Hello friends,

We are home on the farm in a place called Nowhere, and happy to be so. I’m sitting outside this morning at a round table in a shady corner surveying the scene. The winter wheat in our neighbor’s field has been harvested leaving a golden brown swath winding through surrounding fields of green.

A few cicadas woke up this morning, and they are revving their engines, rattling the cages of their desire. A house wren chatters incessantly. A bobwhite whistles. We watched a wild turkey make its way cautiously through the wheat stubble. And here, around the porch, the hummingbirds thrum an invisible harp of air as they visit the feeders that Karin fills religiously with her sweet formulas.

It’s supposed to be a hot one today: 100 degrees. I got up early to give the tomatoes and peppers and squash and watermelon and okra (etc) in the garden a good drink. Karin watered the flowerbeds and the mint and the hanging ferns on the porch. (One of the hanging ferns was home to a lovely pair of house finches (the male looks like a sparrow dipped in wine) but their four young ones fledged successfully, and they have all moved on.)

Last night I soaked the roots of the young trees we planted this spring. We’re hoping the wind doesn’t get to blowing too much today, because hot windy days can be hard on the old maples. But right now there’s a gentle breeze just significant enough to help the locust trees lean into each other in a hush of whispered secrets.

And when the wind picks up a little, the tall Norway Spruces become woodwind instruments. Their green lungs fill and exhale a soft music that seems good for the soul. (Which we still refer to as the sound of the holy spirit.) (Psithurism, according to the dictionary.)

I think it’s safe to say that this has been the best spring of our lives. It arrived early. March was mostly bright, mild and inviting, reviving everything including our spirits. A film crew arrived from Utah here on the farm the first few days of April to shoot an episode for a series called ‘The Song That Changed My Life,’ and it was already gorgeous outside – 65, even 70 degrees, strong hints of spring everywhere. We enjoyed the taping, and it felt like they really captured something. Hopefully you can all take a peek at that soon, when it airs.

Karin and I slipped away on most weekends in April for trips to California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, and enjoyed these shorter trips immensely. But we realized we were also longing to reconnect with our home, this particular patch of earth here in the rolling fields of Ohio.

Karin has been raising up a blue merle Great Dane puppy for starters. Miss Minnie Pearl was a little squirt of a pup (17 pounds) when we got her in January (our pearl merle girl) but now, at seven months, she’s edging up to 90 pounds on the scale, and tall enough to pull things off the kitchen counter at will.

“Minnie, Don’t lick the rum cake!”

When she gets to rough-housing, everyone ducks and covers. It’s like playing in the living room with a medium-sized frisky pony. But she’s got a big sweet side, and she rounds out the pack nicely. Elroy had left a Great Dane size hole in our hearts when he passed on, so Minnie has assumed the great speckled dog mantle for this current chapter. And Karin is a more-than-willing dog-mama: an animal lover through and through.

And as for me, I was romanced this year beyond belief by the many, many birds that pass through Nowhere Farm each spring. (Many choose to nest right here among us.) I reached a point in my life where I needed to know the name of what was singing over my shoulder. Is that too much to ask?

Karin bought me a good pair of binoculars for a belated birthday present, and it was like I discovered crack cocaine. I would wake at dawn and begin walking and watch the new movie called morning roll into being.

I had learned the names of all the trees on our property after my father passed away, and now it was time to learn the names and songs of these, our many winged companions. I’ve been drunk on it. When my father first visited this place, he encouraged us to leave the edges wild (a good metaphor for songwriting as well) and that approach has rewarded us with, off the top of my head,

bobwhite quail
Eastern meadowlarks
redwing blackbirds
killdeer
indigo buntings
song sparrows
cardinals
catbirds
Eastern pewees
orchard orioles
cedar waxwings
mourning doves
chipping sparrows
Carolina wrens
gold finches
field sparrows
tree swallows
house finches
willow flycatchers
barn swallows
grackles
starlings
red bellied woodpeckers
tufted titmice
house wrens
nuthatches
downy woodpeckers
hummingbirds galore
the occasional blue jay
the occasional mockingbird
great blue herons flying overhead
various circling hawks and secretive after dark owls

not to mention the warblers that pass through on their way further north…

(I’ll never forget the first morning a common yellow throat came into focus ten feet from me on the edge of our maple grove: a tiny bright yellow bird with a black raccoon mask singing witchity-witchity-witchity-witch.)

But the big news has been the arrival, this spring, on Nowhere Farm, of bluebirds.

It took a few years of Karin singing, “There’s a bluebird in my heart…” but they finally heard the call and arrived. I had a premonition they might choose our little place, when I stumbled across about two dozen bluebirds down by the creek the February after The Long Surrender was released. It was such an extravagance there in the snow that I couldn’t breathe normally for a few hours. Never in my life had I seen anything like it.

Well, I won’t give you the long version here, because it feels like a book of some kind that needs to be written. But suffice it to say that I followed a pair of bluebirds around our farm in late April with a bluebird house my father built until I found a spot they approved of. After a number of misadventures and close calls, they successfully hatched and raised four fledglings, which are now happily sitting shoulder to shoulder in the locust grove overlooking our garden. Observing the efforts of this resilient, tireless bluebird couple day after day, and protecting a little corner of the world that allowed four new bluebirds to fly out into Ohio, feels intuitively like one of the most significant achievements of my lifetime so far.

(Few things have caused me as much pleasure as watching a bluebird swoop into the garden and pick a tasty creeping thing off of our broccoli.)

We have an old milk house and the male bluebird likes to sit on the peak of the roof above the door facing North as if he is on the prow of an old battle-scarred ship sailing into the wild. My father would be proud.

We are working on our own fledgling songs, still leaving the edges wild, and we hope to begin recording for real soon when the time is right. We are still thinking we will do another communal art-making enterprise with any and all of you who are willing participants. See if we can catch and release a little wild beauty into the world, which we can all call our own. There is a song cycle taking shape around the farm, this place we call home. (And our third Christmas project seems to be coming into focus.) And our last great adventure might be figuring out how to share Nowhere Farm with you, our extended musical family. We find ourselves thinking seriously about turning this into a shared creative space of some kind where we can offer evenings of music in the open night air.

Stay tuned.

In the meanwhile, mark your calendars as we have a few short trips planned. Yes, we have a few evenings of music up our sleeves that we would love to share with you. Try out a few of these new songs. And a few old ones too. Hope to see you.

Peace like a river, love like an ocean,

Linford and Karin

+++

Over the Rhine Back Roads Tour

This weekend: Come explore some Michigan wineries, orchards, lake shores etc with a prized companion or three and then join us as we set some songs free in the fading light of evening (acoustic shows w/L&K):

This Saturday, June 30, Jackson, Michigan: FolkGalore Festival

Sunday, July 1, Three Oaks, Michigan: Acorn Theatre

(We are slipping away after Three Oaks for a private show in Colorado. Our thoughts are with all of those who are struggling with the fires there.)

FREE SHOW: July 22 (Save the date!) (Full band)

Over the Rhine returns to Over-the-Rhine:

Join us in our old namesake neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati on Sunday evening, July 22, as we celebrate the grand opening of Washington Park. Karin and I recently walked through this $50,000,000 project in the works. The fact that someone would revive this beautiful 8 acres of green space in the heart of a neighborhood that remains a local and national treasure makes us believe something has gone right in the world.

Saturday, July 28, Albuquerque, NM: South Broadway Cultural Center

(This show kicks off our annual summer pilgrimage to the high desert for 10 days.)

Saturday, August 11, Huntington, Indiana: Fandana Festival (See festival website for additional info!)

September shows include another trip back to Texas to beautiful Blue Rock Studios in Wimberly, and the Dosey Doe in the Houston area; the Kent Folk Festival in Kent, Ohio, on September 21; and our acoustic tour of the Northeast beginning in Pittsburgh on September 27. More fall dates and show details at overtherhine.com…

Hope to see you soon. Rave on.

L&K

PS Please share this freely with kindred spirits.