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Wheeling News Registrar, Wheeling WV
November 4, 1994

by Paul Rinkes

OTR SWIMS TOWARD FAME

If positive reviews, increasing record sales and sold-out shows are any indication, a Barnesville native and her band are about to hit the big time.

Karin Bergquist, guitarist and lead singer for Over the Rhine, a band based in Cincinnati, hails from the Pumpkin Town. OTR has just released its second major-label disc. Titled "Eve", it deals with deep relationships, losses and learning to live with ones self.

Even though she's been out of the area for some time now, Barnesville remains fresh in Bergquist's mind.

When asked of her memories of Barnesville, Bergquist stops, hesitates and then carefully responds.

"It's a small town," she said, laughing. "My memories of Barnesville..wow..I spent age 7 to age 21 more or less there and I don't think there's any place like it in the world.

"It's a very unique place and people that live there, well, it's very similar to (the Eagles' song) 'Hotel California': once you check in, it's very hard to leave."

Obviously not too hard, considering she and her band have toured Europe and North America extensively over the past few years. She was in town for this year's Ohio Pumpkin Festival.

But she can't really explain in words what her hometown is like.

"It's a funny little place. I've mentioned to my friends that with Barnesville, you just don't get it unless you've been there."

"Like any kid growing up in any small town, you have pleasant experiences and you have not so pleasant experiences, and I think the one drawback that I really experienced living in a small town pretty heavily influenced the first track of our new record, although it didn't come out of that consciously."

She refers to the disc's first single, "Happy With Myself?" It's a rolling little number that declares Bergquist to be happy with who she is - maybe.

"There have been times when I've said, 'Look Karin, you're 27 years old. If you have to tell this to yourself or anyone else, then who are you trying to convince?"

"Hence the question mark at the end. The character in the song is someone who maybe isn't quite sure she can handle the scrutiny of everyday life, whether it be in the public eye, in front of an audience or under the suspicious gaze of your next-door neighbor in the backwoods of Ohio."

Her songs frequently deal with weighty subjects - often, the loss that she says "is just inevitable" when two people get into a relationship.

And OTR fans keep coming to her, relating how their lives were affected by her songs. All this leaves her feeling a bit perplexed.

"When people tell me they like certain songs, I have to wonder, is it a morose society we're living in or are there certain universal subjects that we all have to face and it's sort of like we can't get out of here alive without having faced them?"

The name "Over the Rhine" comes from the Cincinnati neighborhood where the band members lived and first became a functioning unit.

She said some members of OTR still live and work there, because, "It's a very beautiful, downtrodden, poverty-stricken artistic dreamland sort of neighborhood. There's cheap housing, all the crime you could want and some small stirrings of gentrification. It's perfect."

When asked what music influenced her to become what she is today, Bergquist says, "Well, when I was 17 years old, I do remember going to the Van Halen concert in Wheeling in 1984. That wasn't necessarily my favorite album; I think that year more than anything else I cruised the backroads with friends, listening to Janis Joplin."