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index | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000
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February 11, 2005 Hello fellow travelers, Another overcast, chilly winter day here in Ohio. Hopefully all the clouds just mean that nature is stirring up some cosmic cookie dough in the sky. Hopefully the sun will come out before too long, and we'll have spring, fresh out of the oven. I love snow, but this time of year, all the trees start looking a little forlorn, a little impatient. This time of year is all about lookin' forward, I guess. *** Karin and I just got back from Barnesville, Ohio. We got a sad call from Lisa, Karin's best childhood friend, the matron of honor at our wedding. Lisa's son Brandon had been killed instantly in a car accident. He was a freshman at Kent State University. In many ways, Brandon was the kid that we all wanted to be. He was well loved by his peers, athletic, adventurous, a hard worker, funny, girls loved him, he made his family proud. And then he was gone. So we drove up for a few days to participate in some of the worst that life has to offer. It was good to stay with Lisa and her family - cry together, reminisce together, be quiet together, talk when talk was needed. It was heartening to see the support from the surrounding community. About 1400 people showed up at the viewing in the tiny town of Barnesville to pay their respects to the family - students, friends, Amish neighbors, co-workers… Now we all try to take some of the heartbreak home and live with it. We can't imagine, but we hope in small ways to bear each others burdens. We think about our faith. We believe, and we pray for help with our unbelief. Make sure the people you love know they are loved. *** Karin and I have sold our house to a young family and will be moving this Spring. Two young boys, Collin and Aidan, will explore this attic with its odd angles where I've tried to write. Chad, the father, will be poking around in the basement where we currently store all the oversized posters. Renee will be kneeling in the roses that Karin planted. Maybe they'll all sit like we used to under the grape vines. May they be blessed. Our friends helped us get our foot in the front door of this forbidding old Victorian and by some miracle, the songs that we wrote and often recorded right here enabled us to pay them back. When Karin and I got married, we still had separate apartments. But this is where we set up shop together. We lovingly called this big wooden house the Grey Ghost. We tried to be good to the house. It was good to us. This is the house where Karin taught herself to cook. This is the house where I sat at the table and said, Wow. I love that woman. And this is the house where quite often on New Year's Eve we'd gather some friends together for food, stories, poems, music. After midnight, my men friends and I (Oh, and Aralee would usually join us) would stomp up the stairs and gather 'round in the attic, and the top of the house would fill with aromatic cigar smoke. The cigar of choice was called the “Hemingway Short Story.” We talked and smoked into the wee hours and sipped our Lagavulin. For those few hours, no matter what the New Year might bring, we were unstoppable. It was here at the Grey Ghost that we put together and released: Amateur Shortwave Radio And my three house-bound solo albums: I Don't Think There's No Need To Bring Nothin' It's been a good chapter. Make sure the people you love know they are loved. *** Where are we going, you ask? Ah, be careful of your dreams. After years of rambling about Imaginary Apple Orchards and philosopher farmers (Wendell Berry, Robert Frost, Rockwell Kent, The Wyeths et al), Karin and I bought a little 5-acre farm outside of Cincinnati, with an old pre-Civil War brick house, with crooked floors, with cracked windows, with melancholy mice. What have we done! But we can see the sky properly. We can build proper fires. We can plant new trees and watch them grow in the shadows of the old ones that are already there. We can grow our own food. Karin says, We're aging musicians, and we need to become more self-sufficient! I would like to have the Amish help me with a windmill to draw well water for the garden. One night a lop-sided pregnant moon came up behind the dilapidated barn and took our breath away. One night we heard the owls calling across the fields. We'll probably have to take the barn down and rebuild someday. We're going to be careful with those hand-hewn beams. What will this do to us and our music? We're not sure. Say a prayer. Make sure the people you love know they are loved. *** Our new record is coming out March 29th. It's called Drunkard's Prayer. It was recorded right here in the rooms of the Grey Ghost. I am proud of all of our records, flaws and all. Each represents a time in our lives, and we poured ourselves into each. But there's something about Drunkard's Prayer that is special-hard to put into words. Even after all these years, I think I can finally say I have a favorite. We'll be posting all the info soon. Soon, you can pre-order one if you wish. Karin and I will sit down here at the Grey Ghost one last time and sign the pre-ordered copies until our fingers ache. We'll play music, pour a glass of wine, talk deep into the night. Who knows what we'll find. We'll also let you know more soon about some of our upcoming trips. We're not going to be away for long periods of time this year, but we've got some warm-up shows coming up in the Northeast. We're playing some release concerts here in Cincinnati at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley, March 31st and April 1st, then a trio of shows in Dayton, and then we're heading for the West Coast later in April. We're happy to announce a very special guest: Kim Taylor will be opening for us this year, and sitting in with us some along the way. Stay tuned at overtherhine.com for more. We're looking forward to seeing you. Make sure the people you love know they are loved. Bye for now, Linford for Over the Rhine - - - Hello from Ohio, There's a chicken hawk that has been shadowing the neighborhood of Norwood these last few weeks. The pigeons have never been so nervous. The hawk doesn't really fly. It hurtles in perfect silence from some high vantage point, slices the air outside of our kitchen windows, rounds the corner of the house and is gone. Its ways are above the ways of the neighborhood birds. It came from some outside place with more air and space. It feels foreign here. Overqualified. Its beauty is too wild. As we prepare to leave this neighborhood, I can't help but see this bird as some sort of sign. It feels like it was sent to fetch us, to kill some illusion, to open our eyes. It seems like it was sent to let us know that it's okay to go. We're leaving the city. The farm beckons. More air and space. We'll have to wait and see what happens. We'll keep you posted. *** But for now, this! You can now pre-order your very own copy (or copies) of Over the Rhine's new cd, DRUNKARD'S PRAYER. Why should I order in advance you ask? 1) Karin and I will sign by hand all the cd's that are pre-ordered. This strange little ritual takes a day or two. You can participate in a sort of benevolent torture. Fun! 2) You'll receive a small surprise from the band with your signed cd, if you order in advance. (Karin suggests authentic Norwood pigeon feathers.) 3) When you are kind enough to pre-order through the band's website, most of the money actually goes directly to Over the Rhine, which helps with touring costs, food for Willow, Elroy and the cats while we're away, and get this, farm fencing! 4) Avoid the disappointment of going to a record store on March 29th only to discover the cd is sold out, or hasn't yet arrived. (Unless something unforeseen goes severely haywire (or you live in a distant foreign land) you'll have your signed copy the day DRUNKARD'S PRAYER is released. We have a plan.) Every time we release a new project, we can't help but thank our growing community of listeners for giving us the opportunity to continue to write and record songs for a living. You all continue to surprise and inspire us with your encouragement and support. We don't hesitate to view all of this as mildly miraculous. Thank you again. As Karin likes to say, Without you, we're homeless. DRUNKARD'S PRAYER feels like the most personal record we've ever made. An interviewer recently asked me what I hope people get from this record. I said that whenever I encounter a work of art that moves me in a significant way, I always walk away wanting to be a better human being. I feel it all over my skin. This chemical reaction is a mystery. I don't begin to understand it. But I said I hope this is what happens when people hear this music. I hope people breathe more deeply and find ways to be more courageous, more open, more generous, more fearless, more loving. May it be so. Details, particulars, and old rabbit trails at overtherhine.com… *** We'll be debuting barebones versions of many of the new songs in the Northeast next week. We're very happy that our former Grey Ghost housemate Kim Taylor is opening the shows and then sitting in with Karin and I. We've been rehearsing in the living room right here where we recorded DRUNKARD'S PRAYER. We crack each other up quite a bit. Hope you can join us. Monday, February 28, Annapolis, Maryland RAM'S HEAD Tuesday, March 29, DRUNKARD'S PRAYER USA RELEASE DATE! HOMETOWN DRUNKARD'S PRAYER RELEASE CONCERTS: Thursday, March 31, Cincinnati, Ohio TWENTIETH CENTURY THEATER Tickets for the Cincinnati shows are now available. Europeans and Brits: come on over. Canadians: come on down. Cheap flights abound. We're also looking forward to a long weekend at one of our favorite venues, Canal Street Tavern in Dayton, Ohio, as well as a long overdue trip to the West Coast in April. Check out overtherhine.com for more. Karin's got dinner on and the pasta is smelling good on a Friday night right here at home. The dogs are sprawled out. There's a smattering of snow outside, and it's cold, but it's warm inside. What can I say. Be well, Linford for Over the Rhine PS Speaking of the West Coast, we've got shows booked in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles. We're still looking for shows on April 24-26 between Eugene and San Francisco. If you'd like to recommend a venue or music-friendly coffee house, or if you know of someone en route who is a successful house concert host, we're open to suggestions. Please e-mail Dave Palmer: davepalmerinc@yahoo.com… Thanks! Hello fellow travelers, Hello from Nowhere Farm. I sit in the morning sun of a Sunday with my thick, cream-colored mug of Karin's fresh-brewed coffee. Here I am on the back porch of our new 170-year-old house. I look out across hundreds and hundreds of acres of undulating farm fields at a woods full of spring. Out here you don't merely notice the seasons changing, you live the change from the inside out. The grey wet world of winter that had us wearing three layers inside this old farm house while we ripped up crooked floors and dug out crawl spaces with shovels and buckets has been overtaken by a new world filled with every shade of green, full of fresh air and light and life as far as the eye can see. The only sound this morning is the considerable birdsong that comes at us from almost everywhere. We've heard killdeer, redwing blackbirds, cardinals, robins, sparrows, the noisy confabulations of grackles and starlings. When we ate supper yesterday evening around a small table under the old maple trees, purple martins wheeled around the chimneys and then discovered us and came down to our level doing fly- by's three and four feet off the grass as if to ripple the wine in our glasses with the breath from their own wings past our ears. (Or maybe they were chimney swifts, but we thought we saw blue.) The birds are everywhere. They nest in the eaves of the house and we hear the hoarse squeaks of the hungry young. *** We got our piano moved in the day before we left for the West Coast. I played it in the old room at the end of the house and listened to the sound of the wide-plank hardwood floors and plaster walls and divided light windows built before the civil war. The piano sounded good, full of history. We can make music here. And then I walked out on the porch, and there, listening less than a foot away from the back door was a motionless, sprawled, five-and-a half-foot black snake with bands of brown diamonds. I cannot tell you the primal chord that this struck. I say five-and-a-half-feet, because he wasn't quite as tall as me. Luckily Karin was away and it took me three garden tools to dispose of the old fellow, and there I was apologizing while I killed him, and I had to write about the experience for most of the rest of the afternoon. I wrote the black snake the best poem I could write for ending his life. I hope it's a good poem. My friend Brandon said that coexistence is an ideal that cannot always be realized. "If it hadn't been day three, and if he hadn't been a foot from the back door..." "But the fact that he was listening to me play the piano, a sound he may not have heard all his life, a curious serenade coming from what would soon kill him..." "I have to make this farm safe for my family, for the ones I love..." Snakes get a bad rap. I'm really glad I didn't meet him while I was lying under the house in the crawl space, barely able to roll over on my own stomach. (Every plumber and electrician out here seems to have his own story about the snake in the crawl space. Our own electrician would sometimes send in his teenage daughter. She was fearless when it came to dark, unknown spaces and would run wire anywhere.) There are powerful metaphors at work that make me secretly mourn his blood on my hands. *** It's almost too beautiful here to write. But I hope not. Is it harder to give the world a little something beautiful when you're in the thick of it, when there's a redwing black bird at waist level every 100 feet or so along this gravel road we walk together as the sun sets? When the sound of the breeze in the pines sounds like the Holy Spirit? When trees I cannot name in the distance are covered in blossoms, each a bouquet several times my height? When a pair of Canadian geese fly by and honk their hello's while we're having dinner under the trees? Karin is giving Willow a bath with the hose in the yard. Elroy got up and went over and lay down behind a stone wall. He's hoping that it's not his turn next. The dogs are confused. They think we moved to a park and will have to go home soon. The first week we were out here, even though we were working some of the longest days of our lives, I kept thinking we were on vacation and would have to go back to the city soon. The house has a ways to go. Even now, our only source of water inside is a utility sink in the laundry room. We have a toilet but no bathtub yet. A refrigerator but no kitchen sink. One late evening after a long sweaty day of moving, we ran a hose from the laundry sink out to an apple tree covered in white blossoms. Karin had bought a chrome handheld shower which we put on the other end of the hose. I climbed a stepladder and wrapped the handheld shower around a branch, climbed down, went inside and turned on the hot and cold water. A perfect shower came straight down out of our apple tree, what looked that night like the world's very first tree, a tree drunk with the perfume of its own budding. The moon was coming up over the roof of the house, the sky was awash in stars. It took me my whole life to realize we were all born to bathe out doors in the open air. The farm is full of simple pleasures. *** Our tour of the West Coast was very memorable thanks to all of you who found us for those evenings of music, much of it from our new CD Drunkard's Prayer. And it was memorable thanks to the towering redwoods we drove under driving south from Eugene on Highway 101. And memorable thanks to the rocky beaches along the coast covered with scrubbed driftwood in every imaginable shape, some of the world's best sculpture washed up haphazardly on a beach, lying there free, no admission, on the edge of an art gallery of waves on fire for miles toward a setting sun. I'm working on a new song that's almost done. One bit of the refrain is: This world's so beautiful This world's so beautiful You all filled the rooms we played in Seattle all the way to San Diego with expectation and energy. We were way overdue for a trip out west. Thanks for giving us such a warm welcome back. You were undoubtedly some of the best audiences we've played to in over 10 years of touring. Thanks for the many tiny treats: the flowers, wine, cigars, books etc..... We couldn't have moved out to this farm without the community of friends that gathered around us and helped pack, helped work on this house, helped us move, helped us tour. We couldn't have moved out to this farm without the community of all of you who have discovered our music and helped give it a life. We thank you all. We have been blessed with so many good and generous people. *** This week we'll be heading to Florida for four shows, and then a week from today, we'll be playing Atlanta. We do hope you'll come by and share some of these songs with us. We've got a very gifted group of musicians out right now, and the songs feel very much like living things. You can burn a painting and it disappears. You can't burn a melody. A melody is one of those unseen, eternal things that we can't touch with our hands. Thanks to Rick and Devon and Kim for their good company and musicianship, and thanks to our crew: Chris, Drew and Ryan. (Good luck Ryan with your new chapter.) Stop by overtherhine.com for the particulars on shows this week in Jacksonville, West Palm, Stuart, Orlando and Atlanta. Some of these places we've never played before and aren't quite sure what to expect. We hope to see you. We're looking forward to it. When we work, we travel from city to city. Now when we come home, we disappear, leave the city, breathe deep, slow down a little. It feels like the best of both worlds. There have been many moments when we were overwhelmed, a bit afraid that we had bitten off too much--too many unknowns. But now we're here at Nowhere Farm, and this hard-won moment is drenched with peace and rejuvenation. Thanks for listening and may you all discover your own doorway to true joy, Linford for Over the Rhine PS You can still order our new CD, Drunkard's Prayer, through overtherhine.com. Our sincere thanks to all of you who pre-ordered. That was a huge help to us. Most everyone got their CD on or before the release date as planned, but one shipment of Drunkard's Prayer was lost and our label couldn't track it down for love nor money, which resulted in a delay. We apologize to the few who had to wait. We also ran out of stock on a few items because of the overwhelming response. We really appreciate your generosity. Just to clarify, it wasn't the staff of Pastemusic.com that was at fault. And we really do feel like we've got the few remaining bugs worked out at this point for the future. Our audience is growing, and it's hard to keep up sometimes. Thanks again and we hope to see you soon somewhere down the road. Nowhere Farm Hello, It’s a breezy July Wednesday morning, and a breeze on our little farm is a significant gift. First of all, we haven’t seen a car all morning, so the air is well worth breathing deeply. It’s a sensation closer to drinking than breathing. Second, the locust trees have been an unexpected surprise. Earlier in the spring they were covered with sweet-smelling white blossoms, but now they have deep green, leafy branches with a knack for wrapping themselves around armloads of wind and not letting go. They bend surprisingly low, and lean into each other seductively, sharing windy jokes and whispers. (Karin almost changed the name of the farm to Locust Grove, we’ve been so taken with them.) Third, the wind makes waves in the fields. The soybeans just curtsy self-consciously, but the wheat is transformed into a muted golden ocean that ebbs and flows. (Kim Taylor suggested that for our next video, Karin and I run towards the wind-blown wheat in our vintage bathing suits – beach gear in tow – and snorkel around in the wavy fields. Perhaps the occasional hand-operated folk art fish would rise up during a chorus.) Fourth, the wind in the pine trees sounds like the holy spirit arriving, passing through, moving off to participate in whatever God is trying to get done. I’ve been reading Lauren Winner’s book, Girl Meets God, and she, thinking outloud, suggests that the holy spirit is what quiets all the other voices in our heads so that we can occasionally hear what God might have to say. Finally, we’ve had some brutal heat here in the Midwest the last several days, and it’s wonderful to feel the air move. They say every wind has its weather, and we’re hoping some rain will blow in for the garden a little later. Right now, the sun is still bright, but there is the foreshadowing of rain in the sky, something subtle. My mother and father came down for their first visit, and they grew up on Amish farms, so we were nervous about how our little place would look to them. My father walked over to our fence by the garden and within a few minutes had the bobwhite quail answering his whistles. He said he heard birds that he hadn’t heard since he was a boy. We worked the garden together, planted some more sweet corn, transplanted some watermelon and squash plants. He was genuinely excited about the richness of the soil, the view, the peacefulness. I guess I had forgotten how much he loved birds and their songs. He made field recordings with a reel-to-reel tape recorder when we very young, and played his discoveries at the breakfast table while we kids leaned over our hot cereal. This winter we’ll find a good spot near the kitchen window for my father’s handmade bird feeder, and next spring we’ll start to find nooks for his bluebird boxes. We also want to see if we can lure some purple martins, see if we can convince them that they should make Nowhere Farm their home. My mother spotted the apple tree in the front yard, and said, There’s no way we’re letting those apples go to waste. So we sat together under one of the ancient maples and peeled and quartered, and she helped us make several batches of lightly sweetened home made applesauce. She also brought a big bag of fresh oak leaf lettuce from their garden and made my favorite home made dressing, and between Karin doing her thing in the kitchen, and my Mom pulling out a few specialties, we ate like our farm had been transported to Southern France. We’ve seen things out here. Bloated, blood-red moons on the rise. On a dark night, the milky way spilling down the center of the sky – somebody get a mop. We’ve seen a thousand acres of waist-high fireflies – no wonder people believed in Elves moving secretly across the night. Karin’s got our porch decked out with many a colorful potted flower, each of which she has a knack for naming precisely (my own memory is pretty much shot at this point). So the butterflies flutter by and wow us with their extravagances, their fine art wings, their swallowtails. And the hummingbirds will thrum by in high gear, and hover on a dime, and dip into the blooms to extract their elixirs, the sweet stuff of life, from Karin’s potted flowers. Then there’s the rain out here across the fields, the gentle, soaking rains or the crash-bang, bust-the-sky storms, the trees turning their leaves inside out to drink, the mist lying across the fields on newly wet evenings. The sunsets, different every evening, turning the fields colors that we can never imagine in advance. We are rich, but none of this belongs to us. Karin says, The only things we own are the moments. Everything else is like a book borrowed from the library: it will all be returned. My oldest brother Conrad and his wife Kathy and their five kids came down for a visit. The kids pitched their tent in the maple grove. We played badminton and increasingly cut-throat croquet and picked black berries and dumped spoonfuls of fresh berries on our pie and ice cream. Jonathan, Conrad’s oldest son, caught the largest large mouth bass of his life at a nearby pond in one of the fields, a bass longer than his elbow to the tip of his fingers. He’s been crazy about fishing ever since he could maneuver around on all fours, so it was great to know that this visit will be forever etched in his fishing memory. He was visibly shaken with joy when we stopped back to check on him, but he did manage to more-or-less document the fish with the family video camera before he tossed it back. But what about the dark underbelly of all this beauty? It was a bad year for ticks this spring, so we’ve had to be vigilant with the dogs. Ticks will hide between their toes, or find an unsuspecting spot on a wagging tail. I missed a tiny tick that got a good grip on the nape of my own neck overnight. The bite still itches even now, a month later. I had to go to a country doctor and drive down a long farm lane and wait in the waiting room on old church pews and look out the window at the pond with Canadian geese walking about, suspicious heads held high as if a nurse might approach one of them unannounced and try to hook a wing up to an I.V. A large hawk flies in to Nowhere Farm almost daily, lately crying the saddest cries. We don’t know why it’s so sad. Perhaps it is tired of all the killing. The black birds get nervous, and the hawk will leave us neat piles of plucked black bird feathers after her meals, and once the severed head of a young possum on one of our paths, eyes still open, looking both ways. I’ve had to learn the elusive art of killing poison ivy – 12 and 15 foot award-winning vines, Magnum P.I. – woody, hair covered vines thick as misshapen baseball bats, leaves full of warts and oily secretions. The huge ivy vines twice as tall as me are the queens, and they’re usually surrounded by knee or waist-high younger plants – the protective pawns – all waiting to make us itch. And when it got hot and the air got very still and close this last week, the horse flies came buzzing around doing fly-by’s. The dogs get jumpy and snap at them violently. These are Arnold Schwarzenegger flies about an inch long – a sort of cross between a common housefly and a Hummer – with fluorescent green racing stripes on their eyes and zebra stripes across their bellies and a scissors where their mouths should be for cutting through skin and hide and sucking blood. Nests of helpless baby birds tumble out of trees during storms and sometimes we try to feed the sad, injured nestlings for a few days while they’re waiting around to die. And the birds, born with more music than they know what to do with, fight viciously with other birds of different colors to defend their little pieces of earth, their territory. There’s the occasional snakeskin in the attic above the kitchen that makes us nervous, worst case scenario being we open the silverware drawer one morning and lose Karin. And of course when you’re raising vegetables, any number of bugs will long to infest whatever it is you’re trying to grow. Beetles were rioting on the sweet corn tassels yesterday morning, and our tremendous pumpkin vines (sprawling with pumpkins the size of cannon balls) are starting to get a bit mushy brown near the roots. I saw a large green caterpillar covered with white larvae, that I think were eating the caterpillar, while the caterpillar ate our tomato vines. Hmmm. Karin pulls the shameless, mating Japanese beetles off of the rose bushes she planted, in her first flower bed out here, near the front of the house. Clouds of insects sometimes throw themselves at the lighted 170-year-old night windows of our house. It’s a bit wild out here around the edges. There’s a dark side, but we root for the beauty of it all. And we believe the reckless beauty that surrounds us will somehow win the day. We build our occasional fires after dark with a few friends, and try to figure it all out. We help each other laugh. So we’re out here. And while the farmers eye their fields of corn and harvest their wheat and grow enough soybeans to give a truck full to seemingly every man, woman and child in America, we grow a different crop. We hope this place will be a new home, a place to retreat to after working city to city, a place in which good music and new words can grow and thrive – music and words that can be of use to us and our friends. There are a lot of unknowns out here, and we need those unknowns to keep it interesting. We wonder outloud what Autumn will be like. The first snowfall: everything completely still for miles. Re-establishing our lives on Nowhere Farm pretty much consumed every resource we could muster, but we did manage to take much-needed, much-loved breaks to continue playing our music, namely the new songs on Drunkard’s Prayer, as well as songs that have been around for awhile. Again, our thanks to the many of you who made these evenings so memorable for us. We were surprised at the few thousand people who showed up for our concert in Louisville for WFPK’s Waterfront Wednesday, in spite of stifling heat and the fact that Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson were playing half a mile away. We played another packed midnight show at the Illinois Cornerstone Festival, and of course we always love those sold-out Chicago crowds at Schubas. And speaking of rooting around for beauty, we’ve got more dates coming up that we wanted to let you know about. We love this new chapter on the farm, but we look forward more than ever now to our trips from city to city to fill a room somewhere for an evening with music. Kim Taylor will be joining us once again. We hope to see you. So here we go: August 26, Friday, THE DAME, LEXINGTON, KY – a rock club next to a kickin’ Chapeau shop. Good music and a new hat for all. August 27, Saturday, CONEY ISLAND MOONLITE GARDENS, CINCINNATI, OH. One of our all-time favorite venues. Join us at this historic and lovely outdoor amphitheater in front of a hometown crowd, beneath the stars, down by the muddy river. September 2, Friday, LITTLE BROTHERS, COLUMBUS, OH. It always surprises us how much love shows up in this room, the quintessential dive. September 3, Saturday, CLUB CAFÉ, PITTSBURGH, PA. The coziest room we’ll play all fall. Get your tix early, it will sell out in advance. September 4. Sunday, JAMMIN’ JAVA, VIENNA, VA. One of those great East Coast, coffee house listening rooms. This show also tends to sell out in advance. September 6, Tuesday, JOHNNY D’S, SOMERVILLE, MA. Our first show at this venue. Don’t know a thing about it. Hope to see some familiar faces though. September 7, Wednesday, MERCURY LOUNGE, NYC, NY. Yes. September 8, Thursday, TLA, (THEATRE OF LIVING ARTS), PHILADELPHIA, PA. A big deal for us to return to this larger venue. Thanks Philly for giving us a shot. C’mon out Lancaster folks, etc. September 9, Friday, IRON HORSE, NORTHAMPTON, MASS. Last time we made an after show pilgrimage to Emily Dickinson’s house. There’s more to come, but if you want to mark your calendars well in advance, we’re planning another triple header for the first weekend of November at Canal Street Tavern in Dayton, OH. And the Christmas tour is taking shape: Two shows at Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago on December 3rd, and our homecoming concert at the stunning Taft Theater in Cincinnati on December 10th. Hope you can join us. We’ll be sending out some short notes in coming days about some summer sales at overtherhine.com. And we’ve got a few surprises up our sleeves. More on that soon. Stay tuned. The journey continues. Days of joy, sadness, beauty, dreaming, hard work, tedium, restlessness, longing, confusion, laughter, clarity, tiny victories, peace. Thank God for music. And thanks for listening, Linford Detweiler for Over the Rhine Pour me a glass of wine Intuition, deja vu I was born to laugh I was born to love "Born" (c) Over the Rhine, from the new release "Drunkard's Prayer" Over the Rhine IN CONCERT, with special guest Kim Taylor: Fri Aug 26: Lexington KY, The Dame Sat Aug 27: Cincinnati OH, CONEY ISLAND MOONLITE GARDENS. (One of our all-time favorite venues. Join us at this historic and lovely outdoor amphitheater in front of a hometown crowd, beneath the stars, down by the muddy Ohio River.) Tickets for this special ALL AGES show are available at all Ticketmaster outlets, by calling 513.241.7469 or 513.562.4949, as well as on-line: http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/16003AFA018E923E?artistid=753213&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=1 Or you can pick up tickets at the door at Coney Island on the day of the show -- no one will be turned away. More dreamy, late summer nights: Fri Sep 02: Columbus OH, Little Brothers We hope to see you! Please share these above dates... There's still no word like your word of mouth. *** And back-to-schoolers: Visit overtherhine.com to fill in any lonely spaces in your cd collection. DRUNKARD'S PRAYER -- "The latest cd, recorded in the living room of The Grey Ghost, is possibly the most intimate offering from Over the Rhine thus far... Unforgettable songs, beautiful, real, close to the bone..." CHANGES COME -- "This concert recording captures a cathartic, electric night on the OHIO tour..." OHIO -- A sprawling double album that critics referred to as "a cry from the ravaged heartland" and "necessary, ambitious pop music..." See for yourself... THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR -- A private collection of songs off the beaten track including a post-9/11 version of Neil Young's Helpless... FILMS FOR RADIO -- A richly arranged project that took Over the Rhine to over 13 countries in Europe and around North America... AMATEUR SHORTWAVE RADIO -- Happy Birthday to us: a musical cake baked from scratch that celebrated a decade of musical exploration... BESIDES -- Our first behind-the-scenes collection of oft-requested Over the Rhine moments that were never officially released... THE DARKEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR -- An alternative to jingly, syrupy fare, this after dark collection "conjures some of the real mystery of Christmas, snowy open spaces, frozen stars, warm lamp-lit rooms..." GOOD DOG BAD DOG -- Many writers have referred to this collection as the band's "homespun masterpiece..." Thanks to you, this cd has had a good life. EVE -- "A tempestuous, adventurous, rambunctious exploration of lost innocence and more..." Enjoy. PATIENCE -- A dreamy collection of songs that landed Over the Rhine a national record deal and the seeds of a fantastic following that has stuck around for years. TILL WE HAVE FACES -- The band's earliest songs, recorded in what sounds like heaven's three car garage, the songs that started it all... And don't forget Linford's spare instrumental recordings: I DON'T THINK THERE'S NO NEED TO BRING NOTHIN' Music for writing, thinking, studying, painting, birthing, and especially nursing -- or so we're told... Drink your life down deep, breathe, open wide, bust on through. Thanks for listening -- without you, we'd be homeless. Lookin' forward to layin' eyes on you soon, hopefully, Over the Rhine PS This e-mail may be shared, broadcast, printed, posted and distributed, or otherwise disbursed freely to friends and acquaintances alike without reproach. Hello from Nowhere Farm, A Stray Dog's Life is Good Enough For Me… Today is Friday, October 7, 2005. There's a different kind of chill in the air today. It's a gray day, breezy, and wet through and through with gentle rain. Change is afoot. The grass is green. The grass loves this cooler weather. The leaves of the maples are starting to turn now in earnest. The golden rod isn't quite as brilliant as it was a few weeks ago, when it sugar-buzzed with pollen-drenched, disbelieving bees. Our garden looks like a fall garden - the zucchini and cucumber vines and sweet corn long dried up, a few ripe tomatoes and peppers still hiding here and there, butternut squash lying conspicuously about. I picked the last few, ripe watermelon yesterday. They're not as big as some of the 35 pounders we hauled out earlier, but they feel and sound ripe. So we'll sit on the porch swing some evening soon and see what we've got. That was a childhood memory I enjoyed reliving - bringing in a heaping wheelbarrow full of ripe watermelon. My father tells me there is no food so good as the food grown in your own garden. But soon the frost will come, and the cycle of life will turn once again. The ground will lie fallow for awhile. Rest. We'll hunker down for our first winter on Nowhere Farm. For a long while, we knew another day would come eventually. And it did. I wrote the following to a few family members and close friends Tuesday morning: Goodbye to a Friend… Hey all, I wanted to let you know that Karin and I got back from taping a radio show Sunday night to discover that Willow was failing. She had stayed overnight with a friend who she loves while we were gone, but had a rough time. We ran some tests yesterday, and she has issues with her stomach and lungs and kidneys. She had lost most of her hearing in the last 4-6 weeks. Seems like the light is fading from her body. She's unable to eat anything except for a little broth, and she can't seem to even keep that down. She's very weak, but still has a spark in her eye. Miraculously, Willow surprised us at 10am this morning and got herself up, gulped down some water and looked at us as if to say, Let's go. We all (Karin, Willow, Elroy and I) had a nice walk on the farm. For 15 minutes, she shook off her troubles and got lost in what she loved. When it was over, she lay down, and it soon became even more clear that she was dying. In a final act of kindness, we're going to take her into Cincinnati this afternoon and say goodbye, spare her the hours or days of further suffering. It was almost 10 years ago to the day that she came into our lives, and we can't imagine the last decade without her. I still remember the Fall day 10 years ago that Karin and I drove into the country to meet with a Weimaraner breeder. She interviewed us for hours and let us see her dogs and talked about what would happen if we bought one of her dogs -- it would have to be co-owned, and "finished" -- made into a bench champion etc. We couldn't afford any of it, and were wondering, how would we do all this and make our music? But the woman warmed to Karin and finally said, You know if you're just looking for a companion, a neighbor of mine just picked up a beautiful Weimaraner that was running on the highway. She's been posting signs, and taking out ads to see if anyone claims her. If nobody does, you might be able to help out with giving her a home. She's a great dog, but she's been on the run for awhile... A week later, this amazing, athletic hunting dog was in Karin's apartment. I can't begin to describe the joy this development brought. From the moment we laid eyes on her, we couldn't help but grin at her intelligence, energy and just the stunningly beautiful way she was put together. Her past, prior to the day she found us, remained a complete mystery. Yesterday, Karin was waiting at the vet's office with Willow while he did an emergency C-section on another dog. A woman walked into the waiting room and said to Karin, Do you remember me? Ten years later there she was -- the breeder who had connected us with Willow. It was one of her Weimaraners that was being operated on and she brought out one of the little puppies with its eyes still closed -- the cycle of life and death right there in the room. It was almost like God saying, I gave you this animal, and I'm still here. It's ok. A friend said that dogs awake to their last day with gladness in their hearts. We had always prayed that we wouldn't get a call somewhere on the road informing us that Willow was gone. We wanted to be able to say goodbye. This is what the answer to that prayer looks and feels like. Lots of tears, lots of joy. Love from Ohio, Linford & Karin We knew the day would come and it did. I had never seen an animal put to sleep. A few friends stopped by beforehand to say goodbye, and of course Robert, the man who became like a brother to us by visiting the Grey Ghost and taking Willow to the park and walking her and playing with her every single day that we were away on tour in the last decade. (With the exception of the few adventures/near disasters when we took Willow along with us.) We realized that Robert had never once turned us down - never said, I can't make it, there's a foot of snow on the ground, I'm too sick, or that weekend won't work for me. Not once in ten years. When Robert walked into the room in those last moments of her life, Willow struggled to her feet one last time to give him the props he so deserved. A few friends shedding tears with us… Tears of joy and sadness - they come from the same place. Everyone said goodbye. Then it was just Karin and I and Willow and the vet that had patched her up from time to time. (We used to joke that there was a different scar for every year that we'd known her.) She was completely relaxed. Her body was tired from holding it all together for us. Earlier we had both spoken with her at length. Karin held her as we drove the hour from the farm into the city. When I told her she was going to lie down and go to sleep and go chase some squirrels, she looked at me with gratitude and relief. And in a few seconds she was gone. When I saw her at complete rest like that I knew we had done the right thing. Her work here was done. Ten years ago, when Karin realized that she had a powerful hunting dog on her hands, she decided communication was of the essence, so she took Willow to puppy school and worked with her on the basic commands - Sit, stay, lie down, OFF! (a general command meaning, Back away, don't eat that) heel, etc. Willow was a quick study, but the command that was used to let her know she was free from obligation was “Release.” Karin whispered that to Willow repeatedly in her final hours. That's the command that Karin has been using as we try to let go now. Release. There are some who would argue that a dog's life is insignificant. But God so often chooses to use insignificant things in significant ways. In the grand scheme, we're all insignificant until love shows up. She was a spark for us, and life is a bit dim right now without her. What am I mourning? I'm mourning the end of the special connection I saw between the woman I love and her very first dog. I'm mourning the fact that I'm getting older. Ten years ago, when Willow arrived, we had no idea what to expect. It was the start of a new adventure. Now we look back at another chapter of our lives that has ended. Willow was good for us. She helped us have a semblance of a routine. It was contagious to watch how she insisted on doing what she was born to do. We write these songs because we want to feel things deeply and listen well to our lives. So in times of loss, maybe we feel a bit more than we wish we did, and this makes it exceptionally painful. We know the day will come when we'll look back with only gratitude and fondness for the ten years we woke up together. I guess no one notices the moment a dog becomes part of the family. She was a true kindred spirit somehow. Good Dog. *** Road Trips, Rose Hips and More… You all have been good to us again this year. So many memorable nights of music and good vibes… We had an unforgettable evening down by the river at Coney Island's Moonlight Gardens in late August. Soon after, we drove to the Northeast, visited some of America's great cities. Those of you who attended the concerts wrapped your arms around us with welcome. Thanks for all the good memories and after dark gifts. It occurred to me that you thought we were deep and it turns out we're not deep. All we do is write simple, slightly off-kilter love songs and gather a few people together and sing about love. We're not that deep. Songs about simply wanting to love well those closest to us. Songs about wanting to love those people that have hurt us, and those we've hurt. Songs about wanting to love what we cannot name, what we have yet to see. Songs about being in love with the reckless beauty of the sky, the lay of the land, the grin of a child. Songs about failing to love more deeply, about being partially blind to what we want to see more clearly. Songs in which we wonder out loud if we're in love with God, or simply in love with all our unanswered questions. On clear nights when we have friends visiting we have a little game we play. We walk toward the barn and gather under a pole in the yard that has more or less the equivalent of a street light on it, a light which silvers the blades of grass and makes the maple trees glow in the dark. We tell everyone to look up, and we count to three slowly, very slowly, and then flick the light off and the entire farm is bathed in black. The stars swim instantly into precise focus. And it seldom fails to take our breath away. And it looks like a vandal took a pitchfork and just pricked the daylights out of the membrane sky. Dark, dark, dark… But then do you have days, certain days, when you know you've been given so much, probably much more than you deserve, more vast good than you're even aware of, and yet you can't muster up the strength to kick the melancholy out of the house? What is that about? Those days when we can't access our joy. Voices in our heads telling us lie after lie after lie. --We're failures. I think of these thrown days as emotional tantrums where I commit every significant sin in the space of a few hours - the sin of ingratitude, the sin of wanting it all, the sin of not loving myself and therefore finding myself incapable of loving anything or anyone. Have you heard about this Japanese scientist who tapes labels to jars of water? The water with the encouraging, affirming labels (you are beautiful, I love you) makes lovely molecular snowflake-like crystals, the water with the bad labels (I hate you, I wanna kill you) turns snaky brown. Our own bodies are something like 90% water. What are we doing to ourselves with our own thinking? We need to try to be good to ourselves and each other. Fall back… If you squint your eyes at the distance, you can almost see the end of a year looming. So we're heading back out, finding the slow curve of headlights on the highway, lost at sea, happy together, on the verge. Hope you can come along for the ride. Please join us (see overtherhine.com for more details, or e-mail OTRhine@aol.com): Saturday evening, October 22, 2005: we'll be playing at Paste Magazine's Rock-n-Reel festival in Atlanta (Decatur), Georgia. The folks at Paste magazine have brought some much-needed fresh perspective into covering music and culture in America. This is their first attempt at hosting a film and music festival. Check out pastemusic.com for much more. (Over the Rhine plays at 7pm-ish after the inimitable Erin McKeown, and before the ultimate slow burn band, LOW.) Sunday evening, October 23, 2005: Road trip anyone? How about taking a drive through the Fall colors and meeting us at Blue Cats in lovely Knoxville, Tennessee. Kim Taylor opens. Thu Oct 27: Wheaton IL, Wheaton College -- Coray Alumni Gym… One of Bono's stops on his cross-country speaking tour, and didn't Frederick Buechner guest on the faculty for a spell? Fri Nov 04: Dayton OH, Canal Street Tavern - One of the coziest, most legendary listening rooms in North America. Always a favorite. Three nights! Sat Nov 05: Dayton OH, Canal Street Tavern Sun Nov 06: Dayton OH, Canal Street Tavern Sat Nov 12: Columbus OH: Grace Central (An evening of words and music with Linford Detweiler.) Thu Nov 17: Kent OH, The Kent Stage - A ragged old theater with a haunted piano and red velvet seats. This performance is part of the renowned Kent Folk Festival. Fri Nov 18: Belleville OH, Belleville Opera House - A first for us… Come find us in this small Ohio town, and we'll just have to see what happens now won't we? Sat Nov 19: Grand Rapids MI, Calvin College Fine Arts Center - A beautiful venue on a campus that takes its music and culture seriously. This one's definitely worth a drive as well. And looking ahead to our Christmas Tour, mark your calendars now! We're talking hot mulled wine, Salvation Army Store faux-fur coats, scarves flung exuberantly over shoulders, rosy cheeks, take-me-out-of-the-cold warm-on-the-inside music, All I Ever Get For Christmas is Blue. groups of friends stumbling forward together laughing outloud, scribbled back pocket poems, dinner before the show, we do it every year, OVER THE RHINE CHRISTMAS DATES Thu Dec 1: Akron OH, Lime Spider Fri Dec 2: Ann Arbor MI, The Ark Sat Dec 03: Chicago IL, Old Town School of Folk Music (2 shows, early (7pm) and late (10pm)… Sun Dec 4: Des Moines IA, Vaudeville Mews Tues Dec 6: Minneapolis, MN, Details coming soon… Wed Dec 07: Madison WI: High Noon Saloon Fri Dec 09: Indianapolis IN, The Music Mill Sat Dec 10: Columbus OH, Little Brothers Thu Dec 15: Nashville TN: 3rd & Lindsley Fri Dec 16: A town in Kentucky near you, Details coming soon… Sat Dec 17: Cincinnati OH, Taft Theatre. We're ending our year at home and invite all to join us for this special show at a 2600 seat historic theater. ***Please note: Karin and I are planning extra activities for December 18 as well - a 1pm reading & upright piano performance by yours truly, and a special candlelight, wine & cheese catered, Q&A acoustic performance by Karin and Linford at 5pm. (Both additional performances will be held at St. Elizabeth's Cultural Center (A Cathedral of the Arts) in Norwood, Ohio.) We wanted an opportunity to spend a little more time together this year. Throw a little rendezvous. MORE DETAILS SOON. Please plan on spending the extra day with us if you're so inclined. Yours truly, Linford (&Karin) - - - Hello from Nowhere Farm, (No-where, or now-here, you decide.) There's a lot going on. We'll try to be brief. As a friend once sang, Life is strange, life is good, life is all that it should be... *** Come see Over the Rhine this weekend... Thursday, November 17, at the Kent Stage (a lovely old theater with red velvet seats) in Kent, Ohio. We're honored to be a part of the 39th Annual Kent Folk Festival. This performance will be recorded for later broadcast. Friday, November 18, at the Bellville Opera House, Bellville, Ohio. Travel only by back roads and meet us after dark in a lovely little Ohio town, the kind of town that Sherwood Anderson conjured so vividly in his spare, moving short stories. We'll write a few stories of our own. Saturday, November 19, at the Calvin College Fine Arts Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan. We're always happy to be part of this concert series, one of the nation's finest. Looking forward to the Bosendorfer grand piano, with those few extra low notes. *** Check out our on-line specials... The end of the year approacheth. Every song we've ever recorded is on sale. Hooray. Woo-hoo. Enjoy. Check out our flea market here: http://overtherhine.com/catalog/order.html And stay tuned for more info on the upcoming Christmas Tour, (overtherhine.com) as well as special performances on December 18th, and a limited edition, signed CD of highlights from this year's homecoming concert at the Taft! You'll be hearing from us again soon, Captain Hallelujah Wannabe ps Thanks for the great three-nighter at Canal Street Tavern. That was a good ride. |