About Eric Westphal

Musician, singer and songwriter Eric Westphal was born in Jackson Heights/Queens New York. He began playing guitar when he was five years old, by age nine he was taking classical guitar lessons and just as he turned eleven years old gave his first live classical guitar recital. For the next few years he focused mainly on his playing performing more classical recitals while also practicing & playing bass guitar in several pick up and mostly cover bands with high school friends.

By the age of fifteen Eric found another passion tied to his love for music – song writing. The songs ideas came pretty quickly to him although like most beginners the content was somewhat naïve, he continued to write and in his own words “after about a hundred songs in, my writing started to come together”. Working with a number of bands through these years his songs slowly made their way into the cover band’s live set lists, eventually by the age of 21 Westphal started his own full on original group called the James Blonde Band. This band played all original songs mostly penned by Eric and in Northern California they enjoyed heavy radio airplay with a solid three year run of independent record output.

The James Blonde Band were now opening multiple shows for major headliners of the day, Journey, Greg Kihn, Elvin Bishop, Tommy Tutone, The Eric Martin Band, Steele Breeze, & The Pretenders to name a few. The band did one video in 1982 for their single; Every Boy Wants To Be With My Girl. A new version of the band reformed in the 2000’s to record two fine power pop albums featuring the original 80’s material, ‘International Orange’ & ‘Stockton Rhythm’. In 1984 the original James Blonde disbanded after the tragic and sudden death of best friend and bass player Marvin Hudson. From there a songwriting relationship developed between Westphal & Dirk Hamilton that would produce fifty+ co-writes over a span of nearly 30 years and twelve plus albums. ‘Too Tired To Sleep’, ‘Go Down Swingin’, ‘Yep’, ‘Sufferupachuckle’, ‘Orphans’, ‘SexSpringEverything’, ‘The Ghost of Van Gogh’, ‘The Relative Health of Your Horse Outside’, ‘More Songs From My Cool Life’, and the 2011 release ‘Thug Of Love Live’. In the late 70’s and early 80’s Dirk recorded four critically acclaimed albums: two while on ABC records and two while at Elektra/Asylum Records.

A poet and musician known for his uniquely intelligent lyrics and passionate performance style, Hamilton created music that couldn’t be pigeon-holed into one genre or another. Westphal played bass for Hamilton on multiple US tours, including a dozen Italian tours as well. During the 90’s Westphal was still part of the Dirk Hamilton Band, but was also a member of Gary Young’s Hospital, which produced three studio albums; ‘Hospital’, ‘Things We Do for You’, and ‘The Grey Album’. Hospital played shows mostly in California, New York & Boston. On the strength of the single ‘Plant Man’ which was in heavy rotation on MTV in 1995 and was featured on an episode of Beavis & Butthead, they opened live shows for Hole, Pavement, and Beck at Lollapalooza in Sacramento, played the Fillmore in San Francisco and shows in Los Angeles with Sebadoh, and opened for Mercury Rev in New York City. Gary and Eric were also featured on a four song 1996 EP, Waterloo, California with Jackson Griffith , Westphal sang co-lead vocals on Mic Gillette’s 1995 release Newvo Kids was also featured on background vocals on 1996’s Strokeland Superband album, alongside the Tower of Power Rhythm section featuring lead vocals by Huey Lewis, Bill Champlin, & Mickey Thomas.