Over The Rhine

Friday, November 9, 2012 • Doors 7pm • Show 8pm • $22.50 Advance • $25 Day of Show • All Ages

w/ Joel Henderson

**this is a fully seated show, all seats are general admission

The Long Surrender, the new studio album from the southern Ohio-based husband-and-wife team of multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Linford Detweiler and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Karin Bergquist, otherwise known as Over the Rhine, is something rare and wondrous — an intimate epic. Shot through with the joys and sorrows of modern-day existence and the unchanging fundaments of the human condition, the album has the feel of a living thing, senses alert, feet planted firmly on terra firma.

The album title “speaks to our ongoing desire to let go of certain expectations (and much of what we are so convinced we know for sure) in favor of remaining open and curious,” Karin explains. “It seems like many of our friends are currently wrestling with various forms of ‘letting go,’ so hopefully, the ideas conjured by the title feel somewhat universal. And I think the title speaks to the arc of a lifelong commitment to writing and performing regardless of recognition. Learning when to work hard and when to let go. Learning to leave room for grace to billow our sails occasionally. Learning not to white-knuckle everything.”

“The long surrender” is a phrase that turns up in a poem by B.H. Fairchild called “Rave On,” which became the jumping off point for Karin’s smoldering song of the same title. “It wasn’t so much an adaptation of the poem, more of a flirtation,” Linford explains. The poem references Buddy Holly’s iconic “Rave On,” and so does her lyric: “Blastin’ Buddy on the radio/The Baptist wheat fields rolling low/Rock on/Rave on.” Karin also found a Bukowski poem called “Bluebird,” which in turn led to “There’s a Bluebird in My Heart.” Linford concludes, “She’s feeling some common ground between what she wants her songs to do and what a good poem can still do to her.”

And what songs these are, teasing at first, but revealing more and more with each listening, seemingly without end. Karin provides the back story for the album-opening, zeitgeist-capturing “The Laugh of Recognition”: “We’ve had friends who lost everything (their entire life’s work and savings) in the latest crash — friends who worked so hard and thought they had built something that would last. So this became a song that speaks to making a new start, retaining dignity in the face of uncertainty.”

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