After the national release of Good Dog Bad Dog, it felt like Over the Rhine was making a brand new start. Karin and Linford had been experimenting with the band’s line-up for several years. Thousands of new listeners had discovered the band through the songs on Good Dog Bad Dog, but the Over the Rhine faithful from days gone by had waited five long years for a new studio album.

Linford explains further: “With Good Dog Bad Dog, Karin and I felt we had hit a bit of a stride as songwriters. We had taken an understated, torchy, smoky approach that really left room for Karin’s voice to breathe. And we were trying to get at something utterly heartbroken with many of our songs, trying to pack as much joy and sadness as we could into the same 5 minutes of music.

But we decided we weren’t going to make Good Dog Bad Dog for the rest of our lives. We had already made that record. It was time to move on.

So we threw out the rule book, we tossed aside much of what we thought we knew, and we kicked ourselves out of our comfort zone. We decided we were going to make a juicy, messy pop record.

We bought a bunch of used ADAT recorders and synced them up in the attic of The Grey Ghost, and all of a sudden we had 40 tracks to play with at home.

We got Dave Perkins involved, a lively raconteur of a theologian who could make us laugh, an ex-road dog who had toured with Jerry Jeff Walker and produced records by Carole King. Dave had an old bus in his back yard in Nashville full of vintage recording gear, a two-inch 24-Track tape machine, some old compressors etc. We drank a lot of Lagavulin and Laphroaig on that bus.

And I fired myself from playing bass, and we hired Byron House who has since become a wonderful ally and friend. (Ed. note: Byron’s upright bass playing was featured prominently on Drunkard’s Prayer, Snow Angels and Live From Nowhere Volume One. He continues to occasionally guest with Over the Rhine.)

We hired Don Heffington to play drums. Karin and I were both big Lone Justice fans, and Don had played with Bob Dylan and Victoria Willams – lots of interesting stuff. We played some scattered dates with Don sitting in on drums – great player, lots of authority. We learned a lot just by having him around.

Karin and I wrote what we felt were the best songs we were capable of at the time, and then just threw the kitchen sink at them musically.

It was fun.

Our publisher was working with Dido at the time, and on a whim we included one of her tunes (Give Me Strength) that seemed to fit the theme of the record well. Another stretch for us musically.

Ultimately, we felt like Films For Radio got away from us a bit as a body of work, it all felt a little out of control, but we really enjoyed the ensuing tour, which mostly featured Jack Henderson on guitar, Wade Jaynes on bass, and Dale Baker on drums. Songs like The World Can Wait, I Radio Heaven, Little Blue River and When I Go seemed to want to explode when we played them in front of an audience. It was a great ride.”

Films For Radio sold more copies in Paris than it did in the entire state of Ohio, Over the Rhine’s very own neck of the woods. Karin and Linford and the band toured much of the USA and 13 countries in Europe on the Films For Radio tour. In 2001, OtR was included on a handful of European compilations with bands such as Coldplay, David Grey, Gorillaz and Dido.

Pop record indeed.

“We hope you like this musical chapter. We were swinging for the fences.”