In today's Cincinnati Enquirer there is a great review of Satuday's show at the Taft. Most interestingly, the article points out that this is the first time the Taft was sold out for the annual OtR show!


Over the Rhine show a great holiday gift
Concert review

By Chris Varias
Enquirer contributor



Linford Detweiler reported that his wife almost took a steroid shot to the throat in order to make the show. However, it is clear Karin Bergquist doesn't require needling in order to play their biggest gig of the year.

Detweiler and Bergquist's band Over the Rhine was forced to cancel a pair of out-of-town shows earlier in the week after Bergquist lost her voice, but the local favorites rallied for their annual Christmastime date at the Taft Theatre Saturday night.

Bergquist, the group's singer, didn't show any signs of illness during the two-hour performance before an appreciative capacity crowd. (This marks the 11th year of the Over the Rhine Christmas show and the sixth at the Taft. A Taft official said it's the first time the event has sold out.)

In fact, if there's a singer who can get by on less than full strength it would be Bergquist. She can flash a powerful voice, but she's not a belter. With her band's subdued spin on folk-rock prevailing through the night, Bergquist sailed along without incident. If there happened to be a slight catch in a note from time to time it would only add to the wistful musical aesthetic to which she aspires.

Bergquist and the band - helmed by Detweiler at piano with Rick Plant on guitar, Devon Ashley on drums and local singer-songwriter Kim Taylor on guitar and backing vocals - played several songs from the last two Over the Rhine studio albums, 2003's "Ohio" and this year's "Drunkard's Prayer." There were lots of stark ballads along the way, like the latter's title track, which closed out the second and final encore. It made those few occasions when OTR chose to pick up the pace more than welcome, such as "Lookin' Forward" and a cover of Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man."

As for seasonal selections, the band did what's probably its best-known Christmas song, "All I Ever Get for Christmas is Blue," along with a new one titled "White Horse." An ensemble featuring Amy Rigby, one of two support acts, took on "Merry Christmas Baby" in the first encore.

Rigby's solo-acoustic set was a Christmas gift for which to be thankful. Beginning with her landmark 1996 release "Diary of a Mod Housewife" on through the new "Little Fugitive," the little-known singer-songwriter has been on an impressive run of record-making.

Her nine-song set provided a perfect crash course for the crowd, who ate up the devastatingly funny tales about dating, marriage, second-marriages and the dissolution of all of the above.

Taylor opened the show with a half-hour set of her own.

She played songs from a forthcoming album, as her lone backing, guitarist Jimmy Zhivago, made all sorts of noises to flesh out the haunting nature of Taylor's music.

Anybody know if Chris Varias is of the male or female persuasion? I noticed last night talking to folks that the scorned women gave her the highest praise, unscorned women next, and most of the guys just didn't get it.
Interesting!
~m

i wish they could have said something a little bit nicer about kim, considering it was her last show with them.

as for amy rigby -- i thought a couple of the songs were hysterical ("here's his address, here's his picture" comes to mind), but i don't think i would want to listen to her on a regular basis.

You're talking about Rigby, right? She reminded me of Sally Fingerett and The Four Bitchin' Babes. Anybody else familiar?

yeah, i'm familiar, but i don't really see the correlation. except that christine lavin tends to do songs that are funny in nature.

i always thought sally's songs were more contemplative.

Chris Varias is a guy. I've known him for years. He used to be on the Enquirer staff as the designated concert reviewer, and then got laid off a couple of years ago and now only sporadically does a review as a "contributor" (i.e. free-lancer). I happen to think that he is quite good. When I asked the Enquirer why they laid off their only concert reviewer, I was told that "nobody cares anymore to read about concerts 48 hrs after the facts". Nice going there, Enquirer!

Well. I've only heard one song by Fingerett (TV Talkshow) and then I read the titles and reviews of FBB and just ass-umed it was common ground. Either way, I'm with you in that I couldn't/wouldn't listen to Rigby on a regular basis. : )

A little bit, she too reminded me of a Jersey band called The Shams, as well as Patty Smyth.

I wrote her a fan letter yesterday!

I enjoyed the review a lot.... I always got irritated by the reviews Larry Nagy did for the Enquirer about OTR's shows because he always managed to work in a dig on Jack Henderson in them somewhere.

Jeff
(a review about a review... how wonderfully postmodern!)

I'm with Jessyka on this one--when I heard Amy perform with Kim and Brandon at The Loft in October, Christine Lavin came to mind right away. In fact, I think I mentioned it at the time to Bill, but I don't think he was familiar with her. Interesting bit of trivia: Jimi Zhivago (Kim's producer for the new album and guitarist at Taft) has done a lot of session work for all kinds of people in all kinds of capacities, but he's on at least one Christine Lavin album that I know of.