Eric Sommer: Combining the Elements and Hitting the Road
By Jacob Bowman, Staff Writer
“On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again / The life I love is making music with my friends / and I can't wait to get on the road again.”
If you are unfamiliar with this quote, it's either because you’ve never heard of Willie Nelson or it's because the new lifestyle ofEric Sommer has molded your brain into thinking, “Quote, what quote? This is simply a description of my long-lost friend Eric.”
Long-lost indeed. As an off-and-on Athens, Ohio homesteader, Eric Sommer has officially given up on any form of a domestic lifestyle and has found a new home on the road. However, the road isn’t something necessarily foreign to Sommer.
Eric Sommer grew up playing the guitar, yet his efficiency may be a result of his worldly influences. “I started [playing guitar] when I was about six or seven, and I grew up in Southeast Asia with very few things to do. Playing guitar seemed to be one of the few things that was pretty cool to do and I didn’t need a lot to do it,” Sommer said.
Growing up in numerous locations, ranging from Southeast Asia to Denmark, the world steadily impacted his style; however, his riffs weren’t host to one genre as he kept an open mind to a wide variety of musical breeds. With stints across Europe ranging from British-based blues all the way to German electronica, Sommer’s guitar was busy at work.
Don’t let the bluesy-electronica influence fool you of his current sound though, for at this point in life, Eric was still a fat minute from mastering the guitar, although plenty of practice was in the works. “I was an okay guitar player when I lived in Denmark,” Sommer shared, “but you just have to make that decision, 'Are you going to balance along that line of mediocrity or are you gonna go and try and combine all the elements, vocal, songwriting and really good guitar playing?'”
Eric Sommer had chosen the later, as the remainder of his time in Aarhus, Denmark was spent working on perfecting his playing over a span of six months. “I locked myself in the basement of the architect school and spent 15 hours a day writing and trying to make sense of the fret board,” he said.
With a vast amount of experience and a wallet low on Euros, it was time to head back to the States where, in Boston, Sommer would meet his true influences and settle on the sound his fans are more familiar with today.
“I was broke, had no money and played on the streets for a long time. I lived in south Boston warehouses in the winter with no heat. Then I went to Berkeley and met a lot of people who influenced me,” Sommer stated.
In Berkeley, Eric ran into Mick Goodrick, who was then known as a member of the Gary Burton Quartet and today may be better known as Mr. Goodchord, a renowned guitar teacher.
Yet it was Harvard Square where Sommer ran into David Landau, whose work he followed tediously for a year, impacting him extensively.
“He was playing Charlie Parker solos over rock and roll beats and it was just phenomenal,” Sommer said of Landau’s work. This phenomenon lead to the folk-y Boston style we hear from Sommer today, and is a sound that fits in quite well with the Athens area. “More than any other place in Ohio, the style of music I do and the sound I have, folks just seem to enjoy it in Athens.”
Luckily enough, Athens is playing quite a role in this man's career as someone decided they wanted to put a film together on the musician.
Sommer recently received a call to do a movie representing everything he had been doing with his career. The filmmaker and Sommer decided to do the live sequences at none other than Athens’ Jackie O’s on May 21.
Jackie O’s was fitting for the filming of his set, because Sommer holds the venue in high spirits when he speaks about Athens. “It’s a great place. Their beer is doing great and they treated me very, very well and I just love that whole crew.”
The film not only set to display Sommer’s work on stage, but also gave some insight on his career as a novelist. Sommer has already writtenRed Chairs, which gives some acuity to what it's like hitting the road with him; however, his new novel, Black Pancake, is set to take a rather different path.
When describing his novel, Sommer stated, “There is something so wonderful about a truck’s tracks in the mud and then there’s rain and beautiful little pools of rain collect in the tracks and that’s magnificent. It's that kind of visual imagery that sustains life. It sings beauty and makes it possible to live into the world without being crushed by it.”Black Pancake, set to release next month, will cover more sentimental thoughts as well as stories of Sommer growing up. The reader may experience life in an objective view alongside the author himself.
Eric Sommer has combined the elements and then some. Mastering lyricism, his fret board and a pen and paper, he is living life to his fullest, and holds a story full of life experiences.
