Tag: storytellers

Over the Rhine Hold on to Hope in ‘Love & Revelation’

Posted on by Editor

In the 30 years since Karin Bergquist and Linford Detwiler made their debut as Over the Rhine, the husband-and-wife duo have established themselves as thoughtful storytellers painting cinematic scenes with their poetic lyrics, pastorally beautiful soundscapes and Karin’s sultry vocal delivery. On Love & Revelation, Bergquist and Detwiler take a nuanced approach, exploring grief as it relates to saying goodbye to loved ones and questioning what it means to hold on to hope as an American in 2019.

BGS: Love & Revelation begins with “Los Lunas,” a song about saying goodbye to a longtime love. That theme of dealing with loss seems to open up and run throughout the album.

Detwiler: A lot of what we’re processing on our new record is this idea that certain things are carried with you for a lifetime. The record opens with the words “I cried.” It sort of tips our hand to the fact that there’s a fair bit of grief on this record. When I mentioned that to my 87-year-old mother, she said, “Well, Linford, that sounds like the Psalms.” All of us like to sort of tout our roots and older music that we’re listening to. I like the fact that my mom immediately went to the oldest songbook that I know of, which would be The Psalms in the Old Testament and immediately began talking about how so many of those songs and poems begin with some kind of lament.

The lyrics of “Los Lunas,” like so many Over the Rhine songs, have a cinematic quality, though the specific details of what led to these two people parting ways in that song isn’t clear. Other songs’ meanings seem to open up after repeated listens. They paint pictures that don’t necessarily solidify into something that can be explained using literal description. How do you pull that off?

I don’t like listeners to feel lost and sort of at sea when they’re listening to our songs. I like them to have some sense of what they’re participating in. [Laughs] That being said, our friend Joe Henry talks about “abiding the mystery” and sort of welcoming and recognizing the mystery that’s part of the process and art of songwriting. There is something on an intuitive level that’s sometimes being communicated.

As somebody that’s marking 30 years of writing, recording and life on the road now, I do find myself trying to simplify my writing. What is the most concise, direct way I can break a heart wide open? [Laughs] I hope our songs are like that. There’s something immediate that invites anybody on any level to enter in and begin participating, but I hope there’s some fine print in there, too, where you have to work a little harder.

There’s a line in “Let You Down” that describes grief as “love with nowhere to go,” which really stopped me in my tracks. What inspired that concept?

I was thinking about some friends and family members that were struggling. So many of us have been called upon to lay loved ones to rest. We have friends who have lost children or friends and family that are facing chronic illness or some kind of daunting cancer diagnosis. Just from my perspective now, I realize it’s so much more important just to show up and be with somebody and listen. I don’t necessarily come from the orientation that everything can be fixed.

So, that concept of grief being a kind of love with no place to go, that’s a conversation I’ve had with people that have lost children. There is this sense of holding this love for somebody and not knowing really what to do with it. At this point, if you lose a child, that’s not something that you should get over. You should carry that with you. That’s part of your life experience. That’s something that you’re going to think about every day.

Another thing about “Let You Down” is you, Linford, are singing a full-on duet with Karin, which I don’t think I’ve heard before on an Over the Rhine album. You’re also singing together on “Betting on the Muse.” What led you to step out as a vocalist after all these years?

I had a real stumbling block about singing. I didn’t like my voice. I’m sure some smart therapist could help me figure out where the seed of that was planted. It’s not like I didn’t want to sing, necessarily. I just didn’t enjoy it, and it didn’t feel good. So, Karin was very patient with me and encouraged me for years to remain open to the idea of singing more.

I remember five or six years ago, there was a little bit of a breakthrough, and I said, “Well, actually, when I sing for any extended period of time, I have some physical pain.” She said, “Well, why don’t you try singing through that and just see what’s on the other side?” I accepted the fact that maybe something painful was part of this process, and at some point, I began to let go of some of that and began to tentatively sing some harmony with Karin. It’s so amazing to sing harmony with somebody.

Karin wrote the title song, “Love & Revelation,” which has a very propulsive feel to it. Lyrically, it conveys a belief that even with all this grief, hope can still break through. Tell me about creating the music to complement those lyrics.

When Karin and [drummer] Jay Bellerose began sort of leaning into the song in the studio, we all just sort of backed away slowly because it felt like something so vivid and complete was happening, which is the voice, acoustic guitar and drums. So, I thought it was a powerful moment on the record. It’s very unadorned. It’s kind of that righteous parade and Karin’s voice, and that’s it.

I think a lot of Americans are feeling a little off balance, to put it mildly, and feeling the need to be sort of vigilant and a very necessary instinct to sort of stand against almost a daily tide of cruelty and deception that’s coming at us. We’re looking around and saying, “Well, this is not who I believe we are.” In this kind of environment, sometimes I think we forget to circle back to what it is we actually do stand for, or believe in. So, Karin sort of planted this reminder that actually it comes back around to love and revelation. I like that idea of remembering what we’re for.

That’s a pretty evolved way to look at what’s going on in America in 2019. How do you get to that point of making an album that goes beyond just running around screaming with your hair on fire about injustice?

I was not opposed to recording a protest record. Maybe on some level it is, but it’s interesting that the record we really ended up making was a record that acknowledged that we are grieving. It’s a record that acknowledges that people we love are hurting, and it’s engaging that on a heart level. It’s a little bit less about being on the street corner with a megaphone. I did write some megaphone songs, and maybe they’ll come back around. At some point, speaking softly can be just as powerful as yelling.

As always, you and Karin are credited as solo writers on most of your songs, but you seem to be on the same page in grappling with these ideas of grief and hope. Does that through-line in the theme happen organically because you’re living and working together as husband and wife?

We are sharing a lot of these experiences, and our lives feel pretty integrated. After two or three decades of trying to write a good song, eventually I begin to think, well, what I’m really trying to write is a good life. It becomes kind of inseparable. So, Karin and I, yeah, she’s a trusted editor. It’s a real gift to have somebody close by to bounce ideas off of and process ideas with. We are one of them there musical couples. It’s too late to turn back now. [Laughs]

2019 marks the 30th anniversary of your debut album. What conversations is that milestone bringing up for you and Karin?

We’re thinking a lot about sustainability. One thing we’re working on is restoring a historic barn on our old property, and we’re hoping to open our own 200-seat venue in the next couple of years. We’ve begun hosting our own music festival, and sort of inviting this community that have found our music to begin coming to us more. One nice thing about this possibility of owning our own music venue is we could offer some concerts throughout the year where we go back and take a fresh look at some of these records we made 20 years ago or whenever.

Some of the songs we still carry with us and play on a pretty regular basis, but we’re not really a nostalgia act. We’ll be very focused on Love & Revelation this year, and that’s the way people who engage our music want it. They are hungry for more.

Photo credit: Kylie Wilkerson

The Beauty in Ugly Stories: A Conversation with Anna Tivel

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Critics have likened Anna Tivel’s songwriting to poetry, and it’s easy to see why. She cuts her words on glass, creating phrasing that is at once sharp, precise, and poignant. In the opening to “Alleyway,” she sings, “Smoke against the windowpane, just the semis breathing on the interstate, a gray upon the graying of October,” creating a scene in just two sentences packed full of sullen feeling.

But beyond her poetic sensibilities, Tivel is, at heart, a storyteller. Her new album, Small Believer, reveals a penchant for flaws — be they in characters, moments, or memories. The album opens the doors upon marginalized existences and the spaces that hold them; there are broken-down apartments once bursting at the seams with love, and broken-down characters who race the night back to unkept promises.

Tivel’s razor-edged poetic lyricism bolsters each kind of story, allowing such broken baubles to let loose their truth and shine once again. “Alleyway” — a song told from a former lover’s point of view as she walks a path home by the river, reconciling her routine existence with a fleeting moment of happiness long ago — cuts and carves language down to some inimitable truth. “And I know good things never last. I know that now, but I didn’t then,” Tivel sings — her whisper-like inflections, the soft way she couches the admittance — breathing resolution into what could feel like a bitter line. Tivel’s storytelling, though drawn to the quietly forlorn, doesn’t revel in that same tone. Small Believer quietly unpacks ugliness to find its hidden beauty.

People have called you a poet — and there’s truth to that descriptor — but I liken your craft more to short stories than anything else. Why do you think you’re drawn to characters, in particular?

Something I’m falling in love with is trying to tell a story through the eyes of a character. I think it’s the way I’ve found to process. You’re out in the world and out on the road, and you hear people’s stories and you collect all these different lives. People are going through all sorts of things, and you’re going through all sorts of things, and I’ve found it to be a really different way to distill that, if that makes sense.

So many of the characters exhibit flaws. Are you always gravitating toward flawed heroes?

Yeah, I think that always feels more honest and real to me. Looking at the world, it’s beautiful, but it’s not bright and shiny. I guess the super happy things, I’m not as drawn to dig into.

Listening to the album, I couldn’t help but think about the term that’s been bandied about since the 2016 election: “flyover states.” These hidden narratives, these unknown people, and a lot of your characters feel like flyover characters.

Yeah, some of them are drawn from one story I’ve heard, or something inside of myself, and some of them are a big blob of a lot of things. It’s not so planned, like “I’m going to write a song about this.” It’s just sort of something I’ve been kicking around and needs to come out, I guess, and it comes out in that narrative.

That’s the beauty of that kind of writing — you can pull together so many different pieces. You’ve described yourself as an introvert, and speaking from that position as well, it feels as though there’s the tendency to observe more than participate. But being a songwriter, you have to participate to some degree when you perform on stage. How do you find yourself striking that balance, if that’s even something that you even set out to do?

I love that you said that because that rings true to me, too. Observing is what I’m drawn to more than standing on stage. If performing wasn’t a part of this cycle or this job, I would totally hermit out. Because you’re really vulnerable — people are really vulnerable with you, and that’s a good connection that I don’t think I would foster very often, if left to my own devices. I’m really thankful for that.

I guess I’ve kind of fallen more and more in love with the performing part of it. I think, for a long time, when I first started out, I needed to approach it the way I saw other people approaching it, who were super extroverted and drew their energy from being in front of people and going out in front before the show and then playing the show and then partying after the show. I’d just shrivel up into a tiny raisin and die from doing that. I think this will be a life-long learning thing, but figuring out the way I love it the most is just to treat it more like a conversation with people. If people are willing to be in it with you and engage with the stories, then afterward, they reciprocate and tell you stories. You have this special thing that you wouldn’t have had, if you’d just gone to a bar and didn’t see that in people.

Do you ever have to push yourself to get out and participate? I feel like the introvert’s creed is to cultivate that internal space rather than the external.

Yeah, I don’t drink much anymore. I used to do that to put a pad on things. That’s always a struggle; it’s always rewarding, though. It’s one of those things … after a long run of shows, you’re filled up and you need to go be by yourself to understand. [Being extroverted] is definitely a struggle, maybe not my most natural state, but I think something that I feel has just exploded my world in a way that never would have happened without music.

Music seems to be the conduit for these two variations of being in the world. Introverts recharge and draw that energy from those quiet moments of solitude. Not that they can’t enjoy other people’s company.

Totally, or like a one-on-one with people or a calmer interaction. That’s the nice thing about songwriting or doing music out in the world, you go out and you do this thing, and you take in a lot of other people’s messages and then, the other half of it is, you go home and there’s a lot of work at home, in your own head, where you’re delving into your weird brain. There are seasons to it, totally.

Which is all the more reason to get back on stage, because once you’ve spent too much time inside your own head …

Yeah, you’ve gotta get out of there. [Laughs]

So many of these songs are set at night, and I figured that might be in part because you’re nocturnal by nature, being a performer, but there seemed to be this reverence for that time of day. Can you speak a bit about your relationship to the night?

I almost called this record Nocturne, because listening through to the songs I was like, “Man, I got a night thing going on with this album.” [Laughs] It’s the same reason that little bits of ugliness and hope that I’m drawn to … the night kind of embodies that a little more to me. You do your whole day and then reality hits — you come home and you’re by yourself, and all the things you were hoping your day would’ve held … it feels like that a bit to me. Just that’s where the truth lies, when it gets dark and all that’s there is yourself and what you’re trying for.

With “Saturday Night,” I couldn’t help thinking about the times I’ve lived in big cities, and one of my favorite activities involved glancing at people’s windows as I walked by. Not in a voyeuristic way, but you get a brief tableau before you pass.

No, totally!

It’s beautiful sometimes.

Yeah, like little tiny pictures.

Well, that’s what “Saturday Night” reminded me of — seeing what someone else is doing, when you’re in your own head trying to work through something.

That’s exactly the song. I was working at a restaurant job, and I’d get home late at night, and I was living in this rickety old house divided into apartments and there was a guy in the basement. No matter what time it was, he’d be up. I’d come home, and he’d be staring at the TV or the wall or something, and I’d stand across the street a little and, not creepily at all, watch him. That song started in one of those moments. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite things, too, just walking around at night and everybody’s in their little box.

I’ve said it to people, and they look at me crazy.

Sometimes I tell that story on stage and I can feel people thinking, and I’m like, “Whoops, I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

I guess we should be happy we’re not men because it looks even worse if you see a random man standing outside staring.

I think about that all the time! [Laughs] I love to sit and watch kids at the playground, but you cannot be an adult man who goes to the playground.

Nope. Alright, last question: Nature arises throughout your latest album, especially through stars and rivers. What is the relationship you’re keen to draw out?

I grew up in the valley of Washington, the farmland area by the Skagit River. My dad was a fisherman for a long time, so I’ve always been around the ocean or the river. We lived right around this river path, and I would walk my dog on this path and, when I’m walking, songs are forming or trying to work out lyric things. I guess I don’t even realize that thing as much as I realize the stuff about night coming up again and again. [Nature] is a solid, calming force, and it has nothing to do with people or what people are making — the ugly bits of the world that are manmade. It’s a steady opposite to that. “Riverside Hotel” is literally the story of a homeless veteran I would walk past and talk to sometimes on this river walk when they were building a Marriott Hotel across the street. There’s a song on there called “Alleyway,” and it’s the story of a woman who’s working down the same river walk at a Super 8 motel, and she’d take that path along that river.

Photo credit: Jeffrey Martin