"Eric Andersen is one of our finest singers and songwriters, in the most literal sense of that tradition... the most elegant of singers." David Fricke, (Rolling Stone Magazine)

Swell Productions (Mindy Giles/Steve Nikkel) hope you will join us for this rare West Coast appearance at The Side Door, the new intimate performance room at The Fifth String now located in Curtis Park at the corner of Franklin Blvd. and 4th Ave.

Sony/Legacy Recordings will be issuing ”THE ESSENTIAL ERIC ANDERSEN” – A 42-track retrospective release covering fifty years of his recorded history, on March 30, 2018. The double CD and digital download will include the important classics which span across all his albums, including his early classics “Thirsty Boots” “Violets of Dawn” and “Close the Door Lightly.” The North American Tour to promote the new recording begins with the CD Release at City Vineyard, NYC in early April.

Band members with Eric include: Scarlet Rivera (violinist w/ Bob Dylan,Tracy Chapman, Indigo Girls, Keb Mo'), Cheryl Prashker (percussionist w/ Jonathan Edwards, Tracy Grammer and her own Celtic Roots Music group RUNA.)

Andersen first came to prominence as a performer in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and immediately became part of the Village folk and songwriter scene along with Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and was at the epicenter of the Greenwich Village singer-songwriter explosion in New York City.

With over 25 albums to his credit, Eric has been making extraordinary music since his early days in the Greenwich Village folk scene. This period produced some of his best known songs including: "Violets of Dawn", "Come to My Bedside", and "Thirsty Boots." His songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, The Grateful Dead and many others.

Andersen was seemingly involved in every scene of counter-cultural significance, even as his songwriting bona fides mounted over the course of twenty-plus albums: seeing Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and The Everly Brothers in concert as a kid outside Buffalo, NY; spotting John and Jackie Kennedy leaving a church in southern Massachusetts; playing and trading songs in Greenwich Village in 1964; opening for John Lee Hooker upon his arrival to NYC; meeting beat poets in San Francisco at City Lights bookstore and seeing them read the night JFK died; working to register black voters in Liberty, MS in 1965; being on the managerial roster of Brian Epstein (until his untimely death); starring with Edie Sedgwick in an Andy Warhol movie called Space; showing Joni Mitchell open G and D modal tunings on the guitar; playing on the legendary Festival Express (event and film) alongside The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, and Buddy Guy; recording in Nashville in the early ‘70s; being introduced to Cash by Dylan at Newport Folk Fest in 1964 and later appearing on TV’s The Johnny Cash Show; opening for The Doors, Elton John, and The Byrds; living in the Chelsea Hotel in the 1970s alongside Kris Kristofferson, Sam Shepard, and Leonard Cohen; moving to Woodstock in the mid-70s; playing on the first two shows of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour; co-writing with Townes Van Zandt and Lou Reed; moving to Norway and then the Netherlands; and singing with Rick Danko in the trio Danko/Fjeld/Andersen.