Over The Rhine Lifelong Fling WRITER: Kristi York Wooten PHOTOS: Michael Wilson
L
inford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist, otherwise known as Over The Rhine, are a pair of kindred souls and starcrossed musicians who’ve been churning out poetic, multi-genre song cycles for almost two decades. Famously sincere, the married duo has earned a reputation as peerless songcrafters, drawing comparisons to seminal husbandand-wife teams such as Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Their latest album, The Trumpet Child, revisits mid-century melodymaking with 11 songs set to the warm glow of piano, strings, and horns, each with varying emotional temperaments. Since 1991 and despite record sales into the hundreds of thousands, Over The Rhine has continually eschewed the bright lights of New York and LA for a life in Ohio that includes three beloved dogs, fields of goldenrod, and the occasional jaunt around the world, performing material from their dozen-plus albums for leagues of devoted fans in cities as disparate as Paris, France, and Greenville, South Carolina. Ensconced in their 180-year-old farmhouse outside Cincinnati, Detweiler and Bergquist kick back to reflect upon their marriage, their music, and their careers—and what keeps it all together. Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine.
NOV/DEC 2007 - Feature 39