It’s been a beautiful summer so far. Hope you’re enjoying it.
I woke up at 7:15 and gave everything in the vegetable garden a drink. Karin watered all of her flowerbeds last night.
We’ve been eating cucumber salads and making pesto and last week we took two laundry baskets full of zucchini and crook neck squash to the orchestra rehearsals. (Karin felt that there was no better ice-breaker than a big green zucchini.) The players snatched them up and later in the week we heard all about zucchini brownies, zucchini on the grill, zucchini bread.
I had hoped that maybe a baritone sax player or a valve trombone player would slip a zucchini into the bell of their horn for a mute at some point, but I did not see that.
Karin and I have been talking about writing a collection of garden poems, somewhat erotic in nature, called, The Illicit Zucchini.
Not sure where we’re going with it, but I have made a mental note that zucchini rhymes nicely with bikini.
I remember wondering aloud after we had our first garden out here about whether the church had missed a sin. The pleasure of cupping ones hand around the smooth underbelly of a vine-ripened tomato is about as blood red sensual as it gets. Yep, they might have forgotten to forbid that one.
But actually we’ve gravitated mostly toward yellow tomatoes. They’re full of flavor, less acidic. I feel like I’m in the act of eating something golden, nectar filled, something the ancient Greeks would have passed around on a platter.
People ask us what we grow on the farm. Well, songs, of course, first and foremost. And Karin’s flowers. And a large vegetable and herb garden. We tame our once-neglected farm by cutting meandering paths just about everywhere. But we leave the edges wild with weeds: thistle, milkweed, dogbane, golden rod, inkberries, red clover, Virginia creeper. I scribbled this recently in a poem I was working on about my father:
Let the songbirds have thorny hidden places for their wild melodies.
Yes, the songbirds do seem to appreciate the untamed edges of the world. This morning Elroy and I startled about two dozen bobwhite quail on the back paths. They exploded into flight and then coasted low and away toward the edge of the farm. Sometimes an indigo bunting will leave a streak in the air so blue you can close your eyes and still see it for days.
And we love to watch the native saplings reclaim their rightful places: the red maple, black locust, black cherry, persimmon… the tupelo, ash, elm, cedar… hackberry, mulberry, silver maple, pin oak…
When the sun goes down, you might see me out walking after dark, feeling the coolness along the edges of the trees, the open air above our meadow full of clover.
Slowly the land is revealing itself to us.
Yes.
**
Well, big thanks to all of you who came and found us in the hills high above the Ohio River last Saturday evening. I thought the orchestra sounded amazing, and it’s a thrill to play with an orchestra – a rare gift for a songwriter. It had rained on and off for much of the day and we had just about written off the whole thing at one point, but lo and behold the clouds parted just in time, the air cooled and a beautiful evening emerged. I was a little more nervous than usual, but I think it all came together beautifully. Thanks for being there. (If you think all the previous vegetable ramblings were risqué, try reading the lyrics to Afternoon Delight sometime, let alone singing it with a straight face. We’ll have to see if the recording turned out.)
Yes, it is still the 20th Anniversary of Over the Rhine, and we still do have a few 20th Anniversary aces up our sleeves.
So here goes:
The Trumpet Child Deluxe Songbook
I think probably more than any other question over the years, we have been repeatedly asked, When will there be sheet music available for Over the Rhine’s music?? Well after 20 years, we are finally taking you seriously. We now have our first OtR songbook!
We started with all the songs on The Trumpet Child, and by the time we added all the extras, we were holding a 126 page book packed full of music and various surprises. Whether or not you intend to actually play the notes (which we carefully edited at our home piano here on the farm) we think you might like this keepsake of sorts, which documents profusely the most recent musical chapter of Over the Rhine. Yes, it’s got the piano music, guitar chords, lyrics, photos, a rambling essay by yours truly, playful performance notes and more. Pick up your copy now at OvertheRhine.com… and let us know what you think.
(Special thanks to Michael Wilson, Bill Ivester and The Brothers Wright for the many photographs. And thanks to John, Casey and Andy at our publishing company for helping make it all happen!)
Live From Nowhere Volume Four
Wow. Number four in this series already?
Volume One focused mostly on the Drunkard’s Prayer tour featuring Devon Ashley on drums, Rick Plant on guitar and bass, Byron House on upright bass and Kim Taylor singing harmonies and playing acoustic guitar. (Now available digitally only.)
Volume Two saw the line-up of the band evolve to include Mickey Grimm on drums and percussion and Jake Bradley on upright bass and guitar, and this collection prominently features the playing of special guest and Cincinnati treasure, Paul Patterson. (A handful of unsigned CD’s still remain, because we realized we missed a box. Also available digitally.)
Volume Three was all about The Trumpet Child, but includes some performances from the Ani DiFranco tour, when we opened the shows as an acoustic trio. Hear producer Brad Jones, Mickey Grimm, Jake Bradley and Paul Patterson work their magic on the band’s most recent songs. Volume Three was recorded live and mixed from beginning to end by Juicy himself. (A limited number of CD’s still available.)
Which brings us to Volume Four, the current installment!
We had so much to choose from for Volume Four, but we realized, before the moment passed, that we really needed to dedicate this edition to the special reunion concert that took place with Ric Hordinski and Brian Kelley (and many talented friends) on Friday night, December 19, 2008, at the Taft Theater. We turned up the amps and even Karin broke out her electric guitar as we revisited the recordings from the first decade of Over the Rhine.
What can I say? It was electric fun, a truly memorable evening in all the best ways, and we tried our best to bottle the experience for you. It took TWO CD’S, and a 20-page booklet, and a special package, but we got it done. Paul Mahern (producer of OHIO and Drunkard’s Prayer) helped us get Volume Four all put together and sounding good (before he flew off to work with T-Bone Burnett).
We’ll have the CD’s in 2-3 weeks, and they’ll ship as soon as they arrive. If you pre-order your copy now, you can download all the music immediately and dive in. Let us know what you think.
Here is the track listing:
Over the Rhine LIVE FROM NOWHERE Volume Four
20th Anniversary Reunion Concert Decade One
TWO CD’S – LIMITED EDITION
DISC ONE
1. Eyes Wide Open
2. How Does It Feel (To Be On My Mind)
3. HDIF Reprise
4. Within Without
5. Like A Radio
6. Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander
7. June
8. Circle Of Quiet
9. Daddy Untwisted
DISC TWO
1. Paul And Virginia
2. Poughkeepsie
3. Faithfully Dangerous
4. A Gospel Number
5. All I Need Is Everything
6. If I’m Drowning
7. I Painted My Name
8. Latter Days
Recorded Live, Friday, December 19, 2008
at The Taft Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The exciting thing about Volume Four is that many of these songs evolved significantly in concert from the original recordings and were never before released. So it feels like Volume Four fills a significant gap in our musical journey thus far. (If you’re new to the band, maybe these recordings will make you curious about our first handful of records: Till We Have Faces, Patience, eve and Good Dog Bad Dog. If so, don’t be shy.)
Again, pre-order your copy now at OvertheRhine.com, and you can download the music on both discs immediately. Hope you like!
And finally, we have quite a few concert dates in the coming weeks and months: Albuquerque, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Bloomington, IN, Louisville, Lexington, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, SLC, The West Coast etc etc. (Please check out OvertheRhine.com for details and tickets.)
Finally, we wanted to especially make you aware of one of our hometown faves:
Friday, September 11, 2009: An evening with Over the Rhine at Coney Island Moonlite Gardens in Cincinnati, Ohio. Join us by the Ohio River in this beautiful, historic venue and bring the family. Hope to see you under the stars.
Well, that’s about all the news I can fit into the usual four pages.
Twenty years folks. We thank you.
Whaddya say we do something good in the next twenty? We’ve got some ideas.
Love from Nowhere,
Linford and Karin
PS Pls pass this letter around to the usual suspects. Print it out, climb a tulip tree and wave it at passing cars. Tweet key phrases. Scribble excerpts in the margins of your biology textbook. Cross-stitch a paragraph on a porch swing pillow. Tattoo a phrase or two on a smooth-skinned limb. And my personal favorite: line the birdcage with multiple copies and let the white doves crap all night long.