Over the Rhine Tour Diary
Dave Nixon (the Merch Guy)
Day Two: November 30, 2000
It's 10:45 a.m. CST in Dubuque IA, and we just pulled in. It feels early, and I'm beginning to get a glimpse of what the touring musician's schedule is like. The show at the Fine Line Cafe last night--which went so well--ended about 11:30 p.m. By the time we disassembled and loaded the equipment and merchandise table, took a cab to the Holiday Inn for showers (OtR rents two rooms: one for the driver to sleep in by day, one for the band and crew to shower in), and covered other minor details, it was about 2:30 a.m. when we pulled out. Another hour of unwinding in the bus and it was almost 4:30 a.m. according to my body. That's when Linford and I turned in. Most of the others preceded us by 30 to 60 minutes. The only two to follow us were Spinner and Farns. Waking up this morning in the blackness of the catacombs, I figured it was about 7 a.m., but when I punched the light on my digital watch and it read late morning, I immediately felt a kinship with Dale, the band's drummer.
Who's up? Terri's at the breakfast nook reading L'année des Résenlieus, a memoir of Lord Berner's childhood. She's got a red Scottish plaid blanket spread over her lap and legs and a bright orange corduroy jacket over a baby blue pajama top. Few people could pull off an ensemble like that and still look elegant as she does. Chris is awake, too, making phone calls and taking care of business. But now Linford is wandering in and looking very alive. Clean shaven, wide-eyed, and ready to attack the day. The only soft feature is his royal blue slippers. You can't really be aggressive with slippers. Last night he was telling me about the energy and creativity that touring, despite it's intrinsic craziness, produces in him. There's a momentum that builds and flows over into writing and other artistic enterprises. But his real secret is Master Formula, a powder he mixes with V8 juice to create a sickly green, soupy drink. And how can you go wrong when you start your day with amarinth, brown rice, spirulina, flaxseed meal, millet powder, chicory extract, lecithin, licorice, acerola cherry, vitamin C, horsetail herb, wheat germ, papaya, carrot, broccoli, lemon bioflavanoids, octacosannol, pineapple, lactobacillus, and milk thistle. If this cocktail doesn't help him go platinum, then what hope is left?
On the cab trip to and from the hotel last night I noticed how genuinely kind Karin was to the cabbies. Rather than ignoring the drivers like the rest of us, she began asking them questions about themselves, even helping the first cabbie name the Teddy Bear he carried about with him in the car. Somewhere in Dubuque, Iowa, there's a little brown bear named Buddy helping port customers around the city. It's overcast in Dubuque. So far on this trip, the sun has only shown itself to us obliquely, through a dense gray ceiling. And it's cold, but walking in it is a tonic for the sleepiness.
Spinner and Farns have now come out from the catacombs. Spinner comments on his appearance: "I've found out that if you look like me in the morning and check into a hotel, they'll give you a room very, very quickly. They don't want my type standing around the lobby. It's bad for business."
Like most everyone else upon waking, they go straight for the coffee. We're all grateful to Terri for making it. We would be grateful to anyone who made coffee. Any kind of coffee at all. Taste, as Jack mentioned yesterday morning, is just an added bonus.
Terri, we just find out, got up around 6 a.m. and has already been out to eat breakfast. I instantly feel slothful, but then remember all the hard work of last night. There's so much that goes into putting on a show. So many details to take care of. So much heavy equipment to tote in and set up. The merchandise table alone took me two hours on my first try. But the management of the Fine Line Cafe said it was the best merchandise table they had ever seen. Atmosphere. Ambience. Vibe. The Small Details. Care. These are all features of OtR.
As a FOB (friend/fan of the band), I've seen many of their shows. I go, soak in the ambience, revel in the excellent music, and then walk off full and satisfied, without ever lifting a finger. I'm at a banquet table being served a gourmet meal, for the most part oblivious of everything that goes on or is going on behind the scenes to put on the show. There are people cleaning the kitchen, people chopping and prepping ingredients, people cooking, arranging, serving, and then cleaning up again. Of course, this is what we pay for, I think. We're paying not just for the music, but everything that happens before, during and after it. And when I think of this, I appreciate more what they and other bands offer, and the price of tickets doesn't seem as high as before.
I was astonished to learn from Linford that OtR will be happy to break even on this tour, and that this is typical of touring, even for well-known bands. They'll make about $25K on this winter tour and spend the same. It's hard for me to see how anyone could keep up this nomadic lifestyle and break-even-existence very long without a fundamental love of music. Pure ambition could only carry you part way down this road at best.
It's 1:15 p.m. now and I'm back from breakfast at the Silver Dollar Cafe in the old business district of Dubuque. The tour bus is a ghostly vacant. Sometime over the last hour the others rose from the dead. They're probably out for showers and a meal before the 2 p.m. load-in. Thirty yards away on the passenger side of the bus is the Busted Lift, an Irish Pub that serves as the venue for tonight's show. When Karin hears the name, she says she keeps thinking "The Lifted Bust." The pub's exterior is a sooty two-story, red brick with six windows, one of which is boarded up. Three others have neon-lit advertisements for Guiness, Amber Rock, MGD and Bass. The fifth contains a "Now Open" sign in a Celtic-like script. The sixth holds a piece of plywood replacing some missing panes. On the plywood are the pub's hours. Linford says the owner heard OtR when they opened for the Junkies and that he's been trying to book them ever since, e-mailing them labels of Irish beers that he keeps in stock. You do what you can.
Less than 100 yards away on the driver side of the bus flows the Mississippi river. The small cove next to us has a thin glazing of ice extending a stone's throw away from the shore. Several steamers are moored in the cove, one of them a sprawling, dingy white casino. Its red neon signage along the flank, its glaring yellow sign on the stern, and the limp flags around the deck strike me as weak and silly attempts divert attention from the truth. Next to it a gray bridge spans water over which gulls fly in wide circles. Trees along the shore on either side are barren. Everything looks sad and heartbroken, as if it's waiting for someone to whisper a piece of good news, tell a good joke, say just one word of encouragement. If it's true that OtR's music makes happy people sad and sad people happy, then there should be a little more cheer in Dubuque tonight. I would never on my own pick the Busted Lift as a likely spot for OtR to play, but I've been around long enough to know that sometimes the places pick you, and that good things often lie hidden beneath the surface. With a seating capacity of only 90 (less than half of last night's gathering) and a good supply of Irish beer, the pub should be intimate, warm and welcoming. The show has been sold out now for four weeks.
I may be in one of the best Irish Pubs in the entire Midwest. Character exudes from the inside of the Busted Lift, a long and narrow pub. In its dimensions alone, it reminds me of the tour bus on steroids, but here the similarities end. There are nearly two-centuries-old, thick mahogany doors with hand-carved designs on the front (and weighing in at almost 200 pounds each) that open to the bathrooms; stone and mortar walls; thick oak tables with great barstools; exposed ceiling joists; every type of Irish drink available; and a warm, appreciative crowd. Every 15-30 minutes someone on staff comes by to see if I'm doing okay and offers to bring me something. Most of the folk are locals and most know each, so it feels very community spirited. Karin has just introduced "Anyway" and is now pouring herself out in a stream of beautiful, expressive vocals. I've tried to listen when no one's at the table and it seems to me that her live renditions have grown in depth. She's always been in the top 1% of the class, but if I'm right, her vocal accents and nuances and timings have gone even deeper. Sometimes I catch my breath when listening. I know few greater pleasures and privileges than that of watching, hearing, seeing someone expertly ply their craft, be it singing, making brooms or cooking. In the past two nights I've had several people tell me they wept when they first heard Karin sing certain songs. Something must be hitting the mark.
One of God's lost children was wandering around the bus staring into windows this evening when I came out to unload a barrel of posters. He had some time to kill before the next Greyhound bus left for Milwaukee and our tour bus was his distraction. He promised me he wasn't doing anything bad, that he wasn't snooping around. The mirrors on the ceiling of the bus caught his eye the most. He was like a kid looking at Christmas lights, I thought, and it got me wondering about other people's ideas of success. Whoever rode this bus, he imagined, had really made it in this big wide world, had climbed close to the top if not to the very peak itself.
. . .