Catching Up With... Over the Rhine

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When a band’s been around for 20 years, like the husband and wife duo Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, sometimes a little outside influence is needed to shake things up. For their 14th studio album, they enlisted the help of producer Joe Henry (Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Aimee Mann, Ani DiFranco) in Los Angeles, hoping to make a record “they couldn’t imagine in advance.” With a band of crack musicians assembled by Henry, including vocal contributions from Lucinda Williams, The Long Surrender was born. Detweiler and Bergquist talked to Paste from their Ohio farm.

Linford Detweiler

Paste: How’s the farm?
Detweiler: I walked down to the creek this afternoon and there were two-dozen bluebirds just flitting around like lines in a poem, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I walked along the creek for about 300 yards, and I came up out of the trees. And they were all there almost as if they were waiting for me, and they kind of escorted me along the edge of the field. It was just an unbelievable sort of sacred moment of some kind.

Paste: So moments like that, do they inspire you to go grab a pen and write in a journal.
Detweiler: I had to document the moment in a just a few paragraphs because it felt sacred. We don’t want to turn into generic treehuggers out here on our little piece of land. But on the other hand, there’s sort of a long tradition of certain American writers and artists being intimately connected to a specific geographical location. Maybe we have talked about it before, but when you think of Flannery O’Connor, Robert Frost, Georgia O’Keefe—there’s always a specific piece of earth that’s always associated with certain writers, and I think Karin and I have aspired to that sense of being rooted. That’s one of the main reasons that we’ve stayed here in Ohio. We do enjoy being outside of the city, although we couldn’t live without the energy of the city as well.

Paste: What inspired the decision to leave home and head to L.A. to record with Joe Henry?
Detweiler: Well, I guess it would begin with our desire and curiosity about making a record with Joe Henry. We’ve long admired his song-writing, and obviously began paying attention to his gifts as a producer. When we contacted Joe to see if he had ever heard of Over the Rhine’s music, he said, “Well, as a matter of fact, my mother and father have tickets to your show in Shelby, North Carolina.” And we thought, “Wow, if we can win Mom and Dad Henry over maybe this can actually happen.” It really was the week of a lifetime and we really enjoyed getting away from what was familiar and heading out there to make our first record on the West coast.

Paste: Did you bring musicians who had played with you before or did some of them kind of come through Joe, as well?
Detweiler: No, Joe carefully put this band together with some of his favorites. It almost feels like he has a band of brothers out there, musically. There’s a lot of love and respect among these players for each other and for Joe. We wanted to be surprised by this record. One of the reasons we wanted to work with Joe was we couldn’t quite imagine in advance what the record would sound like. So we headed out there with very few expectations and Joe recruited Jay Bellerose and David Piltch and Greg Leisz and Keefus Cianca and Patrick Warren. And Joe’s son Levon Henry also played on several songs. Joe brought in some soul singers, and Karin and I just sort of entered this new world and surrendered to it and it was truly the week of a lifetime.

Paste: Listening to “Infamous Love Song” I think if I had to try to imagine what your session with Joe Henry would sound like I think that’s about as close as I could have possibly come because it sounds like an Over the Rhine song and it sounds like a Joe Henry song and it sounds like both of you guys. Was that a song that took a different shape with Joe in the room than when you and Karin were playing it back in Ohio?
Detweiler: Well what you’re hearing there is the first and only take that we did of that song and that happened a lot on this record. Joe said there were seven or eight first takes on The Long Surrender . We were all a little bit amazed by that. Well Joe’s word for what happened was “Communion”, and it’s kind of a strong word but it felt like the songs just landed in front of our eyes and we would all just look around and think…we would all acknowledge the fact that it doesn’t always happen like this but we just rode the wave. Yeah, Joe was just a real kindred spirit. I would come back to that idea where it seems most of Joe’s energy goes into deciding who should be in the room based on the songs and then I think he backs away and provides this space for people to completely step into their shoes and just allow for something a little unexpected to happen.

Paste: You said you wanted a record that would surprise you and that you couldn’t imagine before hand. Is that what you got?

Detweiler: Absolutely. I still don’t know how to describe the record really in some ways. When I hear the first song come on and I hear what Joe Bellerose is doing with his kick drum, I don’t know how to find words for it. On the one hand Bellerose is a drummer, I suppose; on the other hand, it’s like he’s making weather. He’s not really just playing a drum kit; there’s something “other” happening. I was struck by how the record sounded three-dimensional when I put on the headphones. I think in the digital world that’s something that I sometimes miss about recordings in 2011—that sense of being surrounded by the music. I’ve been making records for 20 years now, and sometimes I’ve been involved as a recording engineer, and sometimes I produce records, but I’m surprised by The Long Surrender, and I can listen to it and still hear things I’ve never noticed before. So I love those weird little details that are tucked in that I am still discovering.

Paste: And after doing this for 20 years was that something that you felt you needed—to be surprised, to have your music affected from the outside, as well as just what you guys had been doing?
Detweiler: Absolutely. We certainly don’t want to make the same record over and over again. We’d like to believe that our best work might still be out there, yet to be discovered. So we want to be pushed out of our comfort zone as writers and just kind of get away from what’s familiar. It was, I think, a really, really good step for us.