Eric Andersen has seen it all.
He hung out in Greenwich Village with Bob Dylan. He toured across Canada with Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead. He spent time in studios recording tracks with Joni Mitchell and even found time to teach the legendary “Both Sides Now” singer open G tuning.
Six decades later, Andersen is still on the road.
This fall, he’s playing shows all over New England, and on Saturday, September 20, he’ll be playing at Rose Garden Coffeehouse in Mansfield. The show is Andersen’s seventh stop on his fall tour, a tour that comes on the back of his newest album, “Dance of Love and Death.”
Eric Andersen strums the guitar.
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“Dance of Love and Death” is his first full length album since 2003. “It took 14 years to make it,” Andersen said. “I think it’s soulful. It’s a soulful record. … They’re not upbeat square dance songs, but they’re rhythmical. If it’s music that can make you move, it doesn’t matter if it’s loud, soft, whatever.”
Andersen performs frequently with just a guitar. He writes his own music. He is — in the purest sense of the phrase — a singer-songwriter. He’s not a folk singer and he doesn’t like being referred to as such. The reason? He doesn’t know that many folk songs. “It’s an easy moniker,” he said. “It’s a cheap shot to define someone.”
“I’m a writer,” he said, “a singer-songwriter.”
While Andersen drove south from New Hampshire to New York, his writer-ness presented itself quite clearly. He didn’t say that he was driving down to the city. He said he was “snaking” through the green trees and the blue sky. He said it quickly too. It wasn’t rehearsed. It was natural.
For Andersen, this ability to create without thinking, without forcing something, is necessary for creativity, it’s his artistic bread and butter. “When you start trying,” he said, puttering off before finding the right words: “Thinking is the Antichrist of art.”
There’s a song on the new album titled “Every Once in a While” that contains the lyric “How music can persuade.” When asked about this lyric, Andersen indirectly echoed that previous point. “I just wrote it down. I don’t know what it means all the time. I just wrote it down. It sounded good,” he said.
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His songs are deeply poetic. So much so, that in 2019, PBS produced a documentary on the singer entitled The Songpoet. But the richness of his lyrics are almost at odds with how the songpoet sees himself. “I’m surprised how deeply people take my stufff,” he said. “I’m a little astounded sometimes. They’re holding onto something that means a lot. … People want a mirror or something.”
These days, Andersen lives in the Netherlands. He has dual citizenship (Dutch and American) and often spends days writing or reading or walking the dog. He did a handful of shows in Italy about a year ago, but his current tour in the Northeast United States is his largest in some time.
“I write things,” he said before correcting himself: “Or, they write themselves. I do a lot of writing. I do a lot of reading. I travel. I keep occupied. That’s a good question: What am I doing? Sam, I’ve been avoiding that.”
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At 82-years-old, Andersen has had some time to think. “Time has a mind of its own,” he said. “You’re 23 now, but you won’t be 23 always, but you’ll probably think like a 23-year-old all your life. That’s what’s so shocking, because you physically grow older. But it isn’t time that makes it happen, it’s the process. Your body disconnects,” he said. “People have trouble walking, standing up, moving around, and it’s not time that does it. Time is just a measurement of a process.”
So how do you spend that time? For Andersen, he says it’s simple: “Listen to your inner voice, your own destiny, and follow your own star. Do what you want to do. That’s the only thing that keeps you free. You might get pushback on it. You might meet resistance from the jealous ones who don’t do what they want to do, but don’t let it stop you. Keep going.”
How to get tickets
Rose Garden Coffeehouse is located at 17 West St. in Mansfield. Tickets can be purchased at rosegardenfolk.com/music. Prices range from $39.19 to $55.20. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show will start at 7:30 p.m.
This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Iconic singer-songwriter Eric Andersen to play show in Mansfield, MA
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