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. . . X-Ray by Amy Eversole . . . The Cincinnati based band Over the Rhine is back on track with a new album and new live performances; writer Amy Eversole caught up with vocalist Karin Bergquist to find out how they're doing. X-RAY: Over the Rhine has been a band for about eleven years. For a great deal of that time, you've been an independent band and managed to support yourselves with your music. A lot of people would like to know how you've done thatâ¤| KARIN BERGQUIST: You know, it's so much hard work and I wish there was a nice shortcut. I'm still looking for a shortcut. But when we started, at one point in the first three or four years of Over the Rhine, I had five different jobs. I worked at LaRosa's as a waitress, I was a hostess at the Cincinnatian Hotel, I taught piano and voice lessons independently through the Musical Arts Center. On weekends, I would sing both Friday and Saturday nights at the Cincinnatian Hotel for four hours and then pack up, run out of there, change my clothes, run to Sudsy's and do two sets there. So we were definitely not slacking, and I couldn't do all that now. Oh, and I was managing the apartment building that I lived in, too. That was a very brief stint. When we started, we were just very willing to work and to do whatever we needed to do. I think it was approximately four years into it that we quit all of our jobs and gave up all of our outside sources of income to focus solely on recording and touring as Over the Rhine. We made that our income. It forced us to focus on what we wanted to do--it allowed us to have the freedom to pursue our music. When you're working another job, you're always thinking, "Oh, I could be somewhere else, I could be finishing that song..." So we decided to call our own shots, and really focus. Then we had no excuses. When we made the transition, it was difficult at times. It's still difficult. As a musician, well, there are months that I've heard Buddy and Julie Miller describe as being "between money." The money comes when you get paid for whatever project, or you get a fortunate publishing advance or something, then you're OK for a month or two, and then nothing. And you know something's going to happen again. You go on tour or whatever. But there are some real tenuous times, and you just have to be economically mature, which is a struggle for me! And you have to be willing to work for it. X-RAY: What is it that got you to that point of being able to say, "We're ready to take this risk and give up everything else?" KB: I have a dear friend who I went to high school with, and he was talking about how his father would work down at a bar, and he would go down there and see all of these guys sitting on barstools and crying over their beers about what could have been, and he didn't want that for himself. That sort of stuck with me. I realized that putting my energy anywhere else at that given point in time was counterproductive to what I wanted to make happen, and I did not want to be sitting on some barstool when I was sixty, crying in my beer and saying, "What if?" So, I made a decision and now I know whether I succeed or I fail, I tried. I gave everything. Another one of our philosophies or mantras is, "If we fail, we're gonna be fully busted and on the street--homeless, penniless, failed." We didn't want to hold anything back. We were determined that if we were going to make this dream fly, or at least make it a livable dream, we were gonna put everything into it. We were either going to succeed, or fail really big! X-RAY: I read something Linford wrote once about how there are so many lives we can live, but we can only choose one. Do you ever find yourself saying "What if I would have chosen another life?" or wonder what it is you gave up for this one? KB: I can honestly say no. That's how I know I did the right thing. Even if twenty years from now we're penniless and have twenty records to show for it, I'll still be glad I did it because there isn't anything else in my life I could feel this way about. I think everybody has that drive and that passion for something, you know? And we have so many excuses for not fulfilling our deepest impulses, and I know I can make excuses for getting out of doing something that's really important to me, like finishing a project or song or something. But when I try to talk myself out of it, I get this sick feeling. X-RAY: Is that passion something you've always had, or has it evolved throughout your life? KB: It's always, always there. A family member of mine and I were talking about this, and she was saying that she doesn't know what that passion is for her. And I was like, "You've probably suppressed it or really, really pushed it far down." It's probably there, and she's not in touch with it. Yes, that passion has always been there, and that's one of those things that's hard to explain. I don't understand it at all. I just know that from a very young age, I needed to sing. And I didn't know if I'd be successful, if I could, if I'd be any good at it. But it was what I really wanted to do. And it's always been there. It's never been anything else. It's such a huge part of who I am. X-RAY: So what do you say to people who've suppressed their passion? How do they find it? KB: That I don't know. That's why I feel like a fortunate child. I mean, my life was anything but cushy. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. My mother worked very hard for what little we had. But in that sense, in the sense of knowing what I always wanted, I was very blessed and very fortunate. It's hard for me to explain why that's been there, and because of that I can't suggest to anyone else how to find it. But it's there for everyone. I really believe that. We all have a purpose; we all have a place. X-RAY: Is that passion something your mother has always cultivated and encouraged? KB: No. She hasn't discouraged it, but my mother's take was--I'm going to share a little bit of dirty family history here--when my mother was seventeen, my grandmother was very domineering. It was a very matriarchal family from my great-grandmother on, and my grandmother told my mother she was going to be a registered nurse. She put her in nurses' training and said, "There you go. This is your life." My mother took what she was given, and became a registered nurse, and just recently retired. And because of regrets along the way, she encouraged me to do what I wanted to do. She didn't always agree with me or understand, but she was supportive in most of the decisions I made. She supported me when I would say, "Hey, I'm gonna sing." It was OK. She didn't really understand, but she rarely denied me that. She said, "Because I was told to do what I am doing, I'm going to do the opposite and let you figure it out for yourself, find your own dream and be happy doing it." There was a little bit of the practical thing, which was "Go to college and get your education degree to fall back on in case you're a miserable failure." I tried it, but then realized that as much as this world needs dedicated teachers, and they're underpaid and underrated, I know that I am not one of them. I appreciate it greatly - I had a handful of teachers who changed my life. But I am not one of them. And that was hard to tell my mom. I said, "Look, I've got my BA in performance, and I'm done." But I played a head trip on myself and tried a music education degree for awhile. I made it for about one quarter. X-RAY: What's your take on Cincinnati as a place for a band to find its passion? KB: I think a band can find its passion wherever it is, because it's more about your roots and what wells you draw from. A lot of great bands have come from small towns and smaller cities. If you go to New York or L.A. or Nashville, you're going to get sucked into a vortex, and if you don't know who you are before you go, it can really be detrimental to your vision. It depends on you and how strong and mature you are, and what your vision is, and how strongly you adhere to that. I think Cincinnati is as good a place as any. It depends on you. X-RAY: Would you say that Over the Rhine as a band has a pretty strong vision, and always has? KB: Yes. X-RAY: Has that been challenged in the past while you've been signed to a label, and on television, etc? KB: Well, I think when your vision is challenged, it can be a really good thing. It's like the truth. I'm going to get into my critique of modern American conservative culture here--when certain "truth" is challenged, some people tend to freak out and run the other way and wave their hands in the air screaming, "Unclean!" I think I should embrace the occasional challenge of my vision, which is, in my definition, my version of the truth. I think it can be a healthy thing when a record label comes in--if you have a label--and challenges what you're all about. It can make for a bad relationship, boundaries are important, but it can be good for you personally, and even reinforce what you already know. X-RAY: What is it exactly, that you're about? How would you describe it to someone who hasn't been listening to your music for the past eleven years, and are hearing you for the first time on this new album? KB: I think, I hope, that we're less about an agenda and more about figuring out where we've come from, who we've become, and who we're becoming--putting that somehow into something tangible which is a song, and relating that to the listener in a way that makes a real connection. I really don't think that there's any more of an agenda than that. Our music embodies what we're trying to figure out about ourselves, and this life we've been given, and we're asking, "Is there anybody out there who feels this too?" X-RAY: How do you know if you're making a connection? KB: Feedback. We get feedback through letters. We've gotten some great letters. We get a lot of e-mail. It's good to get feedback, but then again, you have to know what you're about to take it sometimes. I guess feedback is the best way to know you're making a connection, or if people buy the record. That's a fantastic way to give feedback! Thank you, thank you for buying the records! But we get some amazing letters that I can't even begin to respond to. A woman recently wrote whose husband just died of cancer, and she told us how much Good Dog Bad Dog was a salve for him when he was dying. There's another man who had a serious surgery for cancer, and during his recovery he refused any painkillers, but he wanted his headphones to listen to "Poughkeepsie." Stuff like that just blows me away. I really didn't have anything to do with that. I'm happy I was the middle man to get that song out to where it needed to go. But then I just have to step back and say, "That's amazing." X-RAY: When you're listening to one of your albums or hear yourself somewhere, what kind of experience is that for you? KB: (scrunching face) Can you record a wrinkled nose? It's weird. When a song is finished--so many other people say this, too--you're still listening to it with a critical ear. As much as you'd love to just get lost in the music and enjoy it, from that first moment of the song's inception, there's a feeling, a connection that you have with that idea, that you'll never get again. Once the song is finished, no matter how much you tweak it and overdub and track it and all those things that you think you can do to convey that idea--for me, I've never quite gotten back to that initial light bulb that I have at a song's conception. So when I listen to an album that we've done, I'm still listening with a critical ear. At least, that's how I am with Films For Radio right now. I'm hearing it in a different way and hearing how the project evolved, so if I hear a song on the radio or something, it's weird. "Why is that such and such? Why is it coming across like that?" It's a great feeling, and at the same time it's not always what I had in my head! What happened to that genius, that moment of sheer brilliance?! I'm kidding. X-RAY: What are some of those initial ideas you wanted to convey with the new album? KB: It varies from song to song. I think that "The World Can Wait" is maybe the most literal we've ever allowed ourselves to be with a song. I can't even say anymore about it that would summarize it. I think that's a fairly complete idea, and I was really pleased with that one. Because I rely on my colleague so much for words, I'll quote him. He says, "These songs are representing different characters who are all dying to live a life worth remembering." I think that's very true when I think about each one of these songs. X-RAY: You mentioned your colleague and his words. Historically, it seems that Linford's been recognized as the songwriter and you as the voice. But I've noticed that this album seems to have more of your writing than past ones. Talk a bit about how your own writing has evolved. KB: Well, we had this fistfight and I won! How has it evolved? A good therapist would say that it's hard for you to disconnect yourself from your work, your writing, your performance. How can you disconnect yourself? So if my songwriting has evolved, I guess it would have to be because I have. I would hope that I have at 34! I hope that I have more to offer than I did ten years ago. X-RAY: How do you maintain balance in a home where both of you are creators? How does that affect your marriage? KB: Well, for a long time I think Linford and I thought that our art was the thing that brought us together. We both had something to say, and he had this aspect of personality that was able to do one thing, and I had other strengths, and they came together and merged well. We have other connections, though, that we're still discovering--reasons that for lack of a better way to put it are God working in mysterious ways--things about our personalities and our chemistry that are just weighty flaws that drew us together. Working through those flaws has developed a great bond between us. There's so much more to our relationship than music. But it's a given that that's the most obvious tie. It's just one facet of it though. But the band can be an all-consuming thing. It's something that could be compared to having children. We've drawn that comparison before with songs that we've put out, that it's like birthing children. Now, I am not saying that I understand parenthood. I don't have children and I'm not trying to slight any parent who has the great responsibility of raising a child--that intimidates me. But I do think that, for us, that is what writing is. Sometimes I feel like I will do all that I can do with a song, and then I'll hand it over to Linford and say, "Here, deal with this, it's yours now. It's your song, not mine!" Sometimes we work together on songs, and sometimes one of us takes care of the issue and handles the song. I know he complements me in what I lack, and I'd like to think I do the same for him. I know that neither of us can beat a song into submission. We like to find alternative methods. X-RAY: You've done a lot of interviews over the years. Is there any question you've always been dying to answer, but no one has asked? KB: There isn't any question that hasn't already been posed that I could answer that wouldn't have an absolutely scandalous backlash. |