14 spare, evocative songs that tread the sweet and weird ground between Jonathan Richman and David Lynch.

14 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Gentle, POP: Delicate



Details:
An established stage director and playwright based in Chicago (and a Minnesota native), Eric Ziegenhagen has been performing his offbeat original songs in small clubs, coffeehouses and cabarets since the late 1990s.

His first CD, You're Talking to the Wrong Guy, was recorded by Dan Dietrich (Andrew Bird, The Redwalls, Head of Femur) in a single marathon session at Wall to Wall Recording in 2004.

In Chicago, Eric has performed at Schubas, The Hideout, Uncommon Ground and elsewhere, opening for the likes of Kevn Kinney, Bill Morrissey, and Hammell on Trial. He performed at NXNE in Toronto in 2000 and 2002, both times earning "Critic's Pick" designations and positive reviews in Toronto weekly NOW.

On stage, he's a casual and conversational fellow with opaque songs, treading the warm and weird ground between Jonathan Richman and David Lynch - or between Gram Parsons and Andy Kaufman. He works in the tradition of hard-to-pin-down individual artists like Leonard Cohen, Robyn Hitchcock, Vic Chestnutt, and Mary Margaret O'Hara (all big influences).

Writes songs, plays them on a four-string nylon-string open-tuned guitar slung flat across his lap. The story: Eric's dad owned a guitar when Eric was growing up. Papa Ziegenhagen would let little Eric play the guitar as long as he kept it in the guitar case, and so he learned how to play that way.

A darling of the Chicago theater scene, Eric was singled out in 1999 by American Theatre magazine (the Rolling Stone of the theater world) as one of 15 up-and-coming U.S. theater artists under 30.

NICE THINGS SAID:
"His own lyrics are imaginative, as you might expect...He sings a lot about cold and snow, as is appropriate for a Great Lakes guy, using inclement weather to launch into a sort of atmospheric poetry of extremity in which the characters dodge monsters and love each other in the same kind of dreamy haze." - Monica Kendrick, Chicago Reader

"An intelligent and entertaining tunesmith with a vivid and playful imagination." -Americana UK

"Chicago's Eric Ziegenhagen (a native Minneapolitan) makes strikingly unconventional folk music on his debut longplayer, You're Talking to the Wrong Guy, opting for a rarely seen approach to acoustic guitar playing (he writes and performs on a four-string nylon-string open-tuned guitar slung flat across his lap). The unconventional approach may have been born out of necessity...but it yields truly rich results, a sweetly plucked sound that feels oddly full in its nakedness. With a warbly voice strangely reminiscent of outsider music legend Daniel Johnston in its boyish innocence, Ziegenhagen has turned plenty of heads in search of something new in his current place of residence. Come on down and see what all the fuss is about."
-- Rob Van Alstyn, Pulse of the Twin Cities, 3/9/05

"'You're Talking to the Wrong Guy' [is] a collection of fourteen folk songs played on a four-stringed acoustic guitar, sung with true Midwest intimacy. 'Can't Hold Love at Bay' begins the record and puts you next to a dirty, boat-ridden lake down south, lke an opening to one of those movies, when you're trying to establish Southern climate. Ziegenhagen sounds a little like Leonard Cohen but comes off more lighthearted, with his lyrics bouncing from the extremes of weather to the disappointment of love. When it's all said and done, Ziegenhagen shows how to balance personal lyrics with the general mouthful that appeals to everyone, and 'You're Talking to the Wrong Guy' exists on its own as a record of despondency that wisely never takes itself too seriously."
-Tom Lynch, New City (Chicago), 1/26/05

"Moonlighting Chicago playwright Eric Ziegenhagen revelled in the small turnout, which suited the rec-room intimacy of his performance style. His self-effacing between-song banter was just as entertaining as the tunes he crooned, accompanying himself on his lap-strummed acoustic guitar...A festival highlight."
-Tim Perlich, NOW (Toronto weekly), NXNE 2002 wrap-up