We’ve featured the music of Eric Anders on our site multiple times over the past year. It only makes sense that we would invite him to join us for this in-depth, exclusive interview during our Mid Tenn Listens Podcast.

You can listen to the audio below or read through the transcript if you prefer text. You will also find multiple links and embeds included in the transcript.

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Check out our previous Eric Anders features while you listen. You can find them here and here (opens in new tab).

***A few changes since Eric and I did this interview.  Eric’s next release will be called “True September Songs,” not “Home,” as he said in the interview.  Also, True September Songs, Eric’s ninth release, will be produced by Jeff Peters.  Since Mark O’Bitz did so much of the work on this 2018 full-length release, Eric and Mark decided to release it as a duo, so another big change.  Eric and Mark expect it will be out in the spring of 2018.

Interview Transcript

Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)

Hi Joshua and thanks to you and to Middle Tennessee Music for doing this interview and for your excellent past reviews.

With regard to where I am from, I am a third generation Californian but did most of my growing up elsewhere, particularly on the east coast in DC, upstate New York and Rhode Island.

My music is pretty traditionally American singer-songwriter. I grew up listening to Neil Young, CSNY, The Doors, Creedence, James Taylor and Paul Simon.  Of course, since I was born in the sixties, I also listened to a lot of British music too: the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Cat Stevens, and, of course, the Beatles.  A lot of Beatles. Pretty standard fare.  Nothing very unique for my generation.  I think you can hear these influences in my music.

What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?

At the ripe age of 37, in 2002, I had earned a English PhD a couple years before and was training to be a psychoanalyst.  Around that time I started getting into singing and was lucky enough to meet guitarist and songwriter Mark O’Bitz.  Mark encouraged me to try to write some songs with him, and before we knew it we had almost twenty songs written together.  More than twenty would follow and they keep coming, I am glad to say.

I don’t play a musical instrument.  My job with all my collaborators is to come up with the melodies and write the lyrics.  I have collaborated with several other guitar players, but I continue to work with Mark most successfully and probably 70% of the songs I have co-written on my eight releases were written with Mark.

In fact, Mark and I have been working together a lot lately.  We collaborated on 100% of the songs on my upcoming ninth release, which will simply be called “Home.”  I hope to release this full-length album  in early 2018.  Mark and I will be headed to Seattle soon to record this new project with Matt Emerson Brown, my producer since 2006.  We will be using the same studio we used to record my most recent release, Eleven Nine.  The studio is Electrokitty in Wallingford, and we hope to gather most of the same musicians we had on Eleven Nine, especially:

http://www.electrokitty.com/

The violin and engineering skills of Garratt Reynolds,

Jeff Fielder on electric guitar,

Andrew Rudd on drums,

Stephen Baldock on bass,