Early in the band’s career, Over the Rhine drafted an intentionally malleable, all-encompassing description of their music — post-nuclear-pseudo-alternative-folk-tinged-art-pop. This playful overview aided the goal of avoiding pigeonholing a group to a sound. It meant something and nothing. Over the past two decades, OtR’s founding members Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist have unwittingly lived according to that credo, following their muse amidst intimate musical spaces that envelop Americana, pop, jazzy touches and beyond into a niche that’s all their own.
Taking a different approach to every recording in order to make each experience distinctive, the duo brought in producer/musician Joe Henry for their current release, The Long Surrender. Along with special guests including Lucinda Williams and Henry’s son, Levon, the subtly melodic material resembled, sonically, a crackling fireplace spreading warmth throughout a room.
Just as they have maintained control of the creative process, OtR have done the same with the business side of their career. The financing for the recording and release of the new album on its Great Speckled Dog label came about through donations by fans.
Working with a new business model for today’s musicians is just one topic discussed with Linford during a conversation that begins at the beginning of OtR and moves around to “The Long Surrender,” Allen Ginsberg, the stylistic content of the music and longevity as a songwriting, recording, performing (and married) act.
JPG: As far as origins are you from Ohio or did you end up in Cincinnati due to the music scene or college…?
LD: I was born in Hartville Ohio. Actually born in Canton, grew up in Hartville. Karin mostly grew up in Barnsville, which is way southeast down near Wheeling (West Virginia). She was born in California and lived in Phoenix for a few years when she was young. Kind of ended up in Ohio where her family had roots. We were small town Ohio kids. My family did move around a bit. Just for the record, I did come back to college in Canton. That’s where I met Karin at Malone College. Quite the liberal arts college. I ended up migrating towards Cincinnati with some other musicians. There was a little bit of a scene down here. Housing was super cheap at Over the Rhine (Cincinnati neighborhood). Just kind of ended up becoming home.
JPG: That’s interesting because being near the Canton area around that time there were music scenes going on in Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh. When I first heard about Cincinnati band such as you, Afghan Whigs, Ass Ponys and others were you already familiar with things there and you gave it a shot because in your letter at www.overtherhine.com you mentioned about being shocked to be in the middle of the city and all the concrete and few trees.
LD: That was certainly a big change from my past, a family of nature lovers; my little apartment on Main Street in Over the Rhine there. I could see no tree from my apartment but there’s something ragged and beautiful and a little spooky about that neighborhood. It was a bad part of town. Later, after somehow believing that it was the perfect place to start a band, we realized that just four to five blocks from where I lived that Hank Williams recorded “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” They have erected, finally, one of those historical plaques on that street where that studio was. No wonder I was feelin’ it!
Yes, Ass Ponys, Afghan Whigs, there was a little bit of a buzz for some of these bands getting signed to major labels. It was a little all over the map in terms of a scene. There was a lot of live music happening. There was something a little bit dangerous about the alternative music scene that happened in the ‘90s. I think we took that danger and eventually took it to a quiet place. A lot of people took that danger and wanted to make it all about being super loud.
So…I don’t know. I still haven’t quite figured it all out. We had a pretty rich, fertile neighborhood in which to start a band and try our hand at making a few records. We started touring fairly extensively and did about 20-some shows with Adrian Belew before we were signed. Worked our way out in San Francisco opening for him. We got an opportunity to open some dates for Bob Dylan. We even played a couple festivals, and then when we got signed to IRS [records], we hit the ground running pretty hard. But the thing about being part of a scene, if you’re a touring musician, is that you’re never home. In some ways I feel once we really began touring that I did kind of lose that connection a little bit. We’re still friends, some of the guys — Ass Ponys…John Curley (of Afghan Whigs) is still a fairly significant part of the Cincinnati music scene and a producer and a studio owner. RicHordinski, our first guitar player, owns his own studio and is a producer.
JPG: I want to get to The Long Surrender, but since we’ve started this way, let allow it to take its course. Since you mentioned Ric, I interviewed him all those many years ago when you supported the album, Eve. I remember asking him since IRS re-released Patience before Eve came out, which album displayed a truer version of the band. Eve sounded more alt-rock of the day. As he put it, it’s just another different side of the band.
LD: There are two things that I would say in response to that. Even from the very beginning, somehow, we had gotten it into our heads, even with those first few records, that we didn’t want to make the same record over and over again. So, our first record, Till We Have Faces, was a little hard to define. It was a little rough around the edges. Not a loud record, but it was very earthy. Had a little bit of… a little bit of an alt-country influence. Patience was a lush record. It was a little bit more about Karin’s vocals, a little bit about the three-dimensional stuff that Ric was starting to do with his guitar playing. And then Eve, we had been playing a lot of clubs, and a lot of beer bottles breaking. One response to that is to just turn the amps up. ‘You have to pay attention to what we’re doing.’ Another response, which we found out later was just to get absolutely quiet, and actually getting absolutely quiet can very quickly change a room and bring people into our evolution, which was called Good Dog Bad Dog. The record that came out after Eve, we had left IRS records. They let us out of our deal shortly before the label was shutdown. They were one of the early casualties of major labels consolidations.
I think IRS got subsumed into the EMI world. Everything was shutdown. People went home and all of a sudden there wasn’t an IRS records anymore. Kind of alarming. Kind of one of the red flags, what is going on in these major corporations that aren’t even necessarily connected to music in any way, what’s going on with them buying record companies and…
Anyway, we had this collection of demos, which was very quiet, a quiet personal collection of songs that we produced independently after we left IRS. That little independent record outsold all three IRS records combined. It taught Karin and I that it’s really not about the music industry at the end of the day. It’s about the songs. It’s about the recordings, what kind of connections people are making with the songs. Everything changed. We were starting to find something that sells was authentic to who we are. Even if it was out of step with the times, there’s a tremendous confidence and energy that comes with, ‘This is who I am and I’ll take whatever it comes because this is what I’ve got.’ We had some stores swing pretty wide open after we released “Good Dog Bad Dog.” Ended up touring with Cowboy Junkies for a few years. They were very much kindred spirits. Just really began finding, I think, our true audience and that audience since then has been incredibly tuned in and incredibly respectful of whatever that authentic thing is.
JPG: Now, you just didn’t go with releasing your albums on your own label but you took that to another level with a different business model, by having your audience fund the making of The Long Surrender.
LD: Well, the traditional model, of course, is to borrow some money from the record label and make the record and then pay the money back with really horrendous terms. And traditionally, after you were done paying off the record label, they own the music. I think everybody realizes that model has imploded and the music industry has devoured itself from the top down. I guess one alternative approach is not an idea that we came up with is rather than borrowing the money, why not just let people that love your music come in on the front end and make the record with you. When we had the opportunity to record with Joe Henry it felt a little bit like an adventure was unfolding. We were very excited about this opportunity. We wanted people that were interested to be able to come along in real time and be surprised along with us. Whatever might happen.
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