Over the Rhine -featured on podcast #1

LINK to podcast #1: "Betty Says Hello!"

I have chosen Over the Rhine as my first featured band for good reason...I have been following their work since before their first cd was even released in 1991. I was working in a small music and book store in missouri and our music-buyer received this homely looking cassette demo from a band he'd never heard of. It was titled "Til we Have Faces". He gave it a listen, thought it sounded a bit too artsy/folky for him and decided to pass it along to me. The year was 1990...I was a freshman in college and just beginning to look beyond what was handed me by this midwestern prime-time culture of which i was surrounded.

That cd did more to turn me on to the "sub-culture" of that which exists below the mainstream, beneath the numbness and blind acceptance of the norm in music...than any music listened to prior. I was hooked! When their full release came out, I purchased it...I pressured our music buyer to buy it for the stores and recommended it to every "music seeker" (you know them because you are one) that came my way. I have been a champion for this band, and others like them, ever since. I saw them in concert this past summer and introduced some friends to the music...they were blown away!

Karin Berquist and Linford Detweiler are the coupled heart behind Over the Rhine...Karin's voice is indescribable...sensual in the way warm honey tastes, or like the sun warming you through a window pane on a cold wooden floor, while you lay with the dog, eyes closed, listening to joni, carol or laura nyro and you remember really being a kid again.

A bit verbose perhaps, but this music is really substantive and difficult to describe beyond the sensual. Lyrically, the band is stellar...they have few peers in contemporary music. Linford and Karin write the songs and Linford has a particular depth of writing that I appreciate. If you subscribe to their email list, expect long, lovely, intimate correspondence filled with bright imagery and cozy thoughts. These artists do nothing half-way...their music is a spiritual offering and their listeners are transcended by the song.

JUST DOWNLOAD AND LISTEN...

"All I Need is Everything"

from

Good Dog, Bad Dog

"Born"

from

Drunkard's Prayer

These tracks are available, along with others, at

www.overtherhine.com.