't... it doesn't... you can't be attached to the results.

I don't do that. I have a hard time doing that. Yeah, I rarely listen to my own albums. I have a hard time. The one nice thing about doing shows and singing is it's so... with your songs, it's like a bit of a diary, yeah. It's like a little way of living life twice, you know. Going through your music, explore, see what's on the riverbanks going up, what's going by. And it's not the destination that counts so much as the journey. It's the travel that's the trip, yeah. And so I don't think about looking over my shoulder and all that stuff. In fact, I was looking at songs and I'm thinking, 'Who wrote those?' you know. Because every time you start a song, it's like you're starting all over again. You know, you think, 'Oh yeah, it's like riding a bicycle,' but yeah, because I always... writing is an exploratory thing. Yeah, it's about not to get a hitter than an effector with an audience. And when you're writing that song, you're in a particular place in a state of mind that's like a snapshot, a little postcard from your life at that moment. It truly is.

The first time I didn't see... I didn't see well. I met Rick in LA and he invited me to Woodstock to meet the band. And I went there. That was one period, like '67 before the Festival Express. And we in fact were walking in the Continental Hotel and we looked at an... it was an open hatch of a station wagon there. And it was the kind of hotels kind of like a lot. All the rock stars stayed in the station. I looked on and there were going on the walk into the lobby and we looked in the... Winnipeg Folk Festival. And that's when I wrote 'Blue River.' I was thinking a blue river with a band, yeah. And then I was doing the Winnipeg Folk Festival and I was sitting there. I heard something, man. What's going on? I heard music, man, behind me and I could see and there was Rick playing the bass on the guitar like down the line, you know. Yeah, a workshop, right? And then later, my daughter's... you know what I says? Look, you know, you do it. We're doing finishing some stuff of this Sony record and my daughter says, 'Get Rick,' you know, because it was always a friendly thing. And he, my daughter, and we were all friends and close. So I called Rick up and he said, 'Yeah, let's write a song.' So I went to his... we're gonna bind t-shirts and buying underwear and I'm like, 'Then again, one summer to fall, buying sweaters.' And there I was with a whole new wardrobe waiting to get Rick, to get him off his ass. 'Let's get to write a song.' He had to get all these preparations. And so finally we sat down, we wrote the song called 'Drifting Away.' Oh man, I mean, you couldn't make it up. The song happens when it's ready.

What does that mean? I'll tell you later. Okay, one thing about Ricky: everything we... musicians are kind of childlike as you... along with another singer or another... it just wasn't his thing, right? He was a brilliant, great bass player. But he... it was difficult. He got nervous and he got scared. And I remember I was sitting there like... that was him and you were me. He's got the bass, he's got three pairs of like drugstore glasses on, you know, to see the chart. And he's having me yell out the chords while he's recording. And I mean, this is how... and this is Rick Danko. Pretty funny. But for the bass track out, yes, huh? Yeah, and nobody in the world played bass like him.