LOCATION: Taft Theater, Cincinnati, OH
LINEUP: Karin, Linford, Nick Radina, Jason Goforth, Tim Luntzell, Tommy Perkinson
REVIEW BY:
"We've got some new songs for you 'cause we're not dead yet." -Karin
Sacred Ground
Very First Snowfall of a Very Long Year (not sure about this title)
Hungry Heart (w/ Lucy Wainwright Roche)
Silent Night (sing-a-long w/ Lucy Wainwright Roche)
The Laugh of Recognition
Snow Angel
North Pole Man
Trouble
All My Favorite People Are Broken
Leaning On the Everlasting Arms (Linford on piano)
Encore:
Rave On
Undamned
Drunkard's Prayer
When Karin Bergquist offered up the title of the Christmas album in the works from her band Over the Rhine, some people in the audience at the Taft Theatre chuckled.
Perhaps those folks thought that the name, “Blood Oranges in the Snow,” conjures up a dark image unsuited for the most wonderful time of the year.
Bergquist disagreed.
“We just don’t do jingle bell-y,” she explained. “We do reality Christmas music.”
Over the Rhine played its annual December homecoming show at the Taft Theatre Saturday night in front of a near-sellout audience. The 21-song set included several of the band’s Christmas-themed originals. To Bergquist and husband Linford Detweiler, reality Christmas music meant that some of those original compositions were celebratory; often, they were wistful, which seems like a fairly accurate happy-sad mix not only in their Christmas world but in a lot of people’s.
Bergquist and Detweiler fleshed out the melancholy musical mood of the evening with help from a four-piece band. Multi-instrumentalists Nick Radina and Jason Goforth were joined by bassist Tim Luntzel and drummer Tommy Perkinson. Radina and Goforth have been in Over the Rhine’s touring band this year and played their parts with ease and their solos with flash, whether it was Radina doing a percussion solo on the OTR staple “Trouble” or Radina and Goforth trading guitar and harmonica solos on the seasonal blues number “North Pole Man.”
Detweiler is usually good for a couple of turns at lead vocals, but at this show, Bergquist sang all the leads. Instead, Detweiler’s turn at the mic came in the form of a long, entertaining monolog about a steady music gig he and Bergquist once had at the Cincinnatian Hotel.
He named the list of traveling musicians he encountered there. He noted that on one occasion Billy Joel hit on Bergquist. (“He and that model were having problems,” Detweiler explained.) And another time he greeted Ian Anderson as Jethro Tull, which Anderson did not appreciate. The story somehow meandered to his former residence on Main Street, and Detweiler recalled winters in the neighborhood from which the band took its name. The first snowfall of the year in Over-the-Rhine, he said, was “a fresh start” and “a sacred moment.”
That served as the launch for a new tune that he and Bergquist performed without the band. It was a good one, full of downtown imagery like “40 ounces of liquor for 30 pieces of silver.” They didn’t say the title, but the chorus was “The very first snowfall of a very long year.” Look for it on “Blood Oranges in the Snow,” which they said will be released late next year.
Following that song, warm-up act Lucy Wainwright Roche returned to the stage for duets with Bergquist on “Silent Night” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.”
The daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Suzzy Roche and sister of Rufus Wainwright, Lucy has a beautiful singing voice, a knack for songwriting and a natural charm as a between-songs small-talk maker, all of which were on display during an excellent 45-minute opening set that she ended to a standing ovation.
YouTube:
Suitcase - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrG9vldMo2M
Rave On - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpFJMUkes2Y
We're Gonna Pull Through - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opSkilLIYpc
Hungry Heart - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A134Ti8-RWg