With their Simon and Garfunkel-style harmonies and Chet Atkins-inspired guitar picking, Los Angeles-based folk duo The Milk Carton Kids proved the ideal opener for Over the Rhine. Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan have both pursued solo careers in the past but have just recently started their musical collaboration, and their brief, yet focused, calm and emotional set at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music hinted at the fruits of this burgeoning partnership. The duo released two records in 2011, Prologue and Retrospect. The song “Michigan,” a highlight of both the band’s live set and Prologue, features the kind of clean, gentle delivery style and deceptively simple, yet intriguingly ambiguous, lyrics that characterize the band’s catalog. The chorus’ principal lines, “Michigan’s in the rear view now/ Keep your hands where I can see them/ You took the words right out of my mouth/ When you knew that I would need them/ What am I supposed to do now without you?,” invoke simultaneous feelings of longing, exasperation and desperation.
Pattengale and Ryan’s sardonic, deadpan between-song banter served as a counterpoint to the emotionally naked songs. The pair mocked folk music as a genre, saying that they would be returning to the Chicago area in February to play a two-hour headlining show, so everyone should “bring their dancing shoes.” They spoke in a self-deprecating manner about their own business model, pointing out that audience members could purchase their CDs in the lobby after the show or could download the exact same albums for free from their website.
If the still-upstart Milk Carton Kids proved a pleasant surprise for most of the Old Town School’s sold out audience, Over the Rhine was a more familiar affair. Having performed together for almost 20 years, Cincinnati-based husband-and-wife duo Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist have nothing to prove, but nevertheless delivered a 90 minute set full of legitimate affection for their music and their appreciative fans. Detweiler and Bergquist were joined by multi-instrumentalists Nicholas Radina (percussion, guitar, bass) and Jason Goforth (lap steel, harmonica). Goforth’s harmonica was frequently run through an effects unit, contributing a trippy, atmospheric layer to the band’s otherwise mostly pure, acoustic texture. Detweiler proved himself, as always, an accomplished pianist, with influences from blues, jazz, and classical creeping into his virtuosic, yet sensitive, playing. Bergquist’s voice stole the show, though. After 20 years on the road, her instrument remains spiritual, sly and sexy.
With a musical output as broad and varied as Over the Rhine’s, designing a representative set is a challenge. The band dealt with this dilemma by focusing on songs from their more recent albums, only one tune dating from before 2005, and by taking a seasonal approach, performing a number of original Christmas songs and several tunes prominently featuring winter imagery. The holiday numbers transcended the usual tropes of peace and goodwill, though, as several tackled darker topics. It was no surprise when Bergquist announced that the title of the band’s next holiday album will be Blood Oranges in the Snow.
The highlight of the show came at the end of the encore when Over the Rhine was joined by Pattengale and Ryan of The Milk Carton Kids to perform an all-acoustic rendition of the Hank Williams classic “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You).” The collective stepped away from the microphones, letting the natural reverberations of their acoustic instruments and voices ring off the back of the sonically superb auditorium. This final song had a distinct realness, a human quality that summed up a night of sincere, decidedly un-ironic music.
Indeed, in an era full of post-everything and self-referential snark, there’s something simultaneously comforting and maddening about Over the Rhine’s old-fashioned qualities. While the band touched on a number of moods during their set, from the jaunty playfulness of “I’m On a Roll,” to the Delta Blues-inflected spirit of “The King Knows How,” to the desperate humility of “Drunkard’s Prayer,” their demeanor was one of pious restraint. Detweiler’s piano and Bergquist’s voice sound like they’re constantly on the brink of overflowing with emotion, yet they stop themselves before they get carried away. The duo’s lyrics are poetic enough, with plenty of spiritual themes and imagery from the natural world, but they’re often predictably unambiguous. When I hear the chorus of “Snow Angel,” “Snow angel, snow angel/ Someday I’m gonna fly/ This cold and broken heart of mine/ Will one day wave goodbye,” the extracted response is either emotional warmth or boredom, depending upon the mood.
To be sure, anyone arriving at the Old Town School of Folk Music hoping to rock out was at the wrong show. But, with the temperature dropping steadily in Chicago, my Christmas gifts yet to be purchased and plenty of holiday-season stresses haunting my cold head, I willingly embraced Over the Rhine’s brand of unobtrusive folk like a cup of warm hot chocolate on a frosty night. As holiday shows go, it was about as fun as could be expected.
