Dear extended musical family, long lost brothers and sisters, favorite people,

Hello from Nowhere Farm.

If you know me, you know that every once in awhile, I like to sit down and write a long letter. Might want to save this one for a quiet part of the day. Maybe have a favorite beverage well in hand. Maybe a comfortable chair, some low light, the kids in bed, the dog(s) asleep?
It was good to be home for much of the month of January. We had some of the most epic winter skies we’ve ever seen out here in Highland County, Ohio. Rosy light would illuminate the familiar, making it all brand new.
Favorite time of light indeed…

We are wending our way to the West Coast to take a little break from winter in Ohio. Yes, it has been so good to be home for some much needed recovery time, but it is also going to feel really good for Karin and I to sing together again, to see some of  you, breathe a little ocean air along the way, be surprised.

Well, we have big news.

This is the 25th anniversary of our ongoing musical adventure known as Over the Rhine. 25 years of writing, recording, traveling, performing. You’ll have to excuse me if I do some reminiscing. Retrace a few well-worn steps.

25 years ago, Karin and I formed a band with our friends Ric & Brian. We borrowed the magical sounding name of a neighborhood we had discovered in Cincinnati, the so-called bad part of town.

We began recording our first tentative demos on a four-track cassette recorder in my third-story bedroom with tall windows overlooking Main Street. Karin and I had just graduated from a little Quaker liberal arts college in Canton, Ohio. We were in our early 20’s. Neither of us came from families that had a background in the arts. We had no road map. All we knew for sure was that we loved music. Certain songs had found us at just the right time in our lives. What a gift. What if we could give 
someone a song at just the right time? 

And even as a child, Karin loved the way her body felt when she sang. It just felt good in her bones. Healing. 

One of the safest places I found as a child was sitting at an upright piano. The piano helped me voice things I had no words for. 

I look at my nieces and nephews now in their early 20’s and they seem so young.

I have no idea where Karin and I found the courage to row into the river of American Songwriting at that age, but row in we did. 

I remember Karin and I having a conversation in those early days. We came up with a simple plan. We decided we would just make music until we were “penniless, on the street, starting over.” You see, for the first time in our lives, we were hungry to have something to do that would invite us to try our hardest. We decided to give our new vocation no less than everything, and see how far it carried us. But yes, we had to be okay with starting over with nothing if it came to that. And we were.

I still can’t quite believe that was 25 years ago.
In September of 1990, we played our first concert with paid admission in a rock and roll laundromat in Cincinnati called Sudsy Malone’s. It was a dive, but kind of brilliant: a college kid could throw in a load of laundry, grab a beer, and check out a band. (Karin remarked recently, while performing with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra at Music Hall – Gee, we’re a long way from Sudsy’s. But I digress.)

Admission at the door was $2. It was a Monday night. There were less than 20 people at that first show, mostly our friends. As bed sheets and bras tumbled in the driers in the back, we leaned into the harness of our new songs. What a thrill. Honestly, it felt a little bit like the room could explode.

And wouldn’t you know, there were a few more people there next time. And a few more after that… 

Soon, a bona fide Nashville publisher with MCA Music drove to Cincinnati in an old Mercedes and signed us to our first publishing deal. (Interesting that we were signed first and foremost as songwriters.)

Then a long-established Cleveland promoter, Belkin Productions, heard our first cassette tape and invited us to open a handful of shows for Bob Dylan. Something vital happened that’s hard to put into words. Walking out on stage before Bob Dylan was a baptism and a christening. This was an invitation to take our writing seriously, to contemplate the long haul, to become independent thinkers, fierce, skeptical of the establishment.

In October of 1992, when IRS Records came to town to check out this little Ohio quartet they had been hearing about, Sudsy’s was absolutely packed and there was a line around the block. I don’t know how the fire department let us get away with it.

Record labels began asking the question, Could we make these kids famous? 
We signed our first record deal and wondered if we should move to Nashville or LA. We were certainly encouraged to leave Ohio. Very persuasive people were telling us that if we could just figure out how to have one hit song, all our troubles would melt away forever, and life would be sweet in perpetuity.

Someday, we’ll put some of this stuff in a book. Trust me, for now, I’m leaving a lot out.

Suffice it to say we got a good whiff of the cheap perfume called fame. We might have even made out a few times. But we never went all the way.

Over time, instead, what we did receive was a real gift. What we were given was a diverse tribe of kindred spirits from all over the USA and abroad who paid attention, who began finding our music and passing it around like a folded note, like a long lost love letter… 

In the words of our friend Joe Henry, these people Listened to the music with a capital “L”…

Yes.

Somehow a ragtag, lovely group of believers coalesced around our records. Not everyone who heard the music felt drawn to it. But the people who did seemed to feel the music in a deep way. These people wrote us a lot of letters (and still do). We realized they were inviting the songs into the big moments life has to offer: falling in love, walking down the aisle, a once-in-a-lifetime slow dance, giving birth… But also the really hard stuff: illness, hospice care, burying a dear one, loneliness, abuse, depression, new seasons of hard won hope.

It has happened more than once that someone has walked up to Karin and I and with no drama simply but emphatically stated that a song saved their life. 

That is a gift we are still learning how to receive.
As we read various letters over the years, Karin and I realized we couldn’t be present in person, and yet we were able to be present in some way through the music. It began to feel like an extended musical family was taking shape. Mysteriously, we loved each other, showed up when it mattered, cared for each other, lifted a glass together, grieved together, hoped for the best, even if we had never met.

But then again, little by little, many of us did meet along the way. And somehow we’re still here. 

If you’re still reading this, we are quite sure that you played a part in our songs’ survival. Whether you’ve been around for most of the last 25 years, or only recently discovered the music, you’re part of the story. Without you, as Karin still says, we’d be homeless.
There are different questions that an aspiring artist can ask.

One question is, What must I do to be famous?

This question will open up a writer to all manner of destructive forces both within and without. We’ve all seen it play out.

A different question, and one asked much less often is, What must I do to make this sustainable? 

Songwriting, painting, acting, writing – these are all crafts that one can practice over the course of a lifetime. You can get better – grow – for a long, long time. 

As Karin and I look back on the last 25 years and look forward to what’s next, we ask ourselves, what must we do to make this sustainable? What might the next 25 years look like?

It’s time to let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
With the early help of a few generous people, Karin and I have commenced the biggest project of our career: we are going to restore/transform a 140-year-old barn in rural Ohio into a permanent music venue and our creative home base for future recording projects, workshops, special concerts etc. We have acquired the barn, which is part of an old farm about 15 minutes up the road from Nowhere Farm. This new property, now lovingly referred to as Nowhere Else, will be an extension of all things Nowhere Farm and will give us enough infrastructure to begin hosting our own concert series, offering occasional songwriting workshops, and sharing some of the amazing artists with you that we have befriended over the years. 

We would also like to continue nurturing younger writers and artists in more substantive ways. We would like to share some of what we’ve learned in the last 25 years about sustainability, creativity, resilience. 

For our last three recording projects, The Long Surrender, Meet Me At The Edge Of The World and Blood Oranges In The Snow, we partnered with our extended musical family (you) to record new songs and get them out into the world. We saw those records open doors that no record label had opened. I think maybe we were all a little surprised at what we could make together.

Well, we are going to take a similar approach to help make this longtime dream a reality. Along with making a record, we are going to invite you to join us to build something a little more substantial: a barn venue where we can meet from time to time. A place close to home where we can make future recordings. And a place where we can “pay it forward” and maybe help in some real way those who are just starting out on their own creative path.

Yes.

We are going to gather as many of you who are willing, and host “barn raising” concerts here on the farm on Memorial Day Wknd, May 23 & 24, 2015. 

Hopefully you’ll lift a glass with us to the last 25 years, and raise it to the next 25.

We are going to bring in the Band of Sweethearts and record a live album in the open air, right in front of your eyes and ears. We will be premiering brand new songs as part of this recording, as well as reinvigorating favorites from our last several projects and beyond. We are going to help the sun go down, and let the moon rise, and raise the curtain on Act Two of this still unfolding journey. 

If you know you want to be a part of this huge step for us, tickets to these special concerts are now available, and we hope you’ll make plans to join us. 

For those who can’t be physically present, please join us in spirit and pre-order a copy of this forthcoming live album. All proceeds from the recording will go toward restoring and building the barn venue. 

(And if you’re able and willing to make a more significant contribution, hopefully there are some intriguing options as well.)

Perhaps most importantly: all who pitch in to help us make this dream a reality will have their names permanently listed in the barn with our thanks. It will be our way of saying, We were here. We found each other. We made some beautiful music together. We built this.

And by the way, it’s true. Karin and I have had that same conversation I mentioned earlier regarding this new bend in the river: if it doesn’t work, we’ll be penniless, on the street, and starting over.

Maybe it’s the only way to live.

Head over to overtherhine.com if you’d like to help us build a barn. Or go directly to the Barn Raising page.

We’ll see you in May on the farm.

Peace like a river, love like an ocean,

Linford and Karin

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PS Those who order Barn Raising tickets will receive an FAQ/Letter regarding airports, special group rates, local attractions, location etc. Kids under 12 admitted free.

PPS Please share the above letter freely with family and friends, new agrarians, future farmers, those who dream of angels ascending and descending, urban owners of laying hens, recalcitrant gardeners, night owls, orphaned believers and so on and so forth. All are welcome.

PPPS Other 25th Anniversary Festivities – West Coast Dates, Barn Raising Concerts, Alaska… Check out overtherhine.com for much more.