Over the Rhine Tour Diary
Linford Detweiler
Day One: November 29, 2000
I climb out of my bus bunk and open the door to the front lounge. The view from any number of moving windows consists of patches of mottled snow on the ground, brown windblown grasses--violent brushstrokes that were finally frozen in place. The fields are interrupted by evergreen trees, as well as clusters of bare, dark, damp, leafless trees huddled together as if trying to keep each other company. Oh, and here is a motionless river full of black water and stones. I open the curtain and peek out the front window of the bus and glimpse a sign: Wisconsin Dells 29.
The bus is waking up slowly and is mostly quiet. Smells of coffee. The driver's CB chatters in a slow southern accent and somehow I overhear this snippet: "These people that talk about getting all the trucks off the highway never stop to think about the fact that practically everything they own came from somewhere on a truck."
There is also the sound of country music faintly drifting back from the driver's seat. He's got a southern accent of his own, and an artificial limb below his left knee, but he's smooth behind the wheel, and on a bus, that's pretty much priority number one. He called me from the road last night about 30 minutes from Cincinnati in high spirits, said he was on his way to pick us up. He said he didn't know whose elbow we greased, but he's got the "Cadillac of Prevosts", one of the new ones, and, What kinda music do y'all play?
I never know how to answer that question.
He tells me that it's his third tour and, We're gonna have a good time, and when my end of the phone goes suddenly quiet, he says, I'm just kiddin' ya.
Later, Jack takes a long look at the driver walking, nods and says, I guess he'll brake with his right foot.
The last time we were out with the Junkies was the first time I ever feared for my life on a bus. So it's a relief to wake up this morning having slept well, knowing that we've got a veteran behind the wheel. And now when he finds a Journey song on his cockpit radio, the last thing I want to hear in the morning, I don't mind a bit. I just head for the back lounge and carry on writing.
Monday we borrowed one of the back rooms of St. Elizabeth's Cathedral six blocks from where we live, and set up our instruments, and that evening our rhythm section for this run, Dale Baker on drums (from Sixpence None the Richer) and Chris Donohue on upright and electric basses, arrived. We eased into our song list starting with a new song that Karin had written that I'm nuts about called "Anything At All", a slow burn of a song that immediately makes me feel sad and glad all over together for no particular reason that I can put into words, and a few measures in, I know it's going to be a rewarding month playing together with these musicians. It has been a luxury to be able to perform with an extended family of gifted players over the last few years. Each player has a unique musical world view: there's something to be learned from all of them.
Then Terri Templeton joined us Tuesday morning (yesterday) and we meandered through some more tunes with her. I always find it somehow extraordinary to hear her sing with Karin. Terri had just flown back from her first trip to Italy to join us. She said that she had arrived (in Italy) after dark with her companion and they had driven for a spell on winding night roads to a small hotel in the hills--she didn't think much about it. When she awoke the next morning, she opened the shutters in her room, looked out, and started weeping. She had never seen anything so beautiful in all of her life. She had to keep telling herself that people actually lived there everyday, worked, slept, ate, loved...
I told her it must be nothing short of shocking to go from Venice to Norwood, Ohio, in roughly 24 hours.
We rehearsed until about 5pm. We haven't even played through everything with everybody, and it's time to pack our suitcases, but it's a vibe thing: if the vibe is wrong, you can rehearse until the cows come home, and it will still be wrong. If the vibe is happening, all will be well.
Spinner and Farns arrive from Canada, two of the crew members that we got to know on the road with Cowboy Junkies. They break down the gear and pack everything up in no time flat. Spinner will road manage and be our front of house engineer, Farns will guitar tech and be general audio renaissance man.
Hazel Henderson has been touring with the band for most of the last few years, looking after our merchandise, but she is great with child and has to stay close to home this Christmas lest there come a decree from Caesar Augustus. Earlier, Karin and I were contemplating who should take her place on this tour. We were driving together to Indiana at the time, and we thought aloud, If we could choose anyone in the whole world to travel with us and peddle our wares, who would it be? We thought of Dave Nixon, a writer, a friend, a neighbor, (and the man who incidentally had presided at our wedding). Well it was a long shot to say the least, but Karin grabbed the cell phone before we could compose ourselves, and Dave, after pondering it for a few days, accepted the offer. Nothing like getting your first choice.
So there are six of us in the band, a crew of three, a driver, a bus, a suitcase full of songs, notebooks half full of dreams... We close our eyes and write what we see. We compose another page or two of the story we're writing with our lives. We hope that we can find the grace to make it a good story.
The bus pulls away at 10:30pm into the thick of the night. It's a fourteen hour haul to Minneapolis. We're probably going to get into some snow. I curl up in my bunk with a Wendell Berry novel, The Memory of Old Jack. Am I what is known in the parlance of the locals as, "a happy man"? I think maybe I am.
We arrive at the venue early afternoon. Minneapolis is grey and cold. Jack and Terri and Karin and Chris and I slip off to a wonderful little vegetarian café for some late lunch. The people at the restaurant ask if we are in a band and refer to us as "bohemian kids".
We soundcheck and the music is still brand new and slippery, but it feels so good, and I feel lucky again. We're pulling some older tunes out of the hat that we haven't played in a good while, as well as trying some things from the new record, and I like the way the songs take me across the varied terrain of my own life, spanning at least ten years of writing and hoping and wondering.
I don't know why or how, but the show is the most fun I've had playing in a long, long time. The Fine Line is full, upstairs and downstairs, and the audience very appreciative. There is something electric in the air when we play cities where we haven't had a chance to play in a good while. Farns and Spinner say there is also something about the first night of a tour. Maybe the band hasn't had a chance to really settle in to a groove, and there is the sense of jumping from a high place, hoping for a net to appear.
After the set, before the encores, the band wonders off the stage into a staircase, and a well dressed man with a drink in both hands follows us wanting to talk, saying he's from Warner Brothers Records. My first response is to say, You're either drunk or have really bad manners, but I bite my tongue and ignore him and we head back out for a few more songs. There is something about the moment when a band first walks off stage that is a little sacred to me, and to have someone interrupt that moment right after the set before the encore is like having the phone ring loudly while you're tangled up and lost with your favorite girl.
Needless to say, when we start playing again, we forget all about the slick suit and tie with the tanned man leering inside saying he's from Warner Brothers, and we get lost again.
But right after the encores, here he comes again following us downstairs. Nobody knows him from Adam. I stop at the dressing room door and say, If you want to come backstage you're going to need to go get a pass from our road manager. He says, But I'm from Warner Brothers, and before I can stop myself out it comes.
Fuck Warner Brothers.
He backs off and we close the door.
Well when the story gets back to the crew (they're from Canada), Spinner pays me the highest compliment that can be paid by a Canadian: he tells me there is an opening for defense on the third line of his hockey team and would I be interested?
There is a swank cigar bar next door to the Fine Line with a tall boy spining old vinyl jazz records just inside the front door, and it's a vibey place but it's a bit full so Jack and I buy our cigars and head back to the bar at the Fineline and the bartender pours us a couple (full) glasses of Jack's favorite single malt Scotch (Lagavulin), on the house. We light up and lean back and prepare to enjoy the good life when suddenly here comes a girl with horn-rimmed glasses and a leopard skin collar straight up to Jack and, Wow, she goes to work on him. I think she's charming in a playful, somewhat sleazy, rock and roll sort of way, but Jack tells me afterward that I thought that because I was the observer, and not the star of the show, the main attraction. This girl is the queen of the double entendre, and Jack is fending off her advances deftly but politely. In a last attempt she asks if he won't at least play chess with her, and says something about him being her king.
No go.
She finally gives up, walks down to the other end of the bar where Karin and Terri are suavely sipping their martinis and promptly starts all over again, with Terri. When the horn-rimmed glasses find out that the band is from Cincinnati, she says, Oh, that's where I had my last nervous breakdown.
Dale Baker takes his first sip of Lagavulin, but we find out he's never smoked a cigar. So I'm going to buy him his first cigar on this tour, and I know just the one: an Arturo Fuente Hemingway Short Story. Great first cigar.
If it means anything, I could sum up this lineup in one sentence: Sleep Baby Jane has NEVER sounded so good.
. . .