Badger Herald, University of Wisconsin
October 3, 1994

by Audrey Chambrandt

"I got up at a quarter to five in the morning for this," Karin Bergquist, lead singer of the Cincinnati band Over the Rhine, said as she waited to go on stage. For, due to scheduling problems, the band's Friday night show was actually pushed back until 12:15 am, providing, at the very least, an exasperating evening for the band.

So they waited. And as time wore on, it began to seem like it wasn't going to be worthwhile: Over the Rhine had been postponed while front room act, Dave Edmunds, finished his set. Yet when it finally came time to play, bassist Linford Detweiler calmly lit the candles that adorned the stage, as he does at every concert, fully embellishing the back room's quiet lounge-like atmosphere. In fact, the quiet atmosphere led to a complete feeling, as though the sparse crowd in attendance was in on a musical secret of sorts.

That kind of secretive feeling went on to rule the evening, as the concert was pushed back later and later, and the 50 or so fans who came to see Over the Rhine, waited patiently for Edmunds to finish in the front room.

Purely and simply, the wait paid off in the end. Over the Rhine, who that day had driven from the Ohio River to Madison, only to get shuffled around like an opening band, ended up giving their unclassifiable brand of rock, funk, late night smoky jazz, and tinges of seemingly every other kind of quality music. Over the Rhine once again proved to be one of the music industry's shamefully well-kept secrets.

Largely comprised of numbers from their third album, Eve, Over the Rhine's concert mostly reflected their more spirited side. Even songs which come off as quietly desperate on albums, came off with their sharpest sides forward in the live translation. While all the songs remained true to their spirit, in the live show they step forward with the most emotionally intense overtones.

With openers, "Birds" and "Within Without" the band set the tone for the show, showcasing musicianship and raw emotion over slick production and songwriting. "Within Without's" rather rapid-fire vocals were brought to the music's level; a point where they were no more or less important than say, Detweiler's subtly empowering bass.

From their independent release came "Eyes Wide Open," a song in which the vocals became horrowingly real. For when Bergquist sang "Eyes wide open to the great train robbery of my soul," the lyrics, considering the evening so far, made surprising sense.

The quartet's second album, Patience was represented by a delightfully poppish version of "How Does It Feel (To Be On My Mind)" which segued into lead guitarist Ric Hordinski's Hendrix-quality intro to the reprise of "How Does It Feel," at which point it became clear that one of the pure wonders of Over the Rhine's live set was that it could not be easily pigeonholed into genre; it only felt like the exorcism of several personal demons, from the incredibly emotional vocals, the guitar playing that came across as angry and liberating, and the drums, which heralded a number of settings and different approaches, from the jazz club beat of "My Love is a Fever" to the rain-on-a-tin-roof sounds of "Falling (Death of A Tree)."

However, the ultimate highpoint of the concert came with the frightenly enigmatic "Daddy Untwisted." While on album the song is frightening enough, in the live show, the tune seemed to become the culmination of years of pent up emotion resulting in a climax to the show which reflected frustration and repression, as though everything these four had ever wanted to say was here, in this song.

In the end, alas, even a die-hard has to admit that there were problems. The schedule shuffling did seem to take its toll on the performance, for the band seemed distanced from its own songs on some numbers, while Bergquist's invitations for dancing and attempts at interaction went largely ignored, most likely due to impatience.

And largely, that was the tragedy of it all. That Over the Rhine once again came through this town, played one of the best shows around, and overall got treated merely as another up and coming, run of the mill band. They're not. When faced with a lousy night, treated like a secondary band, graced with a small audience in a back room, they played like alchemists of music, bridging the gap between music and raw emotion.

Imagine, if you will, what the show would have been like if everything had gone as scheduled.