There probably will never be a Behind the Music episode about Over the Rhine, but the lives of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist over the last few years could make an interesting story. Detweiler and Bergquist, who make up the husband and wife duo of the Cincinnati-based band, haven’t exactly lived the sex and drugs drama-filled folklore that bolster television ratings, but they have endured their share of heartache.
In 2003, they released their most ambitious piece of work, a double album they named Ohio, which led to a tour of clubs across the US. The nationwide trek, which featured bassist Rick Plant, drummer Will Sayles, and fiery multi-instrumentalist Paul Moak, saw Over the Rhine turning up the sound and shocking those in the audience who came expecting an acoustic show. But what was even more shocking came six weeks into the tour, when Detweiler had to tell his fans the truth: the energy that was being produced onstage night after night was lacking in their personal lives. Citing marital problems, Detweiler and Bergquist decided to postpone the rest of the dates and go home to Ohio to see if they could pick up the pieces of their broken relationship. It was the worst of times for a band that was hitting its musical creative peak.
Fortunately for Detweiler and Bergquist, they found redemption in late night conversations, bottles of wine, and laughter, where, in the privacy of their own home, they eventually rediscovered who they were…and who they still wanted to be. Shortly after their mini-break to clear their minds and energize their souls, Over the Rhine returned to the stage, playing a few shows here and there and bringing smiles back to the faces of their fans. In November of 2004 they recorded Drunkard’s Prayer in their living room and will release it on March 29, 2005. Like much of their previous work, Prayer is a quiet, gentle album that features deep and personal songwriting brought to life by Bergquist’s smooth signature voice; each note is carried by Detweiler’s delicate work on the piano and guitars, giving the album warmth and comfort.
Glide recently had a chance to speak with Linford Detweiler about the new record and how he and Karin saved their personal and musical relationship.
This album is a simpler album than your last album, Ohio. What was the attitude at the onset of recording Drunkard’s Prayer?
I think the attitude was just to keep it close to home, straightforward. I don’t know, sometimes when you just strip away the extra stuff and stay focused on sort of the heart of the song it can be pretty satisfying both for the musician and for the listener. We just wanted to make a simple record.
Did this feel like starting over at all since you took some time off?
That’s a good thought. I think that in some ways, and it’s a little silly to say that since we’ve been doing this for so long, but it did feel like a new beginning. Maybe we were a little unsure of where to go musically, just balancing our career and personal life and everything. That’s kind of a cliché, but it was tricky for us to sort of figure out how much we wanted to be gone, and Karin and I have talked about having a family. It did become kind of hard for us to figure out how we were going to fit all of this together. So we ended up taking some time off.
I am sure it was a pretty humbling experience juggling all of those things.
Yeah it was humbling to say, you know, we’re not different from anybody else. We have to work hard to make our relationship a good one. It’s like everybody else—they can’t constantly be focusing energy elsewhere even if it is something good like music. So yeah it’s been a really really great year for us. I have to say that this year we will be touring again, but we have sort of broken it up into bite-size pieces. We’re going to do the west coast and then come back home. We’re never going to be gone for more than a week and a half at a time. And a lot of the times we’re just going to do a weekend and come back, just so we can kind of stay connected to our life at home. It’s a hard battle, one that every musician has. Everyone has to figure out what is right for them.
When I saw you on the Ohio tour, just a few weeks before you pulled the plug, the band sounded really great. And then through your newsletter, you candidly told your fans that you and Karin were having problems in your relationship and would be postponing the remainder of the tour. Your fans seem to be very important to you.
Yeah it’s weird, some musicians, they write very personal music, but they just refuse to draw the connection to their personal lives, they refuse to talk about anything that is going on on a personal level. It just doesn’t feel natural to me. I feel like in some ways Karin and I and the people who like our music, in some ways we’re on a journey together and we’re trying to learn from each other. It’s always felt pretty natural for me to be pretty open, although sometimes I’ll sit back and say, “What am I doing!!” (laughs) But anyway…
Your lyrics, I find them very interesting, but one line that stood out to me on Drunkard’s Prayer was “Thank God the joke’s on me” from the song “Born.” To me, that is sort of the centerpiece of the whole album. Could you talk about that and the songwriting process for this particular album?
Well, every album, no matter how many songs I have written, it just feels like a small miracle when the song actually gets finished, it feels like a complete little kind of mission. It’s just something that…it’s not like when you figure out how to paint your kitchen, like you can do it the same the next time. Every song is different, it happens different ways. I agree that “Born” is sort of the centerpiece of the record and it was a song that Karin and I very much wrote together and it started really simple, with a simple guitar and I sort of drew out the song. I had a little bit of melody for it and, yeah, we really collaborated on that one. That line, “thank God the joke’s on me,” I like that line, I’m not so sure what it means! (laughs) I don’t mind that feeling but I think, you know, when Karin and I came home, we were pretty sad that we had to walk away from a pretty good tour and just sort of sad that we were…a bit broken. And when we were able to just sort of start laughing again and cracking each other up and everything we both sort of felt like, wow, everything is going to be alright.
When you wrote in your newsletter to your fans, you said, “We’re human beings and we’re all broken and sometimes our lives get way out of balance. Knowing this is an amazing place to start. Please keep us in your prayers and again, we hope to see you soon when the time is right.” That—when I read that—expressing that your fans, it’s very admirable.
Thank you. The good part of this is, wow, the amount of feedback that we got from people, we were really concerned that a lot of fans were going to be upset and disappointed or whatever–and people were disappointed. But by far the overwhelming sentiment was just, you know, “Good for you.” A lot of people were at a place, where they needed to look at that same thing, like we just get so caught up in sort of like a success-driven culture that we do sort of tend to put things that we know intuitively are most important, sometimes we just keep shoving them aside for a later time. It’s really…I was glad that even though it was hard for us to admit and everything that people seemed to respond to it well and send words of encouragement.
Did it feel good to step on stage again?
It did, it really did. You know, sometimes you do just open yourself to the possibility that you have sort of done what you have needed to do. But I think when we started to do a little performing again, Karin and I both realized that, ‘You know what, this has to do with why we’re here. This feels really connected and right and it’s who we are.’
This album has more of a jazzy feel than your previous albums. Did maybe recording the album at home have an improvisational effect?
Yeah, it was probably more of a relaxed atmosphere. We’re always trying to find ways to introduce new flavors into our music. And hopefully the end result will still feel like a Over the Rhine record. I don’t know, it was kind of a natural evolution, to just try some things that were…like the horn player, that was something we had never done before. It was really fun to just try it and see what happens.
And Karin’s voice is suited for a variety of styles.
She can sing anything, anytime, anywhere. (laughs) Yeah, no kidding, she’s got a lot of versatility, a lot of depth I think. It could be a little bit of a liability for us because people have sort of a hard time categorizing us, but we’re not too worried about it. We just feel the need to keep it interesting for us and if we’re excited about what we’re doing and believe in it that hopefully it will translate to other people.
I know Karin wrote a few songs (“She,” “Ohio”) on your last record Ohio. Did she do a lot of writing on this album?
Yeah, she did do a lot of writing on this record. She wrote the first track (“I Want You To Be My Love”) mostly, she wrote “Drunkard’s Prayer,” the title track, mostly. She wrote a lot of the fifth track, “Spark.” She wrote most of “Lookin’ Forward,” most of “Who Will Guard The Door,” most of “Firefly”…we realized that when we came to the end of this record that we had both worked on all the songs. But usually, the song is more connected to one person, because of the person that starts the song, but this record did feel like a collaboration.
I get that feeling when I listen to the songs, especially on the opener, “I Want You To Be My Love.” It’s probably about as simple as a song can be, but it moves me the most.
Cool. That’s really puzzling to me—the simplest song—when there is nothing innovative going on…I don’t know, there still is some sort of emotional or chemical reaction that can happen. That to me is always a small miracle.
Are you excited about hearing your fans reaction to this album?
Yeah, we’re really excited to see how people embrace the album. You wonder sometimes if people are going to think if it’s boring or something, but I really think people are going to respond to this record. When you make a record you sort of have a sense of, I think, intuitively of…some sort of realness factor that you just feel. (laughs) If it feels connected to us or if it feels pretty far removed and just out there and sometimes when you go really hard on a project, some just feel closer than others and I just feel like this record couldn’t be more honest, it couldn’t be more connected to where we are. I think that will come through to people. I think it’s going to be a good record for us. I have to say that it might be, and it’s hard to believe after as long as we’ve been doing this, but this might be my favorite one—I know I had the most fun making it. We didn’t labor over it and it was very natural. We would just record a song and then go over to the porch and talk with everybody and hang out. It was more conversation than there was actual working and it was just a very good time. We feel good about letting it go.
I actually discovered your music through a Cowboy Junkies concert, when you worked with them for a few years. The environment usually plays an important role in their recording process and what you just mentioned—it’s very similar. Did their habits rub off on you in any way?
They did, absolutely. I think that we had a lot in common with them before we started working together, which was probably part of the reason why they asked us to come out and tour with them for a few years. It was a great experience and we did learn a lot from them and one of the things that was especially encouraging and challenging to me was that they really wanted to pass the hat around musically. Like onstage, they wanted Jeff Bird to do his thing, Mike would do his thing, and they wanted me over on the organ to play and take it! (laughs) And I just, I never…I was always the songwriter. I played, but I never really stepped out as a player much and they really brought a lot out of me musically. And I think some of the conversations we had about out records, like they seemed to think that there was some sort of connection between Trinity Session and Good Dog Bad Dog. When they recorded Trinity, it was a very simple record and actually the label, RCA, at one point came back and said, “We really love it, now we want you to go back and record it properly.” And they wouldn’t do it. And we felt sort of the same way about Good Dog Bad Dog because we made that record and the plan was to re-record it properly with a real producer in a studio and everything. And then we started to realize, wow, everything that we wanted to do, we pretty much did. It might be a little simpler, it might be a little more raw, but it’s all there. And that had a lot to do with the environment, like you were saying, and yeah, we had quite a few conversations about how the vibe or the experience or recording has an effect of the way the music turns out. And I hope our new project feels like our living room, for the most part, because that’s what it’s about.
