Eric Andersen - Foolish Like The Flowers

“The road is a goddamn impossible way of life,” The Band’s guitarist Robbie Robertson once said. But it is also where special encounters and events happen. It keeps dreams, hopes, and visions alive, even though there is a price to pay.

So two musicians can miss each other by a whisker, only to find themselves working together years later. On a formidable summer night, back in 1975, Eric Andersen was performing with Bob Dylan at New York City’s Greenwich Village, on the first show of what would become the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue. In those same days, Scarlet Rivera was recording with Blowin’ In the Wind ’s writer one of his absolute masterpieces, the album Desire .

Over forty years later, they got on the same stage for a series of wonderful concerts. They had first met in person about a decade earlier, when Scarlet had attended one of Eric’s shows in Los Angeles. Intrigued by what she had seen and heard, she expressed the wish to work with him. “I had never met her before and I still didn’t know her music, but I understood that she was very good,” Andersen tells. “I was looking for a new violinist after the end of my fruitful collaborations with Michele Gazich and Joyce Andersen. So we decided to have a few shows together. People showed great appreciation. Right from the start, I loved the deep tones she can draw from her violin.”

And so the road goes on.

In the winter of 2019 the pandemic was just around the corner, even if we were still blissfully unaware. For many, this would be the last show before the lockdown put a halt to all activities, including concerts. On the night of November 9 ^th 2019, a new Rolling Thunder Revue made a stop in Pavia, and the spirit was the same as always, in spite of the years that had passed: an urge to share emotions, feelings, and love. For Eric Andersen, whose career started in the Sixties, this has always been his mission. Performing in clubs in every corner of the world, exchanging glances, and establishing a connection between artist and audience that closes the distance between them.

By his side for these Italian concerts there was an outstanding transnational ensemble, which well represents how music can cross borders: his Dutch wife Inge Andersen at accompanying voice and choruses; the Canadian percussionist Cheryl Prashker; the excellent Italian dobroist Paolo Ercoli; and “The Queen of Swords” Scarlet Rivera, the gypsy violinist who gave Bob Dylan his sound – a New Yorker like Eric.

They were the heirs to that adventure, on a quest – like us – for redemption and beauty. And they would find it, as Eric confirms: “On that tour our small world music band played and sang wonderfully. Music is the universal wordless language.”

In the cozily retro club Spaziomusica in Pavia, a historic venue for Italian and international independent music, the band set out on a wild ride among folk melodies, metal strings, and ancient, mysterious sounds that conjure up ghosts and friends lost on that road, asking for mercy and offering the audience comfort and inspiration. Isn’t that what we all ask of music?

This CD features a handpicked, reasoned selection of songs from that concert, drawing – even if sometimes briefly – on all parts of Andersen’s long career. From his early folk days in the mid-Sixties with the ballad Dusty Box Car Wall , contained in his beautiful 1965 debut album Today Is the Highway , to more recent songs like the surprising You Can’t Relive the Past , written and recorded with former Velvet Underground member Lou Reed, this collection proves that the Norwegian singer-songwriter has always roamed the wide world of contemporary music, refusing to get stuck in the comfort zone of his early works, like many of his fellow artists.

The record that includes the beautiful Brazilian-inspired ballad We Were Foolish Like the Flowers , that also gives this collection its title, is from an almost forgotten phase between the late Sixties and the early Seventies. And we have to step further back to get to the origins of Violets of Dawn , a visionary poem that was recorded by some big names and that had such an effect on Leonard Cohen that after listening to it he decided to make music. Hills of Tuscany and Foghorn , instead, are featured in one of the songpoet’s most beautiful albums, that Memory Of the Future that in the late Nineties marked his full maturity. And finally, if the delicate Under the Shadows , recorded with his daughter Sari, is a testament to Andersen’s artistic longevity, this compilation couldn’t fail to also include two classics from his most internationally acclaimed work, Blue River : Sheila and Wind and Sand , dedicated to the imminent birth of Sari.

At 76, on that night Eric Andersen sang with a smooth, mellow voice that soared high, masterfully accompanied by a small ensemble whose members managed to elegantly fill the musical space without overpowering each other. All at each other’s service, and all at the service of music.

We have come full circle. The road has gone on and nobody could say it’s come to its end. This hasn’t been “a goddamn impossible way of life,” after all. When all is said and done, the words of his old friend from the Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan, effectively sum it up: “The thing about being on the road is that you’re not bogged down by anything. Not even bad news. You give pleasure to other people and you keep your grief to yourself.”