LOCATION: Gordon College, Wenham, MA
LINEUP: Karin, Linford, Jack
REVIEW BY: Scott Gorke
Notes: * the opening act was a Gordon College student named Jake Armerding, who most likely will be classified by some as a folk musician. He did a very impressive job; the Gordon students in the audience went nuts, and the rest of us had reason to be impressed. It was just him with his acoustic guitar, or his violin, or his mandolin (on which he whaled!). He did so well, that OTR invited him on stage to help out with "Orphan Girl". It sounded like he rehearsed with them (maybe he did, who knows...). * the band arrived in MA the night before, so, unlike previous Gordon shows in which they left Cinti at midnight to make it to MA by 8 PM, they had plenty of time to do a proper sound check. The result was technical flawlessness. Karin's voice was front and center, with no audio confusion or anything like that... * the band was Linford, Karin, and Jack. That was it. No drums, all the bass was in Linford's keyboard, no other rhythm section. Don Smith met up with me and my friend Rich Richardson afterwards, and we agreed that while the sound was excellent and well performed, some of the songs really needed drums, dammit. Goodbye, for example: I miss Brian's drumming! That song is so much more impressive when it rocks! * speaking of the band's sound, Jack's guitar melds well with K&L's efforts. Some of his guitar work was very lush, at times moody, at times ethereal, like Ric in the Patience days. Other times his blues-influenced sound was perfect for Jack's Valentine (duh!) and Orphan Girl and Poughkeepsie. * my first time hearing several of the new songs. "Anyway" is now one of my favorites. "Moth" and "The World Can Wait" are pretty good, "World" having that familiar GDBD feeling of pain interspersed with joy, but lyrically I though it wasn't as good as their other lyrical efforts. When will "Anyway" come out on CD? Or has it already? * Karin's hair is now auburn red. She and Linford are neck-and-neck in the hair length competition. I mentioned to Rich that, with her hair in two short pigtails, K had the Pippi Longstocking thing going on. Rich smirked. As he should. I was joking. * What was up with K's intro to Faithfully Dangerous (definitely new mix)? She intro'd it as something akin to the heinous act of taking apart an insect by the legs or something. I wish I could remember the full text of the quote; it was bizarre. * "The World Can Wait" is not the title. K said that the band was still in the studio working out the tracks, and the title isn't determined. I made a guess on it, 'cause it was the most repeated line, so, like, duh - I went with it. * during Jack's Valentine, L went into an ad-lib riff about how much it snowed the last time they came to Gordon (6 to 12 inches in November 1997). It was a hoot. Okay, this is getting exhaustive. Anyone else got anything to contribute? I'd love to hear what your take on this was!