Performing Songwriter: Rating 4 1/2 Stars
By Clay Steakley

“(Opening Scene: music critic shaking fist at editor, “You want me to review this in how many words?!!? You devil, you.”) A record of disarming beauty and stunning emotional focus. Very rarely does a band like this come down the pike and even more rarely do they consistently top themselves. Rarer still are songwriting teams like Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist, who craft hushed, heart-rending songs of love, faith, doubt and joy. The 21 songs represented here are set in an unpolished sonic setting and deeply layered with texture upon texture of engaging instrumentation.

Then there’s Bergquist - a singer unparalleled in her subtle twists of emotion, her understated delivery and her springwater clear voice. The songs range from whispery piano/vocal outings to full-band drives and hit every variation between. The combination of Bergquist’s voice with superb songwriting and tasteful playing makes this a highlight record of the year.”

Cincinnati City Beat
By Mike Breen

I recently mentioned to a friend that Over the Rhine was going to be an upcoming cover story subject in an issue of CityBeat, the band’s hometown weekly paper. His reaction summed up the under-the-radar status OtR seems to have sometimes in the “Local Music Scene.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, starting his response with an apologetic tone, “but do they even matter anymore?”

The retort was understandable, given the band’s low profile on the local front in recent years. But, in a scene where at least one-third of the artists think a record, publishing or management deal is the be-all, end-all, another third just wants creative freedom and relative isolation to explore their hobby to the fullest and the remainder are trying to make a living, here’s a band with all of those aspects rolled into one.

They have a major label deal with an imprint known for allowing acts to develop without “I don’t hear a single” nibblings at their ears. It provides an assumedly modest income. And they remain in a city far enough away from biz-central that distractions are minimal.

In multi-instrumentalist Linford Detweiler and singer Karin Bergquist’s music comes the sense of self-controlled empowerment. The OtR braintrust has more in common with “career artists” like Neil Young or Tom Petty but without the orneriness that boils the blood of label execs counting on a bottom line.

It’s Over the Rhine’s seemingly infinite artistic liberty that first comes to mind when digging into their double-disc opus, Ohio, their latest for Back Porch/Virgin. The label might not bankroll an Over the Rhine Rap/Metal album, but they trust the band’s instincts enough to follow them on their journeys (nowadays, how many non-Gold-record-selling, major-label artists are given permission to release a two-disc set?).

The trip through Ohio is a far more expansive journey than any of their past recordings. While they do traipse through uncommon ground, the gentle, ethereal sound of OtR still is instantly recognizable.

OtR’s emotive, airy atmospherics have been their most obvious trademark, but that lilt is something they’ve had to artfully adapt over the years, particularly with the loss of guitarist Ric Hordinski and the shift toward a more grounded sound. On Ohio (and the slightly less organic but still stunning previous album, Films For Radio), the duo is far from relying on a sonic fog machine for candle-lit ambiance anymore, dispensing a sparseness that utilizes basic elements -- piano, light drums, sparse acoustic and electric guitar, pedal steel -- that somehow still manages to create a spacious haze.

The band’s mystical glide on Ohio’s “What I’ll Remember Most,” “Long Lost Brother” and the astonishing, nostalgic title track translates more soulfully than ever, the warm minimalism and immediacy of the album’s production drawing out the songs’ essence like a seductive spell. The “hushed lullaby” mannerisms of old OtR material are given a seductive intimacy here that makes them more strikingly beautiful than ever.

OtR has always had a knack for timeless Pop songcraft, and Ohio is liberally sprinkled with a smattering of rootsy melodic gems, including the instantly memorable “Show Me” and the boozy “Jesus in New Orleans.” Bergquist’s soul-stirring vocals are perfect for the more expansive material, but she also has the ability to boldly deliver a hook to great effect.

While those techniques are developed to the point of excellence here with their natural maturity as musicians and songwriters, these are things OtR has always done. The disc contains some of the finer songwriting moments in their canon, but it’s the relatively precarious chances they take as you get deeper into Ohio that are most interesting, collapsing the sometimes redundant, cyclical hum and making the album all the more alluring.

It’s like going to an overly cordial friend’s house for an overnight stay and being accommodated with pillows, blankets, Scrabble, Classical music and warm milk. When they break out the Parliament records and Ecstasy, you know you’ll remember your stay forever.

While Bergquist and Detweiler retain their innate subtlety and earnest tack throughout, the little stylistic jumps are what makes Ohio most engaging -- even her uttering “fucked up” on “Changes Come” creates a poignant rise. “Lifelong Fling” is a surprisingly impacting slice of Neo Soul, devoid of over-reaching artifice and tempered by the band’s distinct, singular affability. On “Nobody Number One,” Bergquist displays her still-in-character brand of spoken “rap,” which doesn’t really work but still is a revitalizing diversion.

Elsewhere, “When You Say Love” is a rare moment of giddy jubilance, thanks to an endearingly awkward keyboard spaz-out that sounds lifted from an early Elvis Costello and the Attractions record. The Gospel choir chants in the closing number, “Idea #21 (Not Too Late),” is the ideal exit for an album that at times feels like a real-time spiritual quest.

While “double albums” are a vintage Rock & Roll move, in these days of gratuitously long CDs the question of their necessity is begged. The short answer is Ohio would be a better single disc collection -- it’s crammed with 21 “good” songs but only about two-thirds worth of “great” ones.

By the end of the epic, you’re left a little drained. Still, the gesture of a double album somehow perfectly fits OtR’s mysterious, romantic and fantasist demeanor. It creates a glorious golden frame for the band’s majestic canvas.

To answer my friend’s question: Yes, Over the Rhine matters. Artistically, they’re as vital as ever. Ohio is low-key brilliance and stands as their best work yet in a strong discography that gets better with time.
CityBeat grade: B.

Cincinnati City Beat
By Brian Bake

For Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist, the founders and sole remaining creative forces of Over the Rhine, home has always been both an abstract concept and a concrete reality.

After moving to Cincinnati from smalltown Ohio nearly a decade and a half ago, the city became the pair’s adopted hometown. It’s also been the base of operations for OtR, their gauzily pretty Pop band (once self-described as “post-nuclear, pseudo-alternative, folk-tinged art-pop”) that’s inspired an exponentially large and cultishly fierce fan base over the years. The groundswell began in Cincinnati naturally as OtR rose in the local ranks, then quickly grew as they were embraced by a regional audience, until finally they belonged to the rarified world of nationally and internationally renowned recording artists.

And with each successive tep, home became an increasingly fractured reality. Home was two small towns in Northern Ohio. Home was the two apartments Detweiler and Bergquist maintained in the 150-year-old neighborhood that was the band’s namesake and earliest songwriting inspiration, places they kept even after their 1996 marriage. Home was a van and a stranger’s couch and an endless succession of hotel rooms. Home was a studio.

After working long and hard to escape the gravitational idea that they were a local band -- OtR’s only area appearances for several years now have been their annual Christmas shows -- Detweiler and Bergquist have returned home. Not in the literal sense, though. OtR is firmly ensconced in their major-label recording contract with Virgin Records imprint Back Porch, and they’re still a band that very much belongs to the world.

And yet the roots of OtR’s 10th and latest album, Ohio, are, as the title would imply, very much a product of Detweiler’s and Bergquist’s childhood experiences and earliest influences, all of which were cultivated here in the state that now serves as the banner for their new work.

A sort of homecoming
It’s fitting then that with all of this talk of home, the conversation concerning Over the Rhine’s latest project should take place in the cozy kitchen of the Norwood home that is OtR’s new base of operations. Neil Young’s Decade, Bergquist’s avowed favorite album of all time, plays in the background as wine glasses are filled and memories recent and distant are recounted to explain both the motivation and the execution of Ohio, the first double album in OtR’s extensive catalog.

As with most creative endeavors, especially by groups with long and much-examined histories, Ohio began with a little bit of healthy soul searching.

“Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, I think there’s always a period of questioning and self-doubt, or at least self-awareness, that precedes the recording of a batch of new songs,” Bergquist says. “Do we still believe in our music? Are we repeating ourselves? Is there still a spark? But once we got into these songs, we had the overwhelming sensation that we were coming home.”

Detweiler paints a similar picture but uses hues suggestive of a band coming to grips not just with a new album but also with its very survival.

“We turned a corner when we were making Ohio,” he says honestly. “Something happened. We realized that, barring any unforeseen misfortune, we were going to be making records for the next 20 years. Songwriting and recording and spreading our songs around to whoever has ears to hear is just what we do.

“Now, more than ever, I really believe that our music probably has a lot to do with why we’re here. I no longer have the sneaking suspicion that we will eventually set aside our songs and do something more important with our lives.”

If Detweiler had come to any other conclusion, OtR’s fans would have challenged his idea of importance on any number of fronts. Since forming Over the Rhine in 1989 (with original guitarist Ric Hordinski and drummer Brian Kelly) and playing their first gig at Sudsy Malone’s, the band has consistently been a fan favorite.

That fandom spread as OtR’s circle of exposure widened. They self-released ‘Til We Have Faces in 1990 and Patience in 1991 (which also featured the photography of soon-to-be-huge Cincinnatian Michael Wilson) and signed to IRS Records, which reissued both albums and released Eve in 1994.

The band’s watershed year was 1996. IRS was dissolved in a corporate merger and OtR was freed from their contract, which cleared them to release a pair of dark acoustic albums: Good Dog Bad Dog and The Darkest Night of the Year, a moody rumination on Christmas. Detweiler and Bergquist decided to make their romantic pairing permanent by marrying in the fall; two months later, Hordinski left to concentrate on his side project Monk and Kelly (now with Cincinnati band Anonymous Bosch) bowed out as well.

The following year saw the fan club release of Besides, a rarities compilation. Not long after, OtR was signed to Back Porch, the small Blues/Folk imprint of Virgin Records. Amateur Shortwave Radio was the first release under the deal in 1999, and 2001 marked the much acclaimed Films for Radio, as OtR became a duo surrounded by a rotating cast of hand-picked musicians.

The road to ‘Ohio’
Two years later, and with the air cleared of any lingering doubts about the band’s immediate and long-term future, Bergquist and Detweiler set to work on the songs that would comprise Ohio. Ironically, the title track was the first song written for the project, although a few of the songs had actually been kicking around for quite a while.

“ ‘Suitcase’ was written 10 years ago and basically shelved until these recording sessions,” Bergquist says. “’Show Me’ was also written at least four or five years ago but continued to morph lyrically up until the day we finally put it on tape. ‘Anything at All’ was written on the road a few years back, but we’ve been playing it out for some time. It was inspired in part by a treasured conversation between myself and (local Bluegrass musician) Katie Laur and in part by my own experience of life on the road. But much of the project is very new.”

As the writing and demoing for Ohio continued, it became apparent to Detweiler and Bergquist that they were beginning to amass a sizable body of songs for a single album. Considering they’d just questioned their ability to bring something fresh to their process, the amount of material they were producing was something of a revelation.

“We went into the studio knowing that we had quite a few songs,” Bergquist says of OtR’s wealth of material. “There had been some talk of maybe recording two projects simultaneously -- one more bare-boned and acoustic in nature and one more full-blown, more of a band project. But as the sessions progressed we were having a really hard time imagining how to separate the songs. They felt like a body of work. The songs felt like they belonged together.”

Although the duo hadn’t consciously set out to make a concept album, and while it’s clear that Ohio doesn’t contain the requisite narrative thread to satisfy the definition, the songs transcend their inherent differences and hang together in a loose but coherent musical arc. (See Mike Breen’s review of Ohio.)

Detweiler’s sense of the album’s connectivity is manifested in the presence of his and Bergquist’s earliest influences on OtR’s sound over the years.

“Ohio, perhaps more than any other record we’ve made, celebrates the music we grew up with in small Ohio towns: Gospel, Country, Rock & Roll,” he says. “There was the music we were hearing in church. My first public performance was at a small revival meeting at the church in Fairpoint, Ohio, where my father was minister. I played the hymn ‘I’ll Fly Away’ on an old upright piano.

“But there was a different kind of revival that was seeping into us simultaneously via our friends’ record collections: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, The Pretenders, Janis Joplin. We were growing up in a surreal musical world where Elvis is King and Jesus is Lord.”

The intersection between secular and spiritual music has always been the foundation of OtR’s sonic philosophy, the hushed reverence of their musical presentation balanced with the interpretive feel of their lyrical message -- all of it deeply touched by Detweiler’s and Bergquist’s individual upbringings and full range of musical experiences. After nine albums of exploring that range one record and one genre at a time, it’s an interesting twist that they’ve used Ohio as a forum to examine all of their influences simultaneously -- from the winsome Soul/Pop of “Nobody Number One” and “Lifelong Fling” to the propulsive Rock shudder of “How Long Have You Been Stoned” to the Country sigh of “Jesus in New Orleans” to the moving piano balladry of the title track.

Although Ohio producer Paul Mahern might have enhanced the colors in the sonic quilt the band had assembled, the album’s relative complexity wasn’t his original suggestion for the band.

“Paul really wanted us to make a simple record,” Detweiler says. “So we worked primarily on an old 16-track analog tape machine, and we didn’t use any loops or samples.”

Detweiler and Bergquist met Mahern in Bloomington, Ind., while doing some recording at Echo Park Studios. When the subject of producers for Ohio surfaced, they both thought of him for the job. For his part, Mahern immersed himself in OtR’s ambiance by listening to every single recording by the band.

“He said he really liked our previous records, but he said he felt like there was a veil between Karin and the listener,” Detweiler says. “He wanted to remove that veil.”

That’s where Mahern’s concept of simplicity came to the fore. His belief was that OtR would be better served with as little instrumentation as possible and Bergquist’s voice front and center on everything -- a definite difference from the gauzy and amorphous production beauty of the band’s earlier work.

And even with the numerous genre-inclusive arrangements that kept insinuating themselves into the project, Mahern’s simplicity manifesto won the day. Although Ohio is rife with every musical influence OtR has absorbed over the years, the translation of those influences is sparsely elegant.

Dual intentions
As the sessions for Ohio moved to the mixing phase, the amount of material was on everyone’s minds.

“Right before we started mixing, I was sitting on the couch and I turned to Karin and Paul and said, ‘Double album,’ “ Detweiler says. “After everybody quit laughing, we all sort of realized that in some subversive way it made perfect sense. It was a huge relief to know that we didn’t have to narrow the record down to 10 or 12 songs and leave the rest for a year or two later or whatever. Plus, we have a finely honed instinct for commercial disaster, and the idea of a double album seemed to fit perfectly with that legacy.”

With 21 songs to put in some semblance of a creative order, sequencing Ohio should have been harder than it was, based on Detweiler’s history in this regard.

“We didn’t really think about it that much,” he says. “That was our first crack at the sequence. After we mixed the last song, we went back to the hotel room and cut that together. I did, in my mind, imagine turning the record over, halfway through each CD.”

“It was the least amount of agonizing I’ve ever seen him do over a sequence,” Bergquist says with a weary laugh.

“I’m an agony freak,” Detweiler admits. “For years, we’ve talked about taking a list of titles to a psychic and just handing them over and saying, ‘Give me the order.’ “

With most of the physical work done, all that remained was to sell the idea of a double album to Back Porch.

“It was one of those calls that starts out, ‘Are you sitting down?’ “ Detweiler says. “We just told them that we accidentally made a double album and that we wanted to put it out that way and sell it for the price of a single CD. They hadn’t heard a demo, a track or a rough mix from the album until we sat down and played the whole thing for them. There was some vigorous discussion, but in the end they decided to do it.”

Detweiler and Bergquist have strong feelings about becoming a part of the double album fraternity (which will include OtR’s first-ever vinyl release to be packaged in an old-fashioned gatefold sleeve with lyrics printed on the inner sleeves).

“The lure of the double album is an important footnote in Rock & Roll history,” Detweiler says. “It’s hard to imagine the history of Rock without “The White Album,” London Calling, Exile on Main Street, Songs in the Key of Life, Electric Ladyland. Everybody seems to have their favorite and their least favorite. Where have all the double albums gone?”

Bergquist looks at the experimental aspect of the expanded form as an opportunity for the band and its fans to stretch in their appreciation for each other.

“We figured that for a double album to work there had to be a lot of variety, but there also had to be something quintessential to the band in every song,” she says. “So that’s the way we approached mixing the project. There also has to be a song or two that leaves people scratching their heads.

“For example, Linford almost got beat up once when he suggested to somebody touring with us that (The Beatles’) ‘Why Don’t We Do It in the Road’ might arguably be a throwaway song. Turns out it was the other person’s favorite song on ‘The White Album.’ I love the fact that on a double album you can push the envelope a bit and a moment that might be a non-sequitur to some people might be another person’s definitive moment.”

High dichotomy
And therein lies the dichotomy that’s always defined the heart of Over the Rhine. The local band that transcended the scene that spawned it almost immediately. The spiritual band with the secular ties. The major label band with the indie mindset. The husband and wife who live and work and travel and create together and who remain in a personal and creative relationship despite it all.

When the topic of how they manage to work and live together arises, Detweiler and Bergquist exchange a look and a laugh and share a story that illustrates the surprises they hold for each other and for their fans as well.

“We were invited to address a songwriting seminar, which was kind of funny to us anyway,” Detweiler says. “We came up with a list of ‘The Top 10 Rules of Songwriting.’ The No. 1 rule was, ‘Don’t start a band with your fucking wife.’ “

“And No. 2 was,” Bergquist says, picking up the thread, “ ‘If you do, you can kiss my ass.’ It wound up being a conservative crowd, so we didn’t go with that.”

But it’s likely not far from that dichotomous truth. The successes that Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist have achieved over the past 15 years have come by way of a number of devices both internal and external. Humor. Bad breaks. Good breaks. Grace. Love. And heart.

After all, that’s where the home is.

PopMatters
By Matt Cibula

Let me get this straight right from the start: I have never heard any of Over the Rhine’s records before this one, I have never seen them live, all I know about them is from their website and the info sheets sent out by the label and this record, Ohio. So it’s not some OtR-cult follower talking, just me, a critic on PopMatters with no agenda whatsoever, when I say that this is perhaps my favorite record of the year so far.

Simply put, this is the one where Over the Rhine goes for it all. The band, which consists essentially of married songwriters Karin Bergquist (also the singer) and Linford Detweiler, has been around the art-pop and alt.country scenes for more than a decade without ever really breaking out into mass consciousness. I can’t even remember reading any reviews of their records -- that might just be my faulty memory, or it might be their unmemorable band name -- it comes from Over-the-Rhine, the artsy/dangerous neighborhood of Cincinnati where they lived when they first started out. How the hell is anyone supposed to remember that name? (It’s also handy for haters; this critic I know says that his wife calls them “Over the Rated.” Har har, it is to laugh.)

Then again, their cult status might be due to the fact that they’ve played almost entirely to their cult. Two compilations of uncollected songs for a group that’s never been anywhere near any charts? Thoughtful online tour diaries and literature recommendations on their website? Clearly, this is a band that is comfortable with their underground status. The easiest thing for them to do, obviously, would be to just play out the clock -- keep pumping out the same sort of stuff that they’ve always done, make their tiny little audience happy enough, leave the boundaries unpushed, etc.

And maybe they’ve done that here, I don’t know -- I’ve never heard their other stuff, and I’m not part of the cult. But that would make their other records even more impressive than this one, and I don’t really think that could possibly be the case. Ohio doesn’t sound like a group on cruise control. First off, it’s a double album. Sure, they could easily have left a couple of tracks off and kept it at a long single disc, but they made a decision not to do that, to just record all the new songs they loved and see how they fit together. [Full disclosure: I love double albums, if they’re done right. Anyone who thinks they’re prima facie pretentious is just afraid of commitment.] And there is only one song here that could be credibly and easily left off (Disc Two’s “She”), which still wouldn’t cut it down under 80 minutes, so I’m glad they left it in, because I love it more every time I hear it.

Secondly, this record is nakedly emotional in a way that a cruise-control indie band could never be. I put this on for the first time not knowing what to expect, and heard the simple piano chords of “B.P.D.” on Disc One for all of six seconds before being introduced to the singing of Karin Bergquist: “You’re making a mess / Something I can’t fix / This time you’re all alone / I’d make it alright / But I wouldn’t get it right / I’m leavin’ it alone”. This voice, equal parts country- and rock-loving small-town Ohio girl and neo-boho jazz-torch sophisticate, is just a damned juggernaut through all my critical defenses -- Bergquist is as powerful and damaged a singer as Allison Moorer, which is high enough praise for anyone, I think. There should be awards for the way Bergquist flips the script from the resigned “crying out loud, crying out loud” into the bleak “crying out” in this song, and the way she makes the wordless chanted chorus work for her is uncanny like an X-Man. And “B.P.D.”’s status as the year’s best power ballad is cemented right near the end, when a huge crashing metal guitar riff explodes the gentle sad mood into a full-on arena-rock sing-along. A lot of lighters are gonna burn out over this one.

It’s tempting to dwell on this hypnotic voice, and I will do so myself in a while, but let’s cut Detweiler into this a bit. Judging from writing credits for their other records, it seems that he’s always been the main songwriter of the group, main bandleader, spokesman, guiding light, etc. But here just about all the songs are written by both of them together, and it sounds that way; Bergquist may be the singer, but she’s not the only thing happening in Over the Rhine. Disc Two has a number of great form-meets-function moments. The extreme self-flagellation of “Long Lost Brother” would be unbearable were it not for the laid-back funk of the drumbeat and Tony Paoletta’s slide guitar work, so when Bergquist’s voice cracks as she is wailing “I wanna do better! / I wanna try harder! / I wanna believe / Down to the letter” it doesn’t sound affected or silly or anything except real, lovely, true, and other unfashionable abstract nouns. “How Long Have You Been Stoned” weds ‘70s stoner rock to a Macy Gray sort of psychedelic murk, and Detweiler’s Procol Harum organ line on “Fool” turns the song from an arpeggiated 3/4 lope into a brand-new country classic that will sadly never be covered by anyone from Nashville.

These songs, as you might imagine on a double album by an uncategorizable band, are all over the place in tone and instrumentation: the mournful Rickie Lee Jones-ish (Magazine-era) piano ballad of the title track has little in common with either the song that comes right before, the fakey-tonk “Jesus in New Orleans” (“The last time I saw Jesus / I was drinking bloody marys / In the South”), or the one that follows, the album’s most audacious and telling piece, the beautiful “Suitcase”. This song is deceptive with a capital D; at first, it’s a sweet heartrending slow-burner about the end of a relationship: “Whatcha doin’ with a suitcase? / Tryin’a hit the ground running?” But then you start noticing that its circular unresolved chord structure sounds kind of familiar, where is that from, where have you heard that before, and then Bergquist sings “Funny but I feel like I’m fallin’ / I wanna beg you to stay”, and you see how that echoes the line from that Stevie Nicks song on Tusk, and it all hits you: “Suitcase” is “Beautiful Child, Part 2”! The younger guy is tired of her now, and is leaving her, and she’s devastated but she sees the fatalistic humor in it all, and it’s doubly sad and somehow less sad for it . . .

… and then you realize why Ohio had to be a double album, that Over the Rhine has gone and made their Tusk, every mood and every genre they could think of had to go into the stew, they’re charting everything that they ever felt, throwing in every riff and style they’ve ever heard, incorporating soul and country and hip-hop (“Nobody Number One” is straight-up talking-blues rap, yo) and whatever it is that Tom Waits and Mary J. Blige do in their songs, “fallin’ for the entire human race”. (That’s from “Jesus in New Orleans”, just one of the songs that Detweiler calls “Christ-haunted” in the liner notes; they aren’t proselytizing, they aren’t denying anything, it’s all good, don’t worry -- Bergquist calls Jesus “still my favorite loser”.)

But I could talk and justify and quote all night, and never get to the bone-dry truth that “Professional Daydreamer” is the prettiest song I think I’ve ever heard, so incredibly sad and brave and Janet-Gaynor-smiling-through-her-tears lovely that I’m welling up now just thinking about it, or to fully explain just what it is about Karin Bergquist’s voice that makes “Lifelong Fling” so sexy, or how Detweiler manages to incorporate two of the best lines of the year (“This is what I remember most about dying” and “You were 80% angel, 10% demon, the rest is hard to define”) in the same song. Ultimately, this homegrown Tusk cannot be quantified, can only be experienced first-hand. Preferably with headphones, preferably with a bottle of pretty-good wine, preferably with a box of Kleenex nearby. God damn it, this is a great achievement by a band that has just slammed the door on “cult status” forever.

— 10 September 2003

All Music Guide Review
by Thom Jurek

It’s mystifying that the recordings that give listeners all the trouble are the albums that offer a lasting impact. Over the Rhine’s Ohio is just such an album. It is a sprawling, two-disc sermon on want, need, recalcitrance, and traditional American spiritual matters viewed in an untraditional manner. Produced by OTR and Mahan Kalpa, it is full of contradiction and represents two different sides of the band’s sound. Disc one is almost completely devoid of rhythm and has nothing whatsoever to do with rock & roll; its dynamic is fragmented to the point of being absent in places, and its pace is like that of a slow, controlled, forest burn. Disc two is rhythmically more varied and projects the questions on disc one more forcefully. Emotion, physical desire, and spiritual catharsis are not so artfully stated, making them come to the listener more immediately; and ultimately, there is some haunted spirit of rock & roll present in its tracks. As an album, Ohio, with its sense of tight tracking and meticulous overdubbing, carefully positioned silences, lyrical artifice, and an insistence on absolute control, seemingly turns back on itself and stands in opposition to the rest of the band’s catalog, and in places, stands against itself. Because of its utter lack of playfulness and self-conscious seriousness, it seems to move against the grain that rock & roll by its inherent nature, revels in. However, none of this is to be discounted. There is great value in the aesthetic view that Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist hold in their collective, velvet-gloved fists. When feeling a record on a gut level as deeply as Ohio demands, it becomes imperative for the listener to observe not only the narrative journeys in the songs themselves, but the one going on in the mirror as well. Ohio is full of OTR’s trademark struggle with the fractured beauty, the brokenness, the sacred, the lure to redeem the sensual and the sexual from the tawdriness of popular culture, the revelation in everyday life, the nagging, seemingly eternal doubt that has been discarded as profane or blasphemous by those wishing to discount the human condition, and so forth. In other words, these transcendent themes are also central to the evolution of not only rock & roll, but popular music across the board.

On disc one, songs such as the opener, “B.F.D.,” and “What I’ll Remember Most,” with whinnying pedal steel guitars (courtesy of under-recognized guitarist Tony Paoletta), brushed drums, and acoustic six strings, become accoutrements for Bergquist to explore the deep, hers, Detweiler’s, and yours as you twist uncomfortably in the jagged ellipses at the end of her lines. The more itchy the lyrics get, the more pronounced the artifice becomes -- “Jesus in New Orleans,” a song that is unbelievable in its haggard gospel setting, becomes shiny new because of that uptight framework. Disc two comes from the heart of the process, immediately in the moment. In the songs that reference something outside the first person, such as “She,” “Another Number One,” “How Long Have You Been Stoned,” and so forth, the power of observation becomes the articulation of archetype and metaphor. It is as if these songs all echo and underscore Bergquist’s vocal ache that is as timeworn as it is brazenly insistent: “I wanna do better/I wanna try harder/I wanna believe down to the letter....” As the pedal steel whines into the center of the tune’s spine, backed by a lilting piano and a faltering rhythm track, Bergquist’s voice embodies the entire struggle; she’s pointing the mirror into the face of the listener who “needs the grace to find what can’t be found.” That pop music can do such a thing is a wonder. That it can cause such visceral reactions, both attractive and repellent, is remarkable; that a band can focus so single-pointedly is a miracle. Ultimately, OTR’s Ohio is a work of tattered grace, a deeply moving, maddening, and redemptive work of art, and necessary, ambitious pop.

Cincinnati Enquirer article
By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Over the Rhine, the literate pop/folk/rock band led by wife-and-husband duo Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, is looking homeward.

Ohio, their ambitious new double CD, is due in stores Tuesday on the Virgin/Back Porch label. With influences ranging from the Beatles to soul/gospel great Al Green to folk/country divas Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, the project takes the pair back to their musical and geographical roots.

The couple still lives in Cincinnati, where the band formed in 1989. Home is a sprawling Victorian house in Norwood they call the Grey Ghost.

We asked them to take us to their favorite places, some of which also turn up in their songs. Here, in no particular order, are some of their favorite things about living in Cincinnati.

Bookstore

Duttenhofer’s Books & News, 214 W. McMillan St., Clifton Heights.

“That’s where I found the book with the Rockwell Kent woodcuts we used for the Patience booklet (the insert to OTR’s 1992 major label debut on I.R.S.),” says Detweiler. “I’ve spent way too much money in that place. We’ve run out of bookcases, now we have them stacked in the attic.”

Coffeehouse

Kaldi’s, 1204 Main, Over-the-Rhine. The band spent a lot of time here on band meetings, writing the old OTR newsletter. Detweiler wrote the song “Etcetera Whatever” (on 1996’s Good Dog Bad Dog, reissued in 2000 on Back Porch) at a table there, in the room opposite the bar.

For Bergquist, it was also a paycheck.

“When we saw Kaldi’s coming in and saw that it was going to be this cool coffee shop and a bookstore, I was one of the first people who asked for a job there. Finally they hired me. The first night I was working there, I broke an entire tray of glasses. I thought they were going to fire me, but they didn’t. It was such a good job, I’m still thankful today.”

The neighborhood looms large in OTR’s music. Detweiler’s apartment at 1229 Main St. is where much of Good Dog Bad Dog and Darkest Night of the Year were written and recorded. It’s also mentioned in “Grey Monologue” from Patience: “My third-story bedroom window, overlooking this rain-drenched night.”

Restaurant

York Street Cafe, 738 York St., Newport. “They catered our wedding and we’ve done some shows down there,” says Bergquist. “It’s just a quaint little out-of-the-way place, very unpretentious, but man, the kitchen is just always so good.”

“They have our vote for the best filet mignon in the U.S.A., and we’ve tried a few,” adds Detweiler.

Music street

Short Vine in Corryville. “I remember when Linford was trying to get me to move here,” recalls Bergquist. “He took me up there (to Sudsy Malone’s) and said, ‘This is it. We want to play here.’ And he pointed across the street to Bogart’s and said, ‘This is where we want to play eventually.’ And we did.”

Radio show and host

WNKU-FM’s (89.7) bluegrass program, Music From the Hills of Home, with Katie Laur; 6-9 p.m. Sundays.

“That should have been syndicated years ago,” says Detweiler.

“I love her,” says Bergquist. “I wish I could listen to Katie’s laugh every time I’m depressed and feel bad. She’s so genuine. And some of the treasures they play. And the conversational style between her and Wayne (Clyburn, her co-host).

“In the first years that I moved here and started listening to that show, it used to be on Sunday afternoons and I would get in my car and drive down (U.S.) 52 and I would go as far as I could go until the station cut out, then I’d turn around, come back and listen to the rest of the show.”

Small town

Norwood. “I come from a small town,” says Bergquist, who grew up in Barnesville in eastern Ohio, not far from the coal country where Detweiler was raised. “And it’s funny, because I ran from that, I ran so fast. And I ended up in Norwood and it’s so similar, and I love it.”

Place to walk

French Park in Amberley Village is where they like to walk Willow, Bergquist’s Weimaraner.

Park for hanging out

Eden Park, where the couple was married in the Seasongood Pavilion.

Stained-glass windows

At the former St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral at the corner of Mills and Carter in Norwood. “This has Bavarian stained glass about 100 years old. Incredible,” says Detweiler. On Sept. 6, Bergquist will do a rare solo performance at a singer/songwriter benefit for the building’s revival as a multiuse artists’ space.

Vintage musical instrument store

Mike’s Music/Guitars in Corryville next to Bogart’s. “One of the best guitar stores in the country, easily,” says Detweiler. “We bought a few things from him over the years. And it’s also the kind of store where, if we need to borrow a Hofner bass for a couple of days, it’s a great resource.”

Place to stock up for a cookout

Avril’s on Court Street. “I’m a sucker for their country sausage. They mix it up right there,” says Detweiler.

Sculpture

The Genius of Water/Tyler Davidson Fountain in Fountain Square. The fountain figures in the band’s first album, 1991’s Till We Have Faces in a song approriately titled “The Genius of Water”: “We’ll ride into the square to see the angel, see the angel in the fountain.”

Landmark

The Roebling Suspension Bridge. “That’s a no-brainer; it’s one of the first things you think of when you think of Cincinnati,” says Detweiler.

Neighborhood

Duh.

“Over-the-Rhine. I remember when we were getting ready to move down here, just hearing that name, it seemed like such a groovy, weird-sounding name,” says Detweiler.

He not only found a home for a few years, but a name for the band he was forming with Bergquist, guitarist Ric Hordinski and drummer Brian Kelley. “It seemed to be the one on the list that raised its hand the highest.”

View

Cincinnati at night, seen from I-75 at the Cut-in-the-Hill. “I’ve seen a lot of beautiful skylines,” says Bergquist. “But when you come through the Cut-in-the-Hill at night, when you’re coming home from a tour, there’s nothing like that. It just feels so good. You know you’re home.”

Cincinnatians

“There’s always an argument to move somewhere, but for us, we always come back to the fact that we can’t replace the people that we know,” says Bergquist. “All the places and the things, they’re all cool and they’re a part of our lives. But the people are irreplaceable.”

Cincinnati Enquirer review:3 1/2 stars
By Larry Nager

Ohio is a state of mind for Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, a place full of heartbreak and loss, of majestic Hammond organs, cheesy electronic keyboards, crying steel guitars and over it all, a singer with the voice of a disheveled angel.

Ohio may not be the best Over the Rhine album (there’s some filler among the 21 songs on two CDs), but it is the most real.

The band’s 10th album shows OTR’s varied roots, with the Beatlesque opener, “B.P.D.”

But even as the tune percolates with pop touches, the lyrics are darker than the music - “You’re makin’ a mess, somethin’ you can’t hide. A slow suicide, just one bite at a time.”

That theme of wounded love is at the bruised heart of most of these songs. “What I’ll Remember Most” again touches on betrayal, “The biggest lies are the little ones. When the look in your eyes is the distant one.”

Then in a rare respite from heartbreak, it’s time to rock, with “Show Me,” a return to the straight-ahead sound of early OTR, complete with Fab Four-style “La-la” backup vocals and namechecks of the Rolling Stones and Elvis.

Gospel singer Dorothy Moore gets mentioned in the woozy country ballad “Jesus in New Orleans,” as Detweiler’s honky tonk piano propels Bergquist’s mix of vodka and religion.

There’s a touch of Lucinda Williams in Bergquist’s delivery, but there’s even more Lucinda in “Anything at All,” another country-flavored song of lost love that Bergquist says was inspired by Cincinnati singer Katie Laur.

The title song is a stark piano-and-vocal ballad. Bergquist accompanies herself, singing about strip mines, farms and more broken dreams.

“Lifelong Fling” is a sensual R&B-tinged ballad in which Bergquist makes the most of the lines, “With roiling joy, lazy as sin, lyin’ up in heaven with my special friend.”

“Changes Come” closes Disc 1 exploring spirituality with no easy answers - “There is all this untouched beauty, the light, the dark, both running through me. Is there still redemption for anyone?”

That theme continues in the opener of the second CD in the chorus of “Long Lost Brother”: “I wanna do better. I wanna try harder. I wanna believe down to the letter.”

Then it’s time for “She,” Bergquist’s most powerful song of heartbreak, about a woman who can’t let go of an abusive lover. “What she ought to do is put a gun to your head for all the things you said and did.

“But what she will not do is let you go before you’re gone. It’s everything that’s ever been wrong, but it’s all she’s ever known.”

This is Bergquist’s best singing on the disc, a starkly powerful performance that mixes anger, pain and resignation. There’s more good stuff on Disc 2, but nothing comes close to this song.

There’s the beatnik hip-hop of “Nobody Number One,” the ‘70s retro touches of “Cruel and Pretty,” in which she slyly makes the most of the line “Meet me in the backstreets of heaven.”

On “When You Say Love” Bergquist channels Chrissie Hynde as Detweiler leads the band, which includes drummer Will Sayles and steel guitarist Tony Paoletta, in some cheesy, new-wave, Blondie-style backup.

“Fool” is a lush ballad of more love gone bad. “Hometown Boy” is a straight-forward love song, about escaping small towns gone to seed with her tender reading of the words “my hometown boy.”

Ohio ends with a hidden track, OTR’s most straightforward religious song to date, the Southern gospel of “Idea #21 (Not Too Late),” inspired in part by a trip to Al Green’s Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis.

It’s a sweetly uplifting end to this masterful collection of heartbreaking songs.

Cincinnati Enquirer concert review
By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

“Thank you for coming out tonight for Ohio,” Over The Rhine’s Karin Bergquist greeted the crowd of around 1,100 Saturday night at Coney Island’s Moonlite Gardens.

For the next three months, the five-piece Cincinnati-based band, led by Bergquist and her husband/keyboardist/collaborator Linford Detweiler, will be bringing Ohio, OTR’s fine new album, to the rest of the country. Saturday, they brought it home.

And they gave their diverse crowd -- several generations of hippies, yuppies and everything in between - a pretty thorough Ohio tour, playing most of the double CD. The songs came alive in the hands of the latest version of OTR, which, almost seven years after the departure of Ric Hordinski, finally has a world-class lead guitarist again.

Paul Moak hasn’t yet found his place in the band, but his remarkable versatility and sense of dynamics lifted OTR to new levels, as he played sitar, vibes, pedal steel and assorted six- and 12-string guitars. Combined with the sturdy rhythm section of bassist Rick Plant and drummer Will Sayles, this is the most rocking version of OTR since the early days, when Detweiler played bass and Brian Kelley handled the drums.

But the gem of OTR remains Bergquist. As the group has had its ups and downs, going through personnel changes, trying on various musical styles and dealing with the vagaries of the music business, she has quietly evolved into a mature, spectacularly nuanced lead singer.

She was a spiritual seeker on “Long Lost Brother”; a sly temptress on “Cruel and Pretty”; an openhearted pop-rocker on “Show Me”; a soul singer on “Nobody No. 1.” And, on “She” her shattering portrait of a woman locked in an obsessive, abusive relationship, she was a masterful interpreter of complex emotions.

And though OTR focused on Ohio, including Bergquist’s solo, voice-and-piano version of the title track, there was also time for a few old favorites, including “All I Need is Everything” and their final encore, “Latter Days.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this group evolves in the course of the tour. They already had the singing and songwriting. Now, in Moak, they have a rock-star-in-the-making. If Detweiler and Bergquist give him the space to take off, this could be the best OTR yet. Saturday, they did Ohio, and their hometown, proud.

But boy, their choice of opening acts needs serious work. Griffin House opened the night at 7:45 with 20 minutes of mediocre signing and sporadically interesting songwriting. His best moment came when he made a cell phone call in the middle of the set. I guess he was bored, too.

Even so, that was the highlight of the openers. The Chicago duo of Josephine Foster and Andy Bar, who call themselves the Children’s Hour and otherwise seemed like perfectly nice people, followed with an excruciating 30 minutes. Combining Foster’s tone-deaf imitation of Natalie Merchant with the couple’s dangerously incompetent guitar playing and derivative songwriting, they managed to alienate even OTR’s famously genteel fans, who loudly chatted and pointedly ignored the “music.”

Cincinnati Post

The new album from Over the Rhine had working titles like “Elvis is King, Jesus is Lord” and the more political “Who Do You Think You Are?”

In the end, the group, comprised of husband-wife team Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, just called it “Ohio.”

The album, featuring a back-to-basics, stripped-down sound, will be released Tuesday. Over the Rhine then plays Aug. 30 at Moonlite Gardens at Coney Island.

The songwriting team, featuring the heavenly, soaring vocals of Bergquist, say this project is a salute to their Ohio musical roots. Both grew up in southeastern Ohio coal mining towns.

“It’s a Midwestern road trip record. It’s top down, window down, crank it as loud as you can take it,” Bergquist said.

Radio listeners can already do that with the first single “Show Me.” It is as a good a toe-tapping, pop/rock anthem as the two have ever written, and is getting played in the tri-state on WNKU-FM (89.7).

Listening to “Ohio” in the car will take you halfway across the state. It is a double album, a rarity these days, with 21 songs, elegant in their simple craftsmanship and music.

“I think the songs on “Ohio” celebrate the music we grew up with more than our previous records,” Detweiler said. “We grew up with hymns, country and western that was sort of in the water in our small town. And rock ‘n’ roll. It’s American music.”

“It’s what happens when your grandpa makes you sit down and watch ‘Hee Haw’ every week when you are 5,” Bergquist said with a laugh.

Detweiler and Bergquist, two of the most unassuming musical artists you will ever meet, admit to a little embarrassment that they pushed their record company (Back Porch) to release a double album.

“It does feel a little self-indulgent,” Detweiler said. “On the other hand it really flies in the face of the whole sound bite approach to music. If you don’t have time to listen to music then this won’t make sense. If you have time, this is where to go.”

Bergquist jokes the label told them, “We can’t think of a reason why we could not release a double album. Then they went back and tried to think of one.”

The two said they couldn’t think of sitting on half of these songs for another couple years, saying many are inspired almost unconsciously from the troubled times for Americans. There is an urgency to many of the songs and a perhaps a little national soul-searching going on in some of the lyrics. The two said the songs were written as the war of terrorism unfolded the past couple years.

“While recording, it was sort of unnerving and heartbreaking that we weren’t further along,” Detweiler said of the war fever climate.

While there is no overtly political song on the album, there are themes that seem inspired by the times. “How Long have You Been Stoned” is a growling plea for civic involvement. There are lines like “I want to do better, I want to try harder” on “Long Lost Brother.” The opening cut, “B.P.D.,” sets the worried yearning mood with Bergquist pleading “Only God can save us now.”

Known for their personal lyrics, the two think this album represents more of a move to comment on the world around them.

“Instead of being retrospective, it’s how we fit into the big picture,” Bergquist said. “Some of the songs are less about the first person. I think we ask some hard questions.”

But it is when they get personal that OTR is at its best, such as the title cut written by Bergquist about growing up in Barnsville after moving there from Phoenix when she was 7. Her voice has never sounded more inspiring and intimate, even as she sings a heart-wrenching story.

“When you get far enough way from your teenage years, so you can handle the embarrassment of them, you come back and start digging around in the dirt and figure out who you are. That was part of the journey of that song,” she said about “Ohio.”

“I hated it. I just remember these beautiful rolling hills and these big strip-mining machines. The town was so closed-minded it was hard to make friends -- . I ran from it as fast as I could.”

Linford and Karin met at Malone College in Canton, forming a band that moved to Cincinnati in the early ‘90s, taking their name from the neighborhood they settled in. In the band then were guitarist Ric Hordinski, now working with his band Monk, and drummer Brian Kelley.

The group developed an intensely loyal following in Cincinnati with fans captured by the yearning vocals of the classically trained Bergquist and the band’s almost spiritual, meditative lyrics of self exploration.

While the group has had mixed results with major label success, it has received plenty of national exposure and favorable reviews over the years. Its last release in 2001, “Films For Radio,” was one of its most commercially successful. It included a modest hit, the spiritual elixir “Give Me Strength,” featured in the TV show “Third Watch.” And the band has found a three-year home at Back Porch, EMI/Virgin subsidiary, specializing in roots and Americana artists.

While the band has performed throughout the world, this new album musically brings them back home. As Detweiler put it: “You can be in Italy and marvel at how exquisitely beautiful everything is. Then you think, Italy could never have given the world Johnny Cash. To me this record is about the music we grew up with that can only happen in America.”

Over the Rhine, featuring a new five-piece band, plays 8 p.m. Aug. 30 at Moonlite Gardens, Coney Island. Tickets, $12. Ticketmaster.

The band’s latest album, “Ohio” will be in record stores Tuesday. OTR is planning a special vinyl release of “Ohio” available next month. For ordering information, www.overtherhine.com.

The band has scheduled a CD release signing party at 3 p.m. Aug. 23 at Joseph-Beth, Norwood.