Over The Rhine, Kent Stage 12/4/2010

Part of playing music is watching and listening to other people play music. Even if I know the music I don't think too much about what the hands on stage are doing.. Just more listening and watching, something melding together in the sight and sound, seeing the musicians react to certain parts of the music..

I remember in the early 1990s seeing mention of a band called "Over The Rhine" in print.. I vaguely understood they were from Ohio, and were a husband and wife team.. I was fading from the dying world of thrash/hardcore/speed metal at the time and transitioning back into rock of the late 60s and early 70s.. So I never checked them out..

Fast forward to a dark, unfriendly winter night in late 2009.. I really needed to see something good, get a grain of hope.. I had this OTR ticket that I'd bought on impulse.. It was cold as heel outside, a bleak, barren night, the kind where you sit on your good intentions and do nothing, but I innately understood that the future was out in the icy wind far away and I needed to go to it.

The Kent Stage: old downtown movie theater near Kent State converted into music venue. I was in row K, midway back, right side.. They had Nashville's Kenny Hutson (guitar) and Mickey Grimm on that tour, and though I didn't know the song catalogue, it didn't matter. Right from the start of the show they pulled every member of the audience in and played every song like it was the last thing they would ever do. I'll always remember singer Karen Berquist's huge grin under the bright lights. Kenny Hutson blew me away by picking up any one of 5 different stringed instruments throughout the night and being awesome at all of them. Watching someone like Kenny lets you suddenly understand without words what an artist truly is. When you are a master, everything you do is intentional, and every note is magic. It was a pure energy show.

What I remember most about that night is how much they gave, and gave, and gave. The whole band seemed genuinely thrilled. I could feel it filling my bones.

I left that 2009 show with a real spring in my step. Since then I've collected several of their albums and I've let them drip into my brain at work. It's a 20 year+ catalogue, and I don't have good perspective on the changes that have occurred in the music and direction. But I'm having fun learning about it.

Saw OTR again in 2010 with friends Scott and Kate. This time we got closer seats. It was a little different. Karen spoke of her mother in a nursing home. She seemed tighter and sadder on stage, at one point reading a poem by Bukowski. The show was less carefree. It spoke of modern concerns, of middle-aged children taking care of elderly parents and single mothers raising difficult teen-agers. Karen played "Ohio" alone on the piano with no one else on stage. The talk between the songs seemed a bit strained and the show seemed short. It was still good, and Scott and I walked out into a fantastic 11 pm Kent snowstorm of soft, huge flakes.

So what's it all mean? What is Over The Rhine to me? Real people. Real lives and real struggles. A band that has never succumbed to mainstream success. Real musicians. I'm fascinated that both Linford and Karen play piano. I mean, they just sit down and play it.

“On earlier records, I was unintentionally playing it a bit safe at times,” she says. “I had all this stuff bottled up and I was afraid that if I let it out, even musically, I’d be laughed at or, God forbid, misunderstood. Now, I’m more lost in it. More drunk on it. Far more out of control about it. Messy, juicy and tangled up.”

-- Karen Berquist, overtherhine.com

I feel like they are people I can understand. The music is earthy. It's folk, it's rock, it's jazz, it's blues. The midwest flavor is comforting to me.

Listening to their earlier albums reminds me of going through REM's early works, the carefree youth and energy. Fascinating.

“Believe me, we don’t want to waste anybody’s time,” elaborates Detweiler. “When we stop believing we’re doing our best work, we’re done. Every song has to be good, every record has to be great, every concert has to have some spiritual significance—something that we can’t quantify, something bigger than all of us.”

-- Linford Detweiler
from overtherhine.com

Weekend Full of Good Music: Part 1

Forget the band - I'm a fan first. I was pumped for the Nervous Jerks/Tay-Sachs/Zhopa Mira show at U-Pie.. University Pizzeria in Youngstown like a northern pioneer outpost with campfire out front and those faces looking up at you, the wander down the long entrance and the big dark red music room in back with exotic girls bright as birds and wanting to be seen.

Ordinarily when seeing shows alone I show up right on time, nervously pacing about, checking my watch.. And several hours later am sleeping in the corner waiting for someone to pick up a piece of wood and make some ^%&#**ing music with it... This time all of us but Matt went down to U-Pie around 10:30 pm or so.. I was sure we'd missed the Jerks and that everything was destroyed.. But right when we got there they'd just started suiting up and getting ready. Perfect timing for us - Chris Wetzl - logistical genius.

So the Nervous Jerks rip into it, minus Dan Frankland (who had a last minute work committment), and it's amazing - somehow between Devon using a fuzz pedal and Mat's superior guitar skills they fill up Dan's absence as best they can. Mat does a thousand things with only 4 fingers and it seems like more sound than possible sails out of his amp. He never even looks at the guitar neck, he knows right where he is. He stares menacingly at Sarge and Devon and then everything serious dissolves into smiles and laughter. Sarge is always an inspiration on drums, lost in the music, eyes closed, with the perfect fills and timing. Devon is solid as hell on bass - Chris just commented how he liked her work - a real strong presence, the root notes, the fifths. Keep in mind I've been literally dousing my ears all day long in Spader, Under the Rainbow and Gettin It Done at work for weeks - so all of a sudden I'm hearing all those tunes blaze into light and sound right in front of me. Awesome. There's nothing like hearing the opening chords of a song like "Double Nothing" - definitely guaranteed to make you smile.

I knew nothing about the band Tay-Sachs except someone named Baker wouldn't be around for awhile so this was their last show.. The Nervous Jerks broke their equipment down and a wild band of younger guys were suddenly jumping around with a mad grinning guitarist who looked like Ethan Hawke's younger brother. Suffice to say their songs were short and brutal - Scott complimented that they were "concise". They did a song about Limp Bizkit, or maybe it was a cover - that lasted exactly one second or maybe two beats. Hilarious. Quite a following, too, with the singer disappearing into the crowd to scream.

I'd been burning to see Zhopa Mira - a newer Y-Town band - someone threw a red hot piece of metal at the ground and it burst up and became a delicious thrashing band with a singer who almost speaks the words casually, yet they hang like fire in the rain. The tracks on their facebook page smoke with slamming, panicked drums and bass and frenetic, absolute universe-bending guitar mixed with Christina Porcase's casual, understated vocals that call to mind San Francisco's Rykarda Parasol in a psycho-delic speed thrashtrip. They did not disappoint - wild, flanged-out tones screamed out from the stage. I don't know how to describe the perfect amalgamation of distorted bluesy licks in a song like "Beastly Savagely" with the searing smolder of the low string drone calling you into the feeling perfectly. If you want to see the next brilliant burning star soar out of Youngstown, just listen to "Crowns" at http://www.facebook.com/pages/ZHOPA-MIRA/111322515553415. Something incredible is happening.

- Kohler