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Initially, Nagler was a folk musician in the United States, and in 1966 he marched through Mississippi with Martin Luther King Jr., encouraging people to register to vote.[1] He married fellow musician Martha Beers in 1966 and due to their opposition to the Vietnam War they moved to Toronto in 1968, Nagler as a conscientious objector to the war. In 1972, Nagler returned to the United States to stand trial for draft evasion; he was acquitted.[1] Around 1971, Eric and Martha owned a guitar/folk-music store on Avenue Road in Toronto called the Toronto Folklore Centre. The couple divorced in 1977. Nagler was remarried to Shelley McCarthy in 1985 and according to his personal website currently resides near Shelburne, an hour north of Toronto, Ontario, and home of the Annual Canadian Championship Fiddling Contest.
Nagler plays a variety of instruments, often homemade or improvised, in the skiffle style. In addition to common traditional instruments such as the banjo and fiddle, and singing, he uses simple instruments such as washboard, spoons, jaw harp, and slide whistle (and provides instructions on making them on his record Fiddle Up a Tune), together with more exotic instruments, such as the psaltery. Most unusual is his "Sewerphone", made of 10 feet of ABS plastic and the agitator from a clothes washer, and functions similarly to a tuba, as described in his "My Lovely Sewerphone" (Come On In! 1985).w
