Eric Ziegenhagen
Director,
playwright, folksinger, humdinger.
Revamped website coming soon. Upcoming theater: --Directing Ethnic Cleansing Day by Brett Neveu as
part of The Side Project’s Cut to
the Quick Festival, November 16
through December 21. Also, earlier this year I became a
company member of Collaboraction Theatre Company. In May 2008 I wrote and directed the play
Bad News as part of their Sketchbook ’08 Festival at the Steppenwolf
Garage. Upcoming
music: My first CD, You’re Talking to
the Wrong Guy, is available at iTunes and CD
Baby. Recordings of two
shows I played at Schubas in Contact
information at the bottom of this page. |
|
Chicago Reader
profile from 2005.
"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 (Eric’s father would only
let him play his guitar as long as he kept it in the case, and after he learned
to play in that unconventional manner he never let it go), 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 (March 9,
2005)
"Here's an odd tidbit. Local folk singer/songwriter Ziegenhagen
learned to play guitar as a young child, but his father wouldn't let him take
the guitar out of the case, so he learned with the instrument lying on its
back. That's why he plays with it in his lap. Weird.
Tonight [Friday, 1/28] sees the release of his first record, 'You're Talking to
the Wrong Guy,' 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,
like 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 (January 26, 2005)
"An intelligent and entertaining tunesmith with a vivid and playful
imagination."
-Dan Wilkinson,
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WHAT I
LISTEN TO
Follow my
listening habits on LastFM.
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CONTACT
Drop a note here:
(c) 2008 Eric Ziegenhagen