Happy Birthday, me!

Yes, yes. 31. I can hardly believe. I am not just 30....I am in my thirties. Ouch! It hurts to even say it! I am going to Forever 21 to spend my gift cards in protest! Forever 21! ;) Just kidding. I am glad I am not 21....I am 31. 10 years wiser, 10 years happier!! (but I will still buy clothes at forever21!!)

Anyway. Have you heard enough from me about Over the Rhine lately? I know. I told you, it comes in waves. I will LOVE love (love) them for a while. And then I will put their music aside for a while. Waves. Well, I am about to make some OtR blend and listen to their xmas album some more ( and read my new bible Todd got me, and maybe write in my new journals from sis). It is just too good to put away for another year. So I'm not! And by the way, in the 3 disc changer are: Snow Angels, OtR; Live from Nowhere, Volume One, OtR; and I Don't Think There's No Need To Bring Nothin, by Linford (of OtR). And they have a new new one coming out in Feb. It will be a compilation of 15 years of music. Here's a description in their own very beautiful words from the OtR myspace:

DISCOUNT FIREWORKS: A COLLECTION The music of Over the Rhine has survived for 15 years. Maybe it’s time for a little mile-marker. For years our fans have told us how much they like to go through our recordings and pick and choose and put their own collections together to introduce friends to the songs. Maybe it’s our turn to put together a little collection. Not a “Best Of” or anything definitive, but a good taste. A birthday cake baked from fifteen years of musical chicken scratch. The longer we’ve toured and recorded, the deeper we’ve been able to feel what an honor and privilege it is to be an American band, to have these songs occasionally rub shoulders with the songs of our musical heroes. Early on in our career, we got to open a handful of shows for Bob Dylan. He was in a fairly dark period of his life, but still, there he was in the dinner line with us backstage in Madison, Wisconsin, spooning food onto his plate as if we were all at a church carry-in dinner. We’re fans first and are always thrilled when artists like Leo Kottke, or Jane Siberry, or Buddy and Julie Miller, or Ron Sexsmith, or Amy Rigby come to Cincinnati to join us in front of our hometown crowd. This is Ohio after all. We’re a little off the beaten path. But what a connecting force music is. Inevitably we gather the musicians on stage and sing a few songs together at the end of the night, and it’s obvious that a few thousand people wander out into the dark feeling something really good that’s hard to put into words. American music is one of the few deeply communal enterprises left in this country. The first time we performed in Italy we were dumbstruck by the beauty of Tuscany, those little tucked away towns. I scribbled this line: Italy is a leather bound book. We walk on marbled endpapers beneath the glass blown night. Should we drop everything and move here? What artist doesn’t wonder? But no, Italy could never have given the world Johnny Cash. It’s the great contradictions of America that interest us, the wealth and poverty, the generosity and greed, the naivety and brutality, the optimism and superstition. So much music in the world that could only have happened in America! Our jazz and blues musicians, our songwriters, black gospel, bluegrass and soul – American music – this is some of the best, most enduring stuff we’ve given the world as a nation, period. Who knows anything about the future of the recording industry? I would argue that after 15 years in the trenches on and off labels, 15 years of hanging out with people who bought tickets to our shows, bought the CD’s and taped or burned copies to pass out to their friends, and then came back next time we came to town with new people who seemed to know every word to every song, and then e-mailed us to tell us they fell in love to this music, or walked down the aisle to it, or danced their first dance to it, or conceived to it, or took it to the hospital and gave birth to it, or underwent cancer treatments to it, or took it to Iraq so they could have some connection to home during a war they couldn’t believe they’d somehow signed up for, or yes, some even buried their loved ones to this music – I would argue that I know as much or as little as anyone. A good song that matters to somebody will always matter. So back to these songs, back to the basics… They were the songs that we needed to write at the time. If we hadn’t written them, they wouldn’t exist. If you inspire someone, it doesn’t matter if you’re John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, or a married couple from Southern Ohio: the world got bigger, the lungs hold more air. Everyone who has truly lived has their great adventure: this music has an awful lot to do with ours so far. Happy listening, Linford Detweiler for Over the Rhine October, 2006