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Described as a "sometimes pensive, often poetic, and continually progressive folk-pop ensemble," the Cincinnati-based, husband-and-wife team of Over the Rhine has been making music for more than 20 years. Fronted by Karin Bergquist's torchy, devil-may-care voice brimming with Midwestern soul, the band is led by brilliant keyboardist and songwriter Linford Detweiler who can seamlessly move from avant garde jazz to whisper-quiet folk subtleties to flat out rock. Over the Rhine returns to the Lincoln Theatre in support of their 2011 release, The Long Surrender.
CAPA presents Over the Rhine at 8pm on Wednesday, December 7, at the Lincoln Theatre (769 E. Long St.). Tickets are $28.50 at the Ohio Theatre Ticket Office (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase by phone, please call (614) 469-0939 or (800) 745-3000. Students between the ages of 13-19 may purchase $5 High Five tickets while available.Over the Rhine began in 1990 as a conventional four-piece rock band, albeit one far more in tune with the nuances of songcraft than its three-chord, grunge-era contemporaries. Adopting the name of the gritty Cincinnati neighborhood called Over-The-Rhine, the group quickly became a local sensation and graduated from sold-out weekend club dates to opening tours for Adrian Belew and Bob Dylan. Two lavishly packaged independent records later, the group was signed to IRS, which re-released second their record, Patience.Seeking artistic autonomy, the band returned to independence for Good Dog Bad Dog, a collection of glorified demos and home recordings that nonetheless eventually outsold the band's three previous releases combined, and knit the band tightly to its fan base which had come to hang on the group's every move.
During the next few years, the band was pared to the core duo of Detweiler and Bergquist, as the two toured with the Cowboy Junkies as "honorary members" of the group, releasing their Virgin/Backporch debut, Films for Radio. Next came Over the Rhine's magnum opus, the double album Ohio, "a deeply moving, maddening, and redemptive work of art, and necessary, ambitious pop," as All Music Guide's Thom Jurek put it in a 4.5-star review. The intimate, living-room-recorded Drunkard's Prayer followed as their sound expanded beyond rock to encompass elements of country and jazz, punctuated by the final track, a moody, late-night reading of "My Funny Valentine."Detweiler and Bergquist's evocative, earthy songwriting and impassioned delivery is at its finest in the 2007 release, The Trumpet Child. A collaboration with ultra-talented Nashville producer/arranger Brad Jones, it celebrates American music in richly imaginative ways. Unfolding like an unforgettable evening of blissful underground cabaret, an all-night performance at a private party, or jovial friends passing around instruments together into the wee hours, The Trumpet Child is a juicy, informally epic pop album and unquestionably Bergquist's finest hour vocally.
The Long Surrender, the new studio album from Over the Rhine, is something rare and wondrous-an intimate epic shot through with the joys and sorrows of modern-day existence and the unchanging fundaments of the human condition. The fan-funded record, to be released on OtR's own Great Speckled Dog label, will see the light of day 20 years after their 1991 debut. It's the bountiful result of a collaboration between the couple and producer Joe Henry, whose songs and recordings they've long admired. Going in, the expectations of these three fiercely intelligent, soulful artists were as wide-open as the horizon stretching out from the southern California desert, each of them eager to discover where their shared journey would take them.On Monday, May 17, Detweiler and Bergquist arrived at The Garfield House in South Pasadena for the first day of recording. By Friday afternoon, the album was complete. "We walked away feeling like we had just experienced the week of a lifetime," says Linford. The near-miraculous speed with which it was made is attributable in large part to the song-serving musicians Henry had intuitively chosen for the project: drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist David Piltch, pedal steel and all-things-stringed player Greg Leisz, keyboard sound-scapists Keefus Ciancia and Patrick Warren and Joe's son Levon on tenor sax, along with soul singers James Gilstrap, Niki Haris and Jean McClain.
Even more than their earlier records, The Long Surrender seamlessly interweaves the disparate idiosyncratic strains that form the many-colored crazy quilt of American music. "We're really only reflecting what we've already heard," Linford explains, "a mix of all the music we grew up with and were drawn to-old gospel hymns, the country and western music on WWVA, the rock and roll records the kids at school passed around, the symphonic music that my father brought home, the jazz musicians we discovered in college, the Great American Songbook performers that Karin's mother loved, and of course the various singer-songwriters that eventually knocked the roof off our world. But when this music is reflected back to the listener through the filter of our own particular lives, hopefully it becomes a much different experience (maybe even somewhat unique) for those with ears to hear."
www.overtherhine.com
