Eric Andersen

Les Blank's first feature-length documentary captures music and other events at Leon Russell's Oklahoma recording studio during a three-year period (1972-1974).

A melange of casual talking, food fights, and folk singing. The film includes Eric Andersen with his guitar, singing his lines, and leading Edie Sedgwick and her friends in unscripted sing-alongs of popular songs including "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Eric Andersen is widely regarded as one of the most poetic songwriters that sprang from the Greenwich Village folk scene of the 1960s. His artful mélange of love, despair, hope and stirred memory has earned him a passionate international following and the respect and admiration of artists ranging from Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen to Lou Reed and Wyclef Jean. The Songpoet offers a look into the mind, soul and creative process of this multifaceted, complex and singularly driven artist whose career saw great expectations waylaid by misfortune.