Over The Rhine: Infamous Love Songs

BCT & Bloomington Roots present a special Valentine concert: Over the Rhine ~ INFAMOUS LOVE SONGS

"Some years ago, when Johnny Cash’s career was undergoing a resurgence during his creative collaborations with producer, Rick Rubin, someone made an attempt to organize Johnny’s songs into three categories: God, Love and Death. It occurred to me then that maybe those are the only three subjects available to the writer. I have tried to write about all three.

And yet, one night over a late night beverage, by way of confession, I admitted to a colleague (a fellow songwriter) that I was embarrassed by the possibility that every song I had ever written was essentially a love song.

Without missing a beat he responded, Well, maybe, but you don’t just write about falling in love: you write about what happens further down the road.

I was relieved and grateful to receive that perspective, because ladies and gentlemen, we are indeed further down the road. Karin and I have been writing, and making records together as Over the Rhine for 35 years. We’ve been married for 29 of those. Long live musical couples. Johnny and June might be our patron saints, but they are not the only ones. A significant swath of our favorite music over the years has been made by that rare and endangered breed of exotic zoo animal: the musical couple. (The list includes Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Buddy and Julie Miller, Richard and Linda Thompson, The Innocence Mission and others.) But back to further down the road… Poet Christina Rosetti famously wrote the lines: Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end.

Few things in life get easier as the years pass. But from this vantage point, after 35 years of climbing, we can see the broader view. We can see the two songwriters who were stoned on love and words and possibility. We can see the couple who almost called it a day, and yet found their way into — and with — each other. We learned that we tend two separate gardens: the garden of our career in music, and the garden of our life together well apart from the noise of the music industry.

We know well the thrill of opening shows for Bob Dylan or Lucinda Williams, getting to play at Newport Folk Festival, or in Japan, or New Zealand. And checking those things off our dream list was indeed a thrill. Seeing the world on the backs of the songs. Watching a community coalesce around our music that crossed borders and boundaries.

And now it is also the deeper abiding joy of quietly walking two Irish Wolfhounds in the cool of the evening. At home. Being together. The fact that we can still make each other laugh. Sharing a story that’s still being written. We live together on a small farm, grow songs, host concerts in the restored barn, and curate and host Nowhere Else Festival — our very own music and arts festival, the festival that we were always looking for but never quite found until we built it ourselves. Both/and.

We have written a lifetime of love songs in all shapes and sizes. We were curious as to what an evening devoted entirely to the possibilities of love songs might feel like. And so, come Valentine’s Day, we’re going to go find a few favorite stages, and find out. We hope you’ll join us."

Linford Detweiler (w/Karin Bergquist close by)
September 2025, Martinsville, Ohio