In this interview spotlight, I chat with Eric Anders & Mark O’Bitz about their collaborative music project, the latest releases, challenges and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
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.)
My family is very Californian, going back for generations on both sides, but I grew up on the east coast and in Europe. As an adult, I have spent most of my time in California, both southern and northern. I currently reside in a suburb of the East Bay.
I see my music as mostly influenced by the music I grew up with in the 70s: the Beatles, Stones, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, etc. I had six great albums in the 70s that got a lot of play: Neil Young’s Harvest, Dylan’s Desire, CCR’s Cosmos Factory, The Eagles’ Greatest Hits, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, and Dire Strait’s Dire Straits. I hear our sound as very much influenced by all of these great albums from the 70s.
We rarely know what to say regarding genre classifications for our music, especially since our style ranges from more indie (Tethered to the Ground) to more Americana (Remains In Me, Eleven Nine, and a lot of our duo releases).
What led you down this path of music?
I got into writing and recording songs in the early 2000s (in my late 30s) when I met Mark at one of his shows and we decided to collaborate on music.
I then tried to make up for lost time by releasing three critically-acclaimed solo releases in four years: Not At One (2003, CD Baby Founder Derek Sivers said this was “the best CD he had ever heard”), Songs for Wayward Days (2004), More Regrets (2005), and Tethered to the Ground (2006, our most successful release with regard to placements, one feature film and two major TV shows).
I wrote most of these songs with Mark and he played on some of these releases. This would hold true for my 2011 solo release, Remains In Me, and my “best of Eric Anders” retrospective Big World Abide in 2016, and my anti-Trump album Eleven Nine in 2017.
As a duo, we would release Of All These Things in 2018 (our debut release as a duo), Ghosts To Ancestors in 2019, and American Bardo in 2020.
… and what motivates you to keep going?
I recently retired from my day job as a psychoanalyst in order to focus more on music. Covid encouraged this change since I wasn’t interested in doing clinical work online and I knew Mark and I could continue doing our work together remotely.
What keeps me going with music is simply that I love the work. I can’t imagine ever “retiring” from working on music.
Mark and I are currently stuck inside like everyone else so we decided to do a pseudo-concept album: Sirens Go By: Music in the Time of Coronavirus. We will work remotely with all the musicians and the producer, Mike Butler–the same producer we used for American Bardo and This Mortal Farce.
How is this new release different than previous ones? Were you trying to accomplish anything specific?
The name “This Mortal Farce” is a play on the name others gave to Dante’s great poems of the afterlife, “The Divine Comedy.” The EP was an extension of the American Bardo project where all the songs were written by the two of us and inspired by George Saunders’ Mann-Booker-Prize-winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. The novel, a more Buddhist tour through an afterlife, was influenced by Dante’s poems.
All the songs on American Bardo are what I call “readings” related to one or more of the characters in the novel. I am interested in Buddhism, ghosts, and hauntings–especially the philosophical take on hauntings called “hauntology” and the Japanese version of the ghost story called the “yurei” story.
Lincoln in the Bardo is an American Buddhist’s yurei story that explores many hauntological themes, in addition to exploring what the word “American” means. My hope with American Bardo and This Mortal Farce was to further explore all of these themes through musical readings of the characters (American Bardo) and through more general musical expressions of what the novel brought out of me (This Mortal Farce).
We took sixteen songs into the studio when we started recording for American Bardo with Mike Butler in San Diego. The four songs on This Mortal Farce were not directly related to one of the characters in Saunders’ novel so we thought a separate EP would be a better way to release these four songs. This Mortal Farce will be my eleventh release (just counting EPs and LPs) and our fourth release as a duo.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this over saturated, digital music age?
Building a fan base large enough to justify touring. After so many releases, Mark and I have resigned ourselves to being studio recording artists. It would be nice if we had a large enough fan base to tour, but I would have to learn how to perform live … which is not that easy at 56 years old. I’ve done one tour (miserable money-sucking failure) and played live about twenty times since I started in 2002. Mark is a very experienced live musician.
How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
Mark and I both have home studios and we are able to keep costs down by using our home recordings more. We have done this exclusively on our current project and it has saved so much money that I think we will do this more going forward.
What was the last song you listened to?
“Three Hours” by Nick Drake. Mark and I are both very influenced by this amazing artist, also from the 70s (but not one I heard, unfortunately, until the early aughts). We have a new song that was inspired by him called “Twilight’s Last Gleaming,” a commentary on our current dystopia.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I prefer whatever will get our music heard.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Again, whatever will get us heard. Of course, BandCamp is the only one that seems to be concerned about artists, so I use their platform to release my albums.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
Our website www.AndersObitz.com.
Anything else before we sign off?
We are really proud of This Mortal Farce. We poured our hearts and souls into each song. Here is a video Mark made for “Comes and Goes” on the cheap. This might be considered a pre-release of this single. I think it is a rather touching video even if a bit crude. 🙂
