[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Coney show and other ramblings
September 21, 1999
Hello again,
Whole grain toast with red raspberry preserves from Oregon and orange juice
for breakfast on a grey Monday morning… I'll start writing and see how far I
get before Karin wakes up and puts the coffee on.
I want to thank all of you who made your way out to Coney Island on that
lovely September Saturday night. I keep remembering and smiling all to
myself. About 850 people gathered by the Ohio River. What a beautiful
audience you all were underneath those hundreds of little white strung lights.
Niki Buehrig walked off stage and said what so many say who open an Over The
Rhine show: we have one of the best listening audiences in the world. We
are fortunate.
The concert unfolded like an evening one has been meaning to spend for a long
time with a few close friends. We were all breathing together and that's
what makes music worth playing. Hearing Jeff Bird's harmonica and mandolin
made me want to do something good for the universe which seemed to be bending
right along with his notes. David's old Fender bass had all that room to
move underneath the world and I got to listen to his playing in a brand new
way. Jack's understated guitar textures have a way of contributing to the
flow of conversation without monopolizing it. That's Jack's appeal: he
plays guitar like someone who's listening to the words. Terri T. has the
ability to blend her voice uncannily with Karin's. People still ask me,
"Where did you find her? She sounds EXACTLY like Karin." Well actually she
doesn't. She has her own voice. But she has the rare ability to match
Karin's tone and to breathe with her and that's what makes…
It was a beautiful night. Thanks so much for being there. (People flying in
from California, driving from Chicago, coming down from Michigan, sneaking in
from the South: my goodness.)
The Blue Jordan Festival last Saturday couldn't have been wilder or more
different. Jeff Bird got stopped at the border of Canada in U.S. Customs
with his contraband harmonicas and they turned him away. It's going to take
30 days to iron out a snag in his work visa. (These musicians are a threat
to society. You can never be too careful.)
But we took a deep breath and called Don Heffington, one of our favorite
drummers. He was in a band called Lone Justice and has played with Bob
Dylan, Victoria Williams, Tom Waits, The Wallflowers and others. Bless his
heart, he dropped everything, hopped on a plane at 5AM the day of the show,
flew to Cincinnati, Jack picked him up in his white '79 Lincoln, we ran most
of the set once with much laughter and conversation, packed up and drove
North to Sharon Woods.
The Blue Jordan folks are fantastic but they had called the night before to
say they really wouldn't be able to accommodate our typical stage
requirements for a six-piece band. This, combined with the fact that the
last festival we had played was Lilith Fair, replete with twenty-four stage
hands and a separate mixing console for each act (maybe we've been a little
bit spoiled) and the fact that everything was running about an hour behind
schedule Saturday made for a somewhat farcical, surreal, damp, cold night:
I'd do it again in a heartbeat. (Blue Jordan Festival is only in its second
year and those very capable people will continue to fine tune, I'm sure.
It's already an exciting development for the Cincinnati music scene and will
no doubt grow.)
The only crew we brought was our front-of-house engineer who spent 45 minutes
attempting to wire the stage together for the six of us, and we spontaneously
decided to go ahead and start our set before he could line-check the main
system. He therefore spent most of the night trying to figure out why David's
bass was coming through Terri's channel, et cetera. Yeah, we're professional
alright. Part of the system kept shutting off, and there was a low hum which
made me wonder if there were a bunch of Buddhist monks underneath the stage.
I never did get my monitor sorted out and I looked down during the set and
unbeknownst to me I had cracked my thumbnail and there were bloody smudged
roses from middle "C" all the way up the keyboard about an octave and a half
and I thought of Annie Dillard's cat in Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. I guess I
was subconsciously hoping that if I hit the keyboard hard enough the monitor
might start cooperating. I didn't hear a note Jack played all night, so I
have no idea what he was up to, but I could hear Karin and Don and Terri and
David and we had quite a roller coaster ride and sometimes these chaotic
concerts are the ones worth remembering. And I kept trying to figure out why
I was so happy even though we were probably making fools of ourselves.
I guess because the whole night felt so off-kilter, I went on a few rambling
Hammond B-3 tirades that I was pretty embarrassed about later, but when the
Spirit feels like it wants to move you have to take that leap of faith in the
heat of the moment and dive off the high board and hope that it's more than
just stringing a bunch of cliches together, blah, blah, blah.
Todd and Mitch Kearby and Scott Ross and Kat helped us unload and set up and
they were fantastic. Tyler Brown helped our sound engineer try to sort out
the madness. Thank you.
But I wish you could have been sitting where I was on stage. Don is a
wonderful monster. It reminded me of being in a mid-sixties ragtop Buick
Wildcat, on the hills of Fairpoint, Ohio.
Brian Kelley stopped by the house Friday night and I think it's safe to
officially announce that he is no longer part of Over The Rhine. As some of
you know, almost three years ago we announced this same piece of news and
then a few months later he was back in the band still grinning, still haunted
by the holy ghosts of his Pentecostal past. We didn't want to jump the
proverbial gun this time.
When I sat down with Brian early last Spring to discuss the next Over the
Rhine record, we got through most of the details there in Sitwell's
Coffeehouse one evening and then drove our separate ways home. In the time
it took to reach my house, I knew that Brian and I had probably learned from
each other in this lifetime all that we were meant to. We had certainly
grown in very different directions as people. I called him later to express
this and he said he had been thinking more-or-less the same thing and that
ten years was a long time. (Out of respect for Brian, I won't discuss all
the particulars of why it makes good sense to us not to continue working
together.)
To some people the idea of change is always read as some version of
catastrophe, but nothing could be further from the truth. An artist's first
responsibility is to grow and sometimes that means leaving safe, established,
predictable working relationships. It takes courage to move forward even
when it's not convenient. It takes courage to say, "If you should ever
leave, then I would love you for what you need."
I'm extremely grateful for Brian's contribution to the seven Over The Rhine
recordings currently in existence. I've always been a fan of his playing and
that's why fourteen years ago I sought him out in a little white church in
Marlboro, Ohio where he was playing in his family's band. Our journey
together was unpredictable, and at times exceedingly rewarding. Brian has
the potential to have a very bright future, and I'll be paying attention
along with everybody else who appreciates his musicality. There were moments
on our recordings that were bigger than all of us. What more can a musician
hope for?
People occasionally ask me how I can be excited about making music after
being in "the business" and at times certainly struggling for over ten years.
I can think of three reasons immediately: one, I've learned how to hear my
own voice and I try to make time to listen. Two, I've learned to surround
myself with people I find inspiring, people who shape the way I think and
enjoy what they do with the intuitive sense that life is an immeasurable
gift. Three, I've learned to keep moving.
The ensemble at Coney was a living, breathing entity. If you ever have the
chance to gather 800 people by a river and to walk out on stage with six
people who have never performed together before but who know how to listen
well, let me assure you your heart will not only beat faster, you'll start
making use of senses you didn't even know you had. In short, for a couple of
hours, you will truly live.
I think back over the ten years of Over The Rhine and the changes and
experimentation in the band and the determination to try different things and
it keeps me interested. One of these days, I'm going to send an E-Mail
entitled, "Fans and Change: Ladies and Gentlemen the Sky is Falling." For
your consideration, it would be fun to gather anecdotes and artifacts
documenting the countless times over the course of the last ten years we've
been informed by what seems to be a tiny vocal minority somewhere in the
wings that Over The Rhine has more-or-less been ruined. I think you would
find it all truly humorous and amusing.
I can remember when a record called Patience was the end of Over The Rhine
(it was SO DIFFERENT than 'Til We Have Faces, What were we thinking?) and
then according to some we OBVIOUSLY sold out with Eve and then when we
started playing the songs from Good Dog Bad Dog, my god this was DEFINITELY
the end.
It's an interesting phenomenon, Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar and
alienating millions of his earliest followers, Joni Mitchell embarking on her
jazz phase, line-up changes in The Rolling Stones, Picassso's distinct
periods, Dylan Thomas abandoning his poems to attempt a novel, Elvis Costello
breaking up The Attractions and going on in recent years to record with a
string quartet or Burt Bacharach, Glenn Gould walking away from a brilliant
concert career to write books and radio dramas and focus more on
recording-what's wrong with these people?
Can there be any art without change?
I'm amazed and strangely humbled that as we've continued to experiment, in
the last two years alone, our audience around the world has basically
tripled. Maybe a commitment to not making the same record over and over
keeps more than just the artist interested…
It would be of interest to me to open this discussion with you all
eventually.
In the meanwhile, pick your own high dive and do the cannonball into the days
and nights you've been given. According to some, we only go around once.
Linford
P.S. For the discussion group only: Stacie informs me that I have reached
Darth Vader status, and shields me from your posts regarding my genius for
evil lest I gloat incessantly and my appetite for gleeful destruction of all
whom I encounter grows insatiable. I am absolutely flattered and I thank
you. It must mean that at the very least you're on topic, which I understand
can be rare. I now begin to fantasize about what my version of a death star
would look like. I now no longer dream about owning and operating my own
apple orchard: I will settle for no less than the entire universe.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| To subscribe/unsubscribe: Majordomo at ActWin_com
| Subject is ignored
| message: SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) listname <your email address>
| The three versions of this list (listnames) are:
| over-the-rhine discussion list
| over-the-rhine-digest digest version of discussion list
| over-the-rhine-announce to only receive "official" messages from OTR
*****************************************************************
Follow-Ups: