Over the Rhine Tour Diary
Linford Detweiler
Day Two: November 30, 2000
We wake up in Dubuque, Iowa. In the words of Jack, never has such a big bus met such a small stage. There is a river with a drab looking casino boat shivering in the distance, railroad tracks, old brick buildings--some in disrepair. John Finn, the owner of the Irish Pub where we're going to perform this evening saw us open for the Cowboy Junkies and had asked us to come play in his family run establishment, and I knew intuitively that we needed to go discover what would happen if we did.
The show has been sold out for weeks (only 90 tickets were made available) but it's being broadcast on the local radio station, and webcast around the world. (It's Over the Rhine's first webcast, and we're doing three on this tour.)
I spend the afternoon getting caught up on correspondence in the hotel, and then wander down to the pub and open the door. Immediately, I know that peculiar, utterly peaceful feeling of coming in out of the cold to a clean warm place full of music, ale, stories, tenderness, history, camaraderie.
Karin meets John Finn's father Jack, and can't help but notice the striking resemblance to her own late father, Rainer Bergquist. Jack Finn is a substantial man in his mid-sixties, with thick dark hair, not a gray hair on his head to be found. When I put my hand on his shoulder, I have the sensation of putting my hand on something more solid and enduring than rock, but very human at the same time.
He is reciting Irish poetry to Karin, a 1600 year-old poem about a monk and his cat, and she is smitten.
The crew has squeezed the band comfortably onto a makeshift stage at the far end of the room and we soundcheck. I don't know what's going on, but this music has a very, very strong heartbeat right now.
John bundles us off to a family-style Italian restaurant and tells us to ask for Lydia. Lydia is the daughter of Mario, the Italian brother who had travelled to Dubuque from New York City for a week, and stayed 25 years. The food begins coming, Sicilian salads, and stuffed shells, and salmon--everything is homemade, and Lydia selects us a bottle of Italian red from the cellar and, Yes, this is what is known in the parlance of the locals as, "the good life". Karin and Terri and I meet Mario after dinner and he says in his Brooklyn/Italian accent, Dubuque is like a sweet apple that you put in your mouth: you begin chewing and it grows on you slowly. But what we're all noticing and talking about is his hands. They are huge. His handshake is massive. We keep shaking hands with him and he tells me I'm the luckiest man alive to be able to travel with these two women.
We head back to the bus, and soon it's time to play and the crowd is absolutely packed into The Busted Lift, every conceivable nook and cranny filled to overflowing with people old and young. Karin goes on record saying it's her favorite venue in 10 years and the music starts and this crowd is drinking in every nuance but they are lusty and loud and intent on the songs, prone to yelling encouragement when something good begins to happen. I cannot tell you how beautiful all the ruckus was. The audience was like an eager young lover with time on her hands.
Karin calls Jack Finn up on stage to recite a poem. And again, I have the sensation as he is speaking that he is weightier than granite, a man of substance and time-worn elegance. He speaks his lines beautifully in a rich edgy baritone. The crowd (everyone knows him), erupts in approval. Jack had confided in Karin that when he recently underwent surgery, he had sort of held on to the song Poughkeepsie--had it in his headphones at the hospital. She eases into Poughkeepsie when he's finished speaking and everybody's stories are starting to comingle and tangle up until we'll never succeed in separating them all it seems.
After the show, the ales and liquers started flowing freely of course, and Jack Finn and Karin talk more and he explains where the name Finn came from and gives her a necklace from Ireland with an engraved silver salmon. I wonder off to the back lounge of the bus with an artist named Tom and his wife, Olivia. Olivia posed for him, they fell in love, got married and now have a two-year old daughter. It's easy to see how this would have happened. I had met Tom a few times briefly, but this was the first time I really got to sit down and take a look at his work. Karin and I hope to have him down to the Grey Ghost to paint a mural for us sometime. And Tom would like to collaborate with me on a book project. He has a letter press printing press set up in his basement. I think to myself: it's going to be hard to write something that can live up to these images. I could look at his drawings and get lost for hours.
We wonder back inside, and John selects me a Cuban cigar from his private stash. I think as I write this of the stories I've heard of young Cuban women rolling the cigars years ago, sitting at desks in rooms set up much like class rooms with someone reading to them aloud at the front of the room on a small stage. Ceiling fans might be turning the slow motion air imperceptibly, but it would inevitably be very hot, and some perspiring girls would hoist their skirts above their knees and seal the cigars by rolling them against the insides of their thighs. But at the time I have no time for reflection, I light up and people are gathering around and everyone has a story to tell, and these people are a cast of infinite characters, delivering their lives in the final act of the evening. One man grabs Dale and he knows everything there is to know about lightbulbs. He's collected them all his life and has them stored all over town. Right now he's really into fluorescents.
The bus rolls into the night and it all feels like a dream.
. . .