[OTR Announce] All the Latest Over the Rhine News

[Announcement list for the band Over The Rhine]

Hello friends and extended musical family,

It’s been a beautiful summer so far. Hope you’re enjoying it.

I woke up at 7:15 and gave everything in the vegetable garden a drink. 
Karin watered all of her flowerbeds last night.

We’ve been eating cucumber salads and making pesto and last week we 
took two laundry baskets full of zucchini and crook neck squash to the 
orchestra rehearsals. (Karin felt that there was no better ice-breaker 
than a big green zucchini.) The players snatched them up and later in 
the week we heard all about zucchini brownies, zucchini on the grill, 
zucchini bread.

I had hoped that maybe a baritone sax player or a valve trombone player 
would slip a zucchini into the bell of their horn for a mute at some 
point, but I did not see that.

Karin and I have been talking about writing a collection of garden 
poems, somewhat erotic in nature, called, The Illicit Zucchini.

Not sure where we’re going with it, but I have made a mental note that 
zucchini rhymes nicely with bikini.

I remember wondering aloud after we had our first garden out here about 
whether the church had missed a sin. The pleasure of cupping ones hand 
around the smooth underbelly of a vine-ripened tomato is about as blood 
red sensual as it gets. Yep, they might have forgotten to forbid that 
one.

But actually we’ve gravitated mostly toward yellow tomatoes. They’re 


full of flavor, less acidic. I feel like I’m in the act of eating 
something golden, nectar filled, something the ancient Greeks would 
have passed around on a platter.

People ask us what we grow on the farm. Well, songs, of course, first 
and foremost. And Karin’s flowers. And a large vegetable and herb 
garden. We tame our once-neglected farm by cutting meandering paths 
just about everywhere. But we leave the edges wild with weeds: thistle, 
milkweed, dogbane, golden rod, inkberries, red clover, Virginia 
creeper. I scribbled this recently in a poem I was working on about my 
father:

Let the songbirds have thorny hidden places for their wild melodies.

Yes, the songbirds do seem to appreciate the untamed edges of the 
world. This morning Elroy and I startled about two dozen bobwhite quail 
on the back paths. They exploded into flight and then coasted low and 
away toward the edge of the farm. Sometimes an indigo bunting will 
leave a streak in the air so blue you can close your eyes and still see 
it for days.

And we love to watch the native saplings reclaim their rightful places: 
the red maple, black locust, black cherry, persimmon… the tupelo, ash, 
elm, cedar… hackberry, mulberry, silver maple, pin oak…

When the sun goes down, you might see me out walking after dark, 
feeling the coolness along the edges of the trees, the open air above 
our meadow full of clover.
0A
Slowly the land is revealing itself to us.

Yes.

**

Well, big thanks to all of you who came and found us in the hills high 
above the Ohio River last Saturday evening. I thought the orchestra 
sounded amazing, and it’s a thrill to play with an orchestra – a rare 
gift for a songwriter. It had rained on and off for much of the day and 
we had just about written off the whole thing at one point, but lo and 
behold the clouds parted just in time, the air cooled and a beautiful 
evening emerged. I was a little more nervous than usual, but I think it 
all came together beautifully. Thanks for being there. (If you think 
all the previous vegetable ramblings were risqué, try reading the 
lyrics to Afternoon Delight sometime, let alone singing it with a 
straight face. We’ll have to see if the recording turned out.)

Yes, it is still the 20th Anniversary of Over the Rhine, and we still 
do have a few 20th Anniversary aces up our sleeves.

So here goes:

The Trumpet Child Deluxe Songbook

I think probably more than any other question over the years, we have 
been repeatedly asked, When will there be sheet music available for 
Over the Rhine’s music?? Well after 20 years, we are finally taking you 
seriously. We now have our first OtR songbook!

We started with all the songs on The Trumpet Child, and by the time we 
added all the extras, we were hol
ding a 126 page book packed full of 
music and various surprises. Whether or not you intend to actually play 
the notes (which we carefully edited at our home piano here on the 
farm) we think you might like this keepsake of sorts, which documents 
profusely the most recent musical chapter of Over the Rhine. Yes, it’s 
got the piano music, guitar chords, lyrics, photos, a rambling essay by 
yours truly, playful performance notes and more. Pick up your copy now 
at OvertheRhine.com… and let us know what you think.

(Special thanks to Michael Wilson, Bill Ivester and The Brothers Wright 
for the many photographs. And  thanks to John, Casey and Andy at our 
publishing company for helping make it all happen!)

Live From Nowhere Volume Four

Wow. Number four in this series already?

Volume One focused mostly on the Drunkard’s Prayer tour featuring Devon 
Ashley on drums, Rick Plant on guitar and bass, Byron House on upright 
bass and Kim Taylor singing harmonies and playing acoustic guitar. (Now 
available digitally only.)

Volume Two saw the line-up of the band evolve to include Mickey Grimm 
on drums and percussion and Jake Bradley on upright bass and guitar, 
and this collection prominently features the playing of special guest 
and Cincinnati treasure, Paul Patterson. (A handful of unsigned CD’s 
still remain, because we realized we missed a box. Also available 
digitally.)

Volume Three was al
l about The Trumpet Child, but includes some 
performances from the Ani DiFranco tour, when we opened the shows as an 
acoustic trio. Hear producer Brad Jones, Mickey Grimm, Jake Bradley and 
Paul Patterson work their magic on the band’s most recent songs. Volume 
Three was recorded live and mixed from beginning to end by Juicy 
himself. (A limited number of CD’s still available.)

Which brings us to Volume Four, the current installment!

We had so much to choose from for Volume Four, but we realized, before 
the moment passed, that we really needed to dedicate this edition to 
the special reunion concert that took place with Ric Hordinski and 
Brian Kelley (and many talented friends) on Friday night, December 19, 
2008, at the Taft Theater. We turned up the amps and even Karin broke 
out her electric guitar as we revisited the recordings from the first 
decade of Over the Rhine.

What can I say? It was electric fun, a truly memorable evening in all 
the best ways, and we tried our best to bottle the experience for you. 
It took TWO CD’S, and a 20-page booklet, and a special package, but we 
got it done. Paul Mahern (producer of OHIO and Drunkard’s Prayer) 
helped us get Volume Four all put together and sounding good (before he 
flew off to work with T-Bone Burnett).

We’ll have the CD’s in 2-3 weeks, and they’ll ship as soon as they 
arrive. If you pre-order your=2
0copy now, you can download all the music 
immediately and dive in. Let us know what you think.

Here is the track listing:

Over the Rhine LIVE FROM NOWHERE Volume Four

    20th Anniversary Reunion Concert Decade One
               TWO CD’S – LIMITED EDITION

DISC ONE

1.  Eyes Wide Open
2.  How Does It Feel (To Be On My Mind)
3.  HDIF Reprise
4.  Within Without
5.  Like A Radio
6.  Conjectures Of A Guilty Bystander
7.  June
8.  Circle Of Quiet
9.  Daddy Untwisted

DISC TWO

1.  Paul And Virginia
2.  Poughkeepsie
3.  Faithfully Dangerous
4.  A Gospel Number
5.  All I Need Is Everything
6.  If I’m Drowning
7.  I Painted My Name
8.  Latter Days

Recorded Live, Friday, December 19, 2008
    at The Taft Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The exciting thing about Volume Four is that many of these songs 
evolved significantly in concert from the original recordings and were 
never before released. So it feels like Volume Four fills a significant 
gap in our musical journey thus far. (If you’re new to the band, maybe 
these recordings will make you curious about our first handful of 
records: Till We Have Faces, Patience, eve and Good Dog Bad Dog. If so, 
don’t be shy.)

Again, pre-order your copy now at OvertheRhine.com, and you can 
download the music on both discs immediately. Hope you like!

And finally, we have quite a f
ew concert dates in the coming weeks and 
months: Albuquerque, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, 
St. Louis, Bloomington, IN, Louisville, Lexington, Milwaukee, Madison, 
Minneapolis, SLC, The West Coast etc etc. (Please check out 
OvertheRhine.com for details and tickets.)

Finally, we wanted to especially make you aware of one of our hometown 
faves:

Friday, September 11, 2009: An evening with Over the Rhine at Coney 
Island Moonlite Gardens in Cincinnati, Ohio. Join us by the Ohio River 
in this beautiful, historic venue and bring the family. Hope to see you 
under the stars.

Well, that’s about all the news I can fit into the usual four pages.

Twenty years folks. We thank you.

Whaddya say we do something good in the next twenty? We’ve got some 
ideas.

Love from Nowhere,

Linford and Karin

PS Pls pass this letter around to the usual suspects. Print it out, 
climb a tulip tree and wave it at passing cars. Tweet key phrases. 
Scribble excerpts in the margins of your biology textbook. Cross-stitch 
a paragraph on a porch swing pillow. Tattoo a phrase or two on a 
smooth-skinned limb. And my personal favorite: line the birdcage with 
multiple copies and let the white doves crap all night long.