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Plain Dealer, Cleveland OH
October 3, 1993

by Michael Norman

OVER THE RHINE MAKING ITS OWN MUSIC PLEASURABLE

Cincinnati's Over the Rhine makes music that's rooted in rebellion, but it's not the kind of subversion you normally associate with today's rock 'n' roll.

Post-punkers such as Nirvana, Fugazi and Sonic Youth embrace noise, aggression and dissonance as an antidote to slickly produced corporate rock. Over the Rhine is a response to that--offering melody, lyrical insight and musicianship as salve for our bleeding ears.

"When I was listening to a lot of alternative rock four or five years ago, it was like 'Man, none of these people can sing!' " says Over the Rhine guitarist Ric Hordinski, a 1982 Willoughby South High School graduate.

"We rebelled against that. We're interested in making music that we find pleasurable and listenable. We're not necessarily out to shock people, which I think was kind of in vogue for awhile, and might still be."

Tuneful, quirky music is the hallmark of this rock quartet, which recently released its major-label debut album, "Patience" on IRS Records. The band--which includes Linford Detweiler on bass and keyboards, Brian Kelley on drums and Karin Bergquist on lead vocals-- plays an artful brand of modern rock, blending elements of folk, jazz, blues and pop into a captivating and meaningful whole.

Detweiler is the principal lyricist, penning confessional, introspective tunes that bristle with dark, sometimes disturbing edges. Bergquist's breathless, haunting vocals give the songs a mysterious, occasionally disquieting feel.

The material is delivered with an art-rock sensibility reminiscent of REM and 10,000 Maniacs and older bands such as the Talking Heads and the Police.

Over the Rhine was formed in Cincinnati four years ago, but the musical collaboration among the four members goes back 10 years. They met in the early 1980s, while students at Canton's Malone College.

Hordinski and Detweiler, both music majors, started playing in bands together almost immediately.

"We just fooled around," says Hordinski. "We were kind of casually studying music. We experimented with all kinds of things. But we never found anything that we really felt great about until we put this band together."

Hordinski says they named their band after their neighborhood--the Over the Rhine section of Cincinnati, a slightly rundown down area north of downtown that "has been inhabited for years by recalcitrant poets, artists--basically people who can't afford to pay a lot of rent."

They played their first gig four years ago at a Cincinnati bar/laundromat called Sudsy Malone's. "It's a little dive with an OK stage and a bar and a laundromat in the back," says Hordinski. "It's sudsy in two senses of the word, but it's a great little room--the kind of room to break a band in. You kind of have to prove yourself there before moving on."

The quartet built a fan base with live gigs and released their first album, "Til We Have Faces," on their own Scampering Songs label in 1991. The buzz from that album led to bigger and better live gigs. Michael Belkin, of Cleveland's Belkin Productions, took notice, asking the band to open for Bob Dylan on three stops of his 1991 tour, including a July 1991 date at Nautica Stage.

"It was a wonderful experience," says Hordinski, "To be able to stand off stage and watch someone like that."

IRS Records offered Over the Rhine a contract last fall after seeing a showcase gig in Cincinnati. The band signed this spring. "Patience" was released this summer.

Hordinski says the band is pumped up about the developments.

"It's kind of like all along we've been rolling this stone up a hill trying to get this thing off the ground and having pretty good success on our own," he said. "But all of sudden we have behind us this record label that has this exceptional track record with breaking unusual bands."

"We kind of feel like, Let's double our efforts and really push it. We've put the burden on ourselves to really hit the road hard. It wouldn't surprise me if at the end of the year we've done 200 to 250 shows."

The "Patience" tour kicked off Sept 17 and included a stop last week at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights. The band will join Squeeze for a seven-week run later this fall, then tour on its own before heading back into the studio in February to record its second IRS record.