Linford and Karin were honored to be approached by John Wooler in the late 1990’s, an A&R man and producer at Virgin Records who had started his own imprint (Pointblank) and worked with Pop Staples, Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker. John W. and another VP at Virgin (Ken Levitan) wanted to start a small imprint called Back Porch and sign American bands and songwriters who had strong visions in place, who had strong followings, who were making unique music that felt real, and who weren’t pursuing the superstar/celebrity approach to having a career in music. The rest of Virgin was focused on getting records out by Lenny Kravitz, Moriah Carey, The Rolling Stones etc. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

Back Porch Records was designed to offer a home to American songwriters a little closer to the dirt. Over the Rhine was the first band to sign with Back Porch, followed shortly thereafter by David Lowrey of Cracker. Back Porch went on to release records by The Neville Brothers, Charlie Sexton, Alejandro Escovedo, Frank Black and John Hammond to name a few.

It was a good relationship in many ways. Back Porch typically let Over the Rhine record and master their records prior to hearing a note of the music. All the artwork was designed in Ohio by the in-house team that had always worked with the band. Without breaking the bank, Back Porch helped to gently re-establish Over the Rhine (and Linford and Karin) as above ground, viable, signed recording artists, whose records were once again actually available in record stores. Over the Rhine soon became and remained the best selling act on Back Porch for the duration of the relationship (2000-2006).

Perhaps the only downside was, at the end of the day, Back Porch didn’t have to do all that much in the grand scheme of things on behalf of the band’s music. They knew Over the Rhine was going to sell X number of records regardless. It’s arguable that some opportunities to significantly grow the band’s following were missed. But the artistic freedom the band enjoyed was ultimately preferable to the alternative: having label execs tinkering willy nilly with the transmission under the hood.

Not too long after Back Porch was started, Virgin closed their offices in Los Angeles and actually shut down for awhile. Subsequently, Back Porch was run exclusively out of the Milwaukee offices of the Virgin Associate Labels, which included David Byrne’s Luaka Bop, and Peter Gabriel’s Real World.

“It was a real honor to have someone like John fly into Cincinnati, sit down over dinner at Scotti’s, and say that the music on Good Dog Bad Dog was an obvious place to start. We had believed in those songs, we had played them all over the USA and Canada (John had seen us perform at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano) and we were thrilled that GDBD was finally going to be available nationally and internationally. With no distribution, GDBD had already outsold our first three IRS releases combined, and it was a real blessing to have had something to do with a collection of songs that seemed to have a bit of a life force all their own. The songs certainly surprised us.

And besides, we were going through a real Van Morrison phase! Jack had turned us onto Van’s Into the Music and a lot of his stuff that we had never heard. And there we were sitting with Van’s A&R man getting as many stories as we could out of John regarding Van the Man himself, a famously recalcitrant, unapologetic recluse.

We had John ask Van Morrison if he would sing a duet with Karin on the song Little Blue River, and John said he responded that he wouldn’t sing with anyone under the age of 50! Oh well. We marked our calendars.”

The songs on GDBD found their way into scattered prime time television shows and some independent films, including Jon Favreau’s Love & Sex, with the fab Famke Jannsen. All I Need Is Everything was included on an excellent Starbucks/Hear Music Compilation. And as far as we know, GDBD was the only record to inspire an entire episode of The X-Files, which featured a dog-expert named Karin Bergquist and an evil Dr. Detweiler who took a stake through the heart in the final minutes.

“We hope you enjoy the songs on this re-released, re-mastered version of Good Dog Bad Dog. It remains a very special record for us.”