Bud Scoppa interviews Linford and Karin regarding The Long Surrender. Here's a set of questions for you to respond to or ignore as you see fit. If I've missed something essential, please bring it up and address it.

Generally speaking, I’m interested in the thematic aspects of the material and the process through which it was brought to life.  

THEME TOPICS:

Is The Long Surrender “about” something in particular? In this sense, what does the title intimate?

Linford: First, (just an aside) “the long surrender” is a fleeting line in a poem that Karin fell in love with by B.H. Fairchild called Rave On. Karin used the poem as a jumping off point for the song called Rave On, the third track on the record. It wasn’t so much an adaptation of the poem, more of a flirtation.

Karin: (Interestingly enough, the poem already references Buddy Holly’s song Rave On.)

Linford: And while we’re on the topic of source material, Karin also found a Bukowski poem called Bluebird, which she used as a diving board for a song on this project (There’s A Bluebird In My Heart). So apparently she’s feeling some common ground between what she wants her songs to do and what a good poem can still do to her.

I think the title speaks to our ongoing desire to let go of certain expectations (and much of what we are so convinced we know for sure) in favor of remaining open and curious.

Karin: It seems like a lot a lot of our friends are currently wrestling with various forms of “letting go,” so hopefully, the ideas conjured by the title feel somewhat universal.

And I think the title speaks to the arc of a lifelong commitment to writing and performing regardless of recognition. Learning when to work hard and when to let go. Learning to leave room for grace to billow our sails occasionally. Learning not to white-knuckle everything.

Linford: Finally, I hope The Long Surrender is a record that needs to be listened to as a complete work in order to experience the full impact of the songs. Hopefully it invites and seduces the listener to surrender 55 minutes of their life to this music, and to come up for air feeling like there has been some small shift in their world.

Do people still listen to records like that? Is that the exception? If so, then perhaps we are trying to make records for exceptional people.

Karin: Fortunately, I think much of our current and extraordinarily devoted audience is up for that approach. We are blessed in that regard.

Did you start with an overarching theme and then proceed to populate it with songs, or did the songs you were conjuring up coalesce into a theme?

Linford: Based on my own experience, I’m a believer in Flannery O’Connor’s observation about her own writing: I have to write in order for the outcome to be revealed. I can’t name where I’m going in advance. I have to write to find out.

Karin: I find myself in the same boat. Writing for me is an ongoing, necessary form of discovery/self-discovery.

Linford: I love the idea of a song revealing something unexpected to the writer first, and then of course the listener gets to share in that sense of discovery.

What specific works and/or events fed this creative explosion?

Linford: Karin and I have arrived at a point in our lives where we (and our friends) are having to bury/say goodbye to loved ones. I was called upon to write my father’s obituary a few years ago. I’ve been told that an important shift occurs when a son buries a father: one no longer sees life as something that unfolds indefinitely, rather, we tend to process things more in terms of how much time we have left.

So hopefully there is an urgency that’s felt in the songs, and a deep desire (in spite of often falling short) to make the most of whatever time we have left.

Karin: My father is deceased and my mother suffered a debilitating stroke a few years ago. She requires full-time skilled nursing care. This chapter in our lives inspired the song, Only God Can Save Us Now.

You have a way of connecting the personal with the universal, the here and now with those parts of existence that never change. Where and how does this record/these songs manifest your states of mind, your attitudes and emotions?

Linford: I still see many of the songs I write as love songs. Not necessarily proud of that, but that’s the way it is. But someone encouraged me recently that they are often not songs about falling in love – they’re songs about what happens further down the road.

Emotionally, physically, spiritually – everything is feeling a little “further down the road” at the moment. The first blush of passion dies down into something that feels more like a slow burn. I’ve disappointed friends and family and vice versa, but we still try to love each other. The romance of the road has long worn off, although we still love walking out on stage and leaning into an audience. But it seems our writing is currently more about this stage of life: commitment, endurance, resiliency, and hard-won small victories.

What are the album’s linchpin songs, and what do they represent?

Linford: I haven’t identified any linchpin songs – as all the songs on the record connect with this chapter in our lives in different ways. (We’ll comment on a number of them – use or disregard freely.)

The Laugh of Recognition – Karin: I was calling the dogs in out of two feet of snow last February (COME ON BOYS) and realized I had a song coming on. We’ve had friends that lost everything (their entire life’s work and savings) in the latest downturn – friends who worked so hard and thought they had built something that would last. We have been thinking all along that our catalog of songs and records would provide for our retirement some day and while many of our records continue to sell and support us, no one knows what will happen to the future of recorded music. So this became a song that speaks to making a new start, retaining dignity in the face of uncertainty (and getting the damn dogs to come in out of the cold when they’d rather not).

Karin: And maybe it speaks to nurturing the required patience and persistence when who and/or what we love seems hell-bent on behaving in a way that is not best for anyone involved.

Sharpest Blade: (The first song we wrote with Joe Henry. He submitted this strange and wonderful lyric, which we expanded on and wrote music for.)

Karin: Actually, there is a humorous back-story here. Linford and I are quite competitive and when Joe sent us his lyric, we each submitted music for Joe’s lyric (two separate melodies with changes) and did so anonymously so that Joe could just chose the one that he connected with most. I was certain Linford’s was better and would be selected, but Joe chose mine! I was thrilled and did my best to be a good sport about it. So, how am I doing so far? Truly, I am hoping we will use Linford’s melody with another lyric on the next project; one of us will write it I’m sure, but we may compete over that as well.

Soon: Karin: (I wrote the music and melody for this one but struggled to complete a lyric that felt relevant. I asked Joe if he was interested in taking a crack at it. He knocked out the lyric one morning before breakfast. It contains some of our favorite lines on the record including: the gift of your heart frees me from mine. JH)

Undamned: Linford: Karin: We didn’t think this song was going to make the cut but Joe had a feeling about it and sent it to Lucinda Williams. She offered (Joe asked her) to sing on it and (Lucinda) was very encouraging about the writing and Karin’s voice. Karin and I have been huge fans of Lu, so believe me, when she opened her mouth (to sing into that microphone), tears flowed. I like the fact that the song references an old hymn we used to sing called, Just As I Am… (made famous or infamous by all those tent revivals.)

Infamous Love Song: Linford: …tried to cram a lot of our personal story in this one. Right now, this verse resonates the most with where I am:

Karin: (And perhaps this is where many people in the country who are still struggling find themselves right about now?)

There’s days when we lose our appetite
And days when we’re bruised and losing the fight
Of a lifetime – days when we’re looking inside
Wondering if we’re half dead or alive

That might feel a little morose on the cold blank page, but I believe just about anyone who has attempted to commit to any enduring undertaking or relationship encounters this terrain at some point.

So I suppose these songs are ways we find to lean toward the light, not lose our way completely.

Only God Can Save Us Now: Karin: My ode to the nursing home characters we have met in the last nine years after my mother’s devastating stroke, which happened to occur on the heels of her own retirement from forty-plus years of nursing. We came to describe the nursing home as a “head on collision between comedy and tragedy.”

In our live performances, I introduce this song with a story where (along with describing some of the various characters in the song) I explain how we’ve found comedy and humor to be the grace we are given by which we learn to cope with the tragedy that we might otherwise be unable to handle.

Obviously we’ve gotten to know many of the residents there at the nursing home and have found it impossible to ignore them and their stories. And we have favorites. For example, once, when I leaned in to ask one of the residents, a little bird-like woman named Geneva, How are you today, Geneva?

She replied, Only God can save us now…

Karin: I make a point of carrying either a notebook or some handheld recording device with me, and I always have one with me when I frequent the nursing home.

The King Knows How: Karin: I had a feeling about this song and really pushed for it and the singers that Joe brought in were like a tornado of joy that whirled it into fruition.

All My Favorite People: Linford: I believe this is a song that finally arrived because it had something to teach me. Took me 5+ years to finish this one – a lot of false starts.

Your music is hard to describe in terms of genres. How would you describe your stylistic and aesthetic underpinnings?

Linford: Karin and I live on a little farm in Southern Ohio, our refuge from the road. The night skies are dark enough out here to really see the milkyway and we love to look at the moon – watch it rise when it’s full and blood orange. It is one of our favorite things really. (I know, I know, this all sounds very rock and roll.) The moon was rising the other night, casting an eerie light over everything, milky, bright. I was reminded that unlike the stars, the moon of course doesn’t generate light itself, it only reflects the light of the sun. And yet that reflected sunlight that we call moonlight is a completely different experience than the sun shining directly on us.

I tend to think of our writing like that. We’re really only reflecting what we’ve already heard – 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 used to listen to, and of course the various singer songwriters that knocked the roof off my/our world. But hopefully when this music is reflected back to the listener through the window of my own particular life, hopefully it becomes a much different experience (maybe even somewhat unique) for those with ears to hear.

On a good day I am almost fearless enough to believe that The Long Surrender is a record that only Karin and I could have made (with Joe). Any other songwriters would have walked into The Garfield House and made a much different record.

For us it’s ultimately about the songs themselves, and I love to think of songwriters perusing their record collections and not quite finding exactly what they’re looking for, and then realizing, Oh, that record that I’m not finding is the record that I’m aching to make.

How does this LP fit into your sprawling body of work? Do you view it as more of a departure? The logical next step? Your crowning achievement?

Linford: We’re not afraid of the idea that The Long Surrender is our best record to date, and a few people I trust have already expressed as much. But we’ll let others agree or disagree freely as they deem fit. That tends to keep the ongoing conversation interesting.

PROCESS TOPICS

Did you feel this group of songs demanded that you ante up the production?

Linford: Karin and I have both been actively involved in producing our own records over the years, and we feel like largely through trial and error and persistence, we have acquired some good tools in our toolbox in terms of making our records feel and sound a certain way.

With The Long Surrender, we wanted to set our own toolbox aside and venture into the unknown, get away from our familiar surroundings, make a record that we couldn’t quite imagine in advance.

Karin: The one intention that I decidedly brought with me into the recording studio was to NOT have many pre-conceived notions (i.e. expectations) about what the recording process would look like. It was a huge relief for me to let go and to trust and just try to enjoy being a part of Joe’s vision.

How did Joe’s involvement in the project come about?

Linford: We contacted Joe earlier this year and one of the first things he said was, Oh, actually, my parents have tickets to your upcoming show in Shelby, NC.

That was the beginning of an easy rapport with Joe, and we began a long correspondence with him that was a huge inspiration for Karin and I moving into this project. (In fact, I hope we can collect some of those letters together at some point and share them with our audience.)

What did you know about him and his work going in? Was there an album you particularly admired from a sonic standpoint?

Linford: We had admired Joe’s songwriting from a distance for years. There is a singularity of vision and a seriousness in his approach to his own music and writing that is alluring. When Joe had Ornette Coleman sit in on one of his songs, to me those few moments of mad beauty that ensued were the most interesting I had heard in pop music in at least a decade.

And of course when Joe produced Solomon Burke, we (and many others) sat up and began taking notice of his gifts as a producer.

Oddly enough, the record that Joe produced that moved his name to the top of our list was The Bright Mississippi by Allen Toussaint, a mostly instrumental record, and one we feel is a masterpiece.

Karin: And the recent Rodney Crowell recording that I found myself going on about just happened to be Sex and Gasoline that Joe produced. And we also loved Strange Weirdos, Joe’s collaborative record with Loudon Wainwright III…

Were there any particular albums that stood up as reference points for this endeavor?

Linford: Very few. Joe referenced Astral Weeks early on and pointed out that the songs on that record were quite traditional in nature in terms of their form, but “the seams had been blown out…”

That particular observation lodged in our imaginations like a call to arms. Yes. We were going to California to blow the seams out of our songs.

Karin: I actually recall a moment during the five-day recording session when Jay Belerose was encouraging me to express my opinion on something we had just cut. Perhaps it appeared I was withholding my thoughts – when in fact I was just so at peace with the organic musicality of the performance – I was entirely comfortable with the ensemble and the life force that it was developing. I felt really good about what was happening and was truly fascinated by our ability to become a whole and complete moving body or entity in the studio. I guess I was surprised that the whole event seemed so fulfilling. And yet so simple! Joe had been so right about the selection of players for this project. I was amazed.

What was your vision for the project, and how did it coincide with/differ from Joe’s vision?

Linford: Our vision was “to make a record that we couldn’t imagine in advance.” We wanted to be surprised. We wanted to remain open, let the record unfold in real time.

We had heard the records that Joe had been producing, but we couldn’t quite figure out in advance how that would translate to an Over the Rhine record. That was a fascinating dilemma for us.

Fortunately, Joe loves to be surprised as well. He puts most of his efforts into selecting the particular musicians he intuitively believes will be amazing together for the particular project in question. (I believe he thinks of these musicians as an extended band of brothers. His affection for each of them is beautiful to behold.)

Karin: (His respect and regard for them in an industry of dismissal and disregard is remarkable and refreshing.)

Linford: Then it feels like he gets us all in a boat together and fearlessly sets sail into unknown territory. Or maybe he puts us on a secret, after dark train that makes a previously unknown world roll by. The destination is revealed along the way.

Karin: (Either way, he makes one hell of a captain.)

Linford: But secretly, sometimes it felt like Joe wasn’t interested in making a record. I think he wanted the whole event to feel more like shooting a black and white film.

In terms of differing visions, in Joe’s words, he often favors the obtuse. Whenever something becomes too obvious or immediate, he tends to lose interest.

I on the other hand always want moments on my records and in my shows that are completely inclusive – moments where the yoke on the listener is easy, and the burden is light. I was fascinated to see Joe fearlessly steer us mostly into places that were somewhat more challenging all around.

What’s the relationship between your expectations for the record and its final form?

Karin: As mentioned above, I had few expectations and it was intentional. Although I am not a practicing Buddhist, daily I would read Pema Chodron – a Buddhist nun – to aide me in my process of letting go. I would say that it helped immensely.

Describe the experience of the week in which the album took shape.

Linford: We flew out to Pasadena Saturday evening May 15 to get our feet on the ground, get settled in. Karin and I had dinner together.

Karin: Sunday morning we had breakfast and walked around and found a bookstore that Joe had recommended called Vroman’s, and bought yet another Bukowski collection called Betting On The Muse – which is also the title of a poem that seemed to capture our mood at the time.

Linford: We met Joe for the first time for coffee that afternoon, a Sunday, and I must admit, it was a delight. Sometimes in this vagabond life there can be what feels like a dearth of “real” conversation. With Joe, that is not a problem. I believe that Joe’s preferred word for what ensued during our week of working together is “communion…”

It is not too big of a word to describe that week and the friendship and encouragement that flowed.

Karin: I was encouraged and immediately disarmed by how comfortable I felt with Joe. His warmth was infectious, and he had the substance to reinforce all of his works and reputation.

Linford: We started recording TLS at The Garfield House in South Pasadena with Joe Henry at the helm on Monday, May 17 and wrapped the following Friday afternoon. We walked away feeling like we had just experienced the week of a lifetime. 

Jay Bellerose and David Piltch and Greg Leisz and Keefus Ciancia and Patrick Warren and Joe’s son, Levon, and the soul singers – (James Gilstrap, Niki Haris, Jean McClain) they were all wonderful conjurers and co-conspirators. A significant number of the tracks on the record are first takes. We landed ‘em like glistening, silvery fish, everyone playing together, Karin singing with the band for every take. Then we all sat down and ate dinner together in the evenings.

Joe presides over his espresso machine at the top of the stairs not unlike a priest at an altar.

Joe said very little in advance about how he specifically wanted the record to sound. Rather, he asked Karin and I and the musicians to watch a 1957 Italian film before we arrived: Le Notti Bianche, directed by Luchino Visconti. Sure enough, on Monday morning in South Pasadena, as if on cue, it was suddenly cool, rainy and misty, the mountains all but obscured, the colors of the world muted.

Jay Bellerose always wanted a copy of the lyrics in front of him and he wanted to be able to see Karin sing while he played. Those were his only two requests.

One other memorable image from the week: Joe cooking dinner for his family (Melanie, Levon and Lulu) in a white apron, old jazz records being piped overhead into the kitchen practically making the skillet on the stove sputter. Joe’s love for his family and their love for each other and mutual respect are certainly among the most important moments we witnessed that week.

Don’t know if the following is helpful or not: It’s an excerpt of the letter we sent out to the Over the Rhine mailing list announcing that we were going to be working with Joe Henry. We invited our listeners to pitch in to make the recording possible (for national release on our own label, Great Speckled Dog) and they fully-funded the project…

Hello extended musical family,

Might want to pour a cup of something good and settle in. You know it always takes me at least four pages to say a proper hello.

Hope you are well.

We have some big news.

Spring has come to Ohio. The grass is green, the silver maples have their leaves, our part of the earth has tilted back toward the sun, which seems to take pleasure now in drenching the house in morning light. If you stand on the porch, close your eyes, turn your face toward the sun and let it shine on your eyelids, if you breathe deeply, it feels like someone is pouring a pitcher of light directly into your soul.

The birds are drunk on spring, flirting, nesting, singing. Our lone tupelo tree has new eager buds that make it look like a candelabra full of tiny green candles. My mother says if you pay attention it’s like watching the world being created all over again right in front of your eyes.

Yes, we are feeling adventurous. (Maybe adventure is simply paying attention to the part of you that wants to be created all over again.)

We are feeling like we want to invite you along.

e have some big news.

For the first time ever, this coming May 17, Karin and I are planning to travel to the West Coast to make an Over the Rhine record. We are going to work with producer Joe Henry and an amazing cast of characters. We are going to make a record that we can’t quite imagine. Hopefully it will be a little bit strange and a little bit wonderful.

Hopefully we will, “Blow the seams out of the songs...” (JH)

One thing for sure: We are going to be surprised.

There are at least three reasons why we still want to make music:

One: We believe making music has something to do with what we were put on this earth to do. If we leave our songs alone, sooner or later they call to us until we come back to where we belong. When we live in the sweet spot of that calling, it gives others (you?) permission to discover the sweet spot of your own calling and live there.

Two: Both Karin and I have had occasion to bury loved ones. When we put loved ones in the ground, we find that we lose interest in acquiring stuff. We know we can’t take it with us when we go. No, it’s not about acquiring, rather it’s about what we are able to leave behind. That’s what gives life meaning: doing work that you can leave behind, your personal token of gratitude to the world in return for the gift of getting to be alive in it. (We believe the opportunity to make this record with Mr. Henry has everything to do with what we will leave behind.)

Three: Presence. There is a beautiful passage of scripture that made an impact on me as a child that I have never forgotten. Jesus said that if you help someone in need, someone hungry or naked or thirsty or imprisoned, if you are able to be present with them and soothe them in some way, it’s the same as if God was hungry or naked or thirsty or imprisoned and you found a way to help God.

There is so much need in this beautiful broken world it can be overwhelming. Maybe the most profoundly satisfying thing about making music for the last 20 years is we have watched people invite our music to be part of the big moments of their lives – a slow dance in the kitchen with someone who changed everything, a walk down the aisle at a wedding, a child being born... Unfortunately, big moments also occur during seasons when it feels like everything is going horribly wrong. We all need music during those dark times too – I know I do. It’s always humbling and amazing to learn that our music can be present in those too-difficult-too-imagine times. In some small way, through our music, it feels like we get to be present too, even when that is physically impossible. We get to be there in spirit.

That’s enough to keep us coming back.

That and all the sex and drugs…

I’m just kiddin’.

One dilemma with doing something creative for a long time is it can become a bit predictable. If an artist doesn’t push forward into fresh territory, doesn’t continue to risk something, doesn’t seek out new people who can teach her something unexpected, help her find a new way into the center of it, something vital begins to atrophy.

Karin and I have been writing our new songs for a good while now. I suppose many of them are understated glimpses into the people we are (so far) and the people we long to be and the difference that lies between.

Songs are little holders of ideas and images and questions that we want to remember. Sometimes the songs simply gather together some particular details of our life here on the farm. The songs teach us what we care about, and on a good day surprise us. Sometimes the new songs soothe us during our own dark moments. Sometimes they try to lend a helping hand.

Underneath our writing, there is a hunger and belief in possibility: the possibility that the “best” Over the Rhine record hasn’t been made yet. The possibility that our best work is still out there waiting for us. The possibility that we can still grow…

With this in mind, we asked ourselves, If we could make our next record with any producer/ally, someone who could help us record a project that we can’t quite imagine and envision (we want to be at least a little bit surprised as I’m sure you do), who would that person be?

We thought of some of our favorite moments on records we had heard in the last several years.

A name that quickly rose to the top of our list is songwriter and producer Joe Henry.

Joe has been quietly making records (well not that quietly, he has won at least two Grammy’s) that don’t sound like other records being made in 2010. They are a little bit dark and cinematic and funky and unpredictable. It seems like he loves to help performers who have already covered a lot of miles – people like Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Solomon Burke, Louden Wainwright, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Mose Allison – rediscover the soul of what they do in new light.

But maybe even more importantly, Joe is a fine songwriter. We were excited about the possibility of getting his perspective on the actual writing.

Well, it’s always a long shot when you start at the top of your list, but to make a long (amazing) story short enough to fit into this letter, Joe has fully embraced the idea of helping us make this next Over the Rhine record. The ensuing conversation has been wonderful. We have discovered some friends in common, and I think we will discover even more common ground along the way as we discover the next chapter of the band together. We are even writing a song together that keeps us up at night in a good way…