Over The Rhine

Over The Rhine
True Americana from the 'Heart of it All'
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, May 2008



If you’ve ever taken the lovely northbound jaunt up I-75 to Cincinnati, you know that it’s a bit of a strange cultural collision point. Northerners call it the start of the South, and Southerners say the opposite. Influences flow here on the Ohio River and spin off in a thousand different directions. As a result, you get a city that’s produced both Andy Williams and Katt Williams, 98 Degrees and Adrian Belew. In a mildly twisted way, it’s a microcosm for America. Cincinnati just needed somebody to bring it into focus.

That’s where Over the Rhine comes in. The husband-wife duo of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist has been a Cincinnati music staple for nearly 20 years. They even named their band after the well-known Nati neighborhood, Over-the-Rhine, where the couple lived in the ‘90s. So, the city and the band are almost literally synonymous. But one does not necessarily explain the other.

“Cincinnati does have a rich musical history, both in terms of recording and radio broadcasting,” Detweiler says. “But I like to think of Over the Rhine (the band) as more of a Midwestern melting pot of American music. I think what has been most fascinating to us is to be songwriters connected to a particular piece of earth-- a place where we have roots. We're interested in the idea of an American writer or artist that you associate with a particular place, be it Robert Frost, Thoreau, Flannery O'Connor, etc.”

Detweiler and Bergquist seemed to embrace this concept particularly on Over the Rhine’s 2003 magnum opus, Ohio, an album they’ll be revisiting in its entirety as part of a special live show in Cincinnati this month. When they hit Knoxville, however, the set-list will likely be centered more around tunes from their latest effort, The Trumpet Child—a wildly eclectic homage to the best elements of traditional American folk, jazz, blues, country, and just about everything else this side of crunk.

Some might call Over the Rhine “revivalists” or torch carriers, but as Detweiler sees it, the styles of music he and his wife embrace never went away in the first place. “Jazz. Blues, bluegrass, and rock n’ roll—these are unique forms of American music,” he says. “They’ve grown out of the messy, beautiful experiment that is America. And I think they’ve established themselves permanently in the world. Musicians will always choose to become students of those forms of expression, and attempt to contribute to them.”

Over the Rhine has certainly made its share of noteworthy contributions in that department. But it’s been a winding road to success. Back in the early ‘90s, the band was signed to IRS and packaged as an alternative folk-rock act in the 10,000 Maniacs mold. When that experiment failed, OTR began a long run of label hopping and lineup changes that only now seems to have come to its fruition. At the moment, Detweiler and Bergquist are the only official members of Over the Rhine, and they released The Trumpet Child last year on their very own label, Great Speckled Dog.

“It’s going really well,” Detweiler says of the label. “It just makes a lot of sense in 2008 to do things this way. It would take a lot at this point for us to consider signing with an established label again.”

In some ways, Over the Rhine’s past labels must be forgiven for their failings. Strange as it may sound, selling sharp, sophisticated American music to an American audience isn’t necessarily the easiest thing in the world. For much of their career, in fact, Detweiler and Bergquist have found equal if not larger audiences overseas, where a fascination with American jazz, country, and blues may be more prevalent than in America itself.

“It's wonderful to be embraced far from home, and realize that your music has gone ahead and made friends,” Detweiler says. “It’s been gratifying for us to be able to play four sold out shows in one week in Wellington, New Zealand, for example. And we've been grateful for BBC airplay at times in the past. But I don't feel that Americans who appreciate good songwriting are out of touch. They are very supportive of the music they find meaningful.”

In terms of their own support system, of course, Detweiler and Bergquist have each other. The pair married in 1996, and ten years later, Paste Magazine ranked them #74 on their list of the 100 greatest living songwriters. Always fine-tuning his game, Detweiler is equally adept at playing a slick country guitar riff or a sprightly jazz piano line. And his wife, a classically trained vocalist, can navigate the divide between Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday with relative ease.

“I continue to find her alluring,” Detweiler grins, and it’s clear that Over the Rhine is one case where a musical partnership and a romantic relationship have co-existed quite nicely.

“There is a lot of overlap, but we did have to learn that being married and collaborating creatively as songwriters are not one and the same. We use the metaphor of two different trees that both require water and sunlight, each with a life of their own. We try to take care of both the best we can.”