Interview with Linford by Angela Pancella, Feb. 2000

AP:Are you there Linford?

LD:I am here. I am on the twentieth floor of Iowa's great city, Des Moines. Looking out my hotel window.

AP:The twentieth floor of the city in general, or the twentieth floor of a specific building?

LD:The Marriott Hotel. I wish it was more exciting, but...I can see as much of Iowa as there is to see, I think, from here.

AP: (Much background info, band name, band members, etc.) You are part of the Cowboy Junkies' lineup that is coming to St. Louis, is that correct?

LD: That's right. We have been referred to as honorary members for about the last two years. Playing in two bands, crazy.

AP: How did you secure this position?

LD: Well, Mike Timmons, who is one of the main songwriters of the group, heard a record we made a few years back called "Good Dog Bad Dog"-it was an independent record-and he invited us to come out and tour with them for about four months in late 1998. So we did that, we toured most of North America with a six-piece version of OtR opening their shows, and then Karin and I would sit in with them and occasionally our guitar player Jack and backup vocalist Terri would sit in as well. When we finished that tour, they just sorta kept calling us, saying "Hey, would you want to come out again?" We were having such a good time, it was hard to say no. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep doing it, but it's been a really great couple of years playing their music.

AP: Yeah, 'cause you're gearing up to start up the OtR machinery again, with a new release?

LD: Yeah. That same record, GDBD, was recently rereleased by a brand new division of Virgin Records. So it's available for the first time aboveground. We've made it available for the last few years sort of quietly to our friends around the world and all that. But, it's officially in record stores, so, what do you know.

AP: (long monologue about how I discovered/fell in love with GDBD) I have been conversing with other fans and discovering this has happened to more than a few. It's a really lovely record.

LD: Oh, thank you. What sort of fans would these be, and where are they-where did you find them?

AP: Internet mailing lists!

LD: Oh, okay.

AP: There are about, what, six thousand of them out there?

LD: I guess so, yeah.

AP: Some extraordinary number. I put out the word that I was going to be interviewing you here on KDHX, St. Louis community radio [-obligatory call letters aside there] and my mailbox flooded with emails of people eager to tell me every facet of information they thought would be particularly helpful, so…

LD: Wow! So can they actually access this interview on the Internet?

AP: I believe so, we do have a website-www.kdhx.org-but I will also put up a transcript or something or make a tape available.

LD: I better say some interesting things then!

AP: Well, there are people out there who do want to know how things are going with you guys now that you are back into the major label thing-I know you were associated with IRS Records for awhile, then indie, and now you're back into the swing of-at least Back Porch at Virgin; I don't know if that has the feel of a major label to you or not.

LD: I think it feels a little more gentle all around in its approach; they really tried to woo us in a way that would make us feel like we could continue doing what we do. We got cold feet a little bit with the IRS thing because we had made a couple of independent records and we ended up signing the rights of those over to this record label. You know, the music industry is constantly changing, and IRS as a label was going through a lot of changes and ended up absorbed into EMI and shut down. Our records were kind of in limbo. We were a little discouraged by the whole thing. It wasn't without its good points, but we went back home and made a fresh start. GDBD was our first collection of recordings after we left IRS. So much good has happened from those songs. The whole thing just felt a whole lot more honest and close to home again for a while. I don't know; Karin and I talked about it and we're pretty excited to spread the music around a little bit more. So far it's been great. Since we've signed, EMI was merged with Warner Brothers-(laughs) just stuff happening all the time, and who knows where it'll all go.

AP: But you were careful with your recording rights this time out, and made sure they'd always revert back to you, right?

LD: Yeah, pretty much. They sent somebody out to meet with us that had basically put out Van Morrison's last record, had put out a bunch of the more recent-in the last decade or so-John Lee Hooker records, had worked with Pops Staples. He just kept mentioning one hero after another. All these people had had a good effect on Karin and I. They all had strong visions and weren't necessarily squeezed into some MTV mold or anything. It just felt kind of right. We slowly but surely decided to give it a shot. I think some good things have already started to come of it.

AP: We've got GDBD rereleased in a slightly different format, with some songs off and a new song on, "It's Never Quite What It Seems." Did you decide the other songs didn't fit thematically?

LD: That's a good question. The guys at Virgin just said "Hey, is there anything you'd like to do to make the record feel fresh for you?" That was basically all they said. They didn't make any suggestions or anything, they just left it up to us. We decided to repackage it: I collect beautiful old photographs, and I love all kinds of imagery like that, so we pulled out a couple of our favorites and dressed it up in a new set of clothes. Karin always felt-there was a song on there, a bouncy gospelly kind of tune-she felt that was an odd girl out on the record. I had, in the space of about 20 minutes, improvised a spoken word thing that we put on the record. It had become a crowd favorite (laughs) live, that was a song called "Jack's Valentine," a quick tip of the hat to Jack Kerouac. Both songs were a bit of a stretch for the record. We like them both, but we decided to pull those off and put on another song we had written right about the same time we'd written the heart of the record, and that was "It's Never Quite What It Seems." So we stuck that one on there…Our thinking was also that the people who had been so generous and supporting the first version of that record, we wanted them to feel that they had a first edition of the record. By changing it slightly, hopefully it makes the original a little more special.

AP: Aah, I see, it all comes back to marketing, hm?

LD: (Laughs) Something like that.

AP: Always different incarnations of OtR out there, always comes down to you and Karin, but you have a new drummer now, right?

LD: Yeah, we've been playing with a wonderful drummer from LA, one of our heroes, again. He was the drummer in a band called Lone Justice, one of our all-time favorites-big, big fans of that band. And so Don's been playing with us, and that's been a real honor. And Jeff Bird from the Cowboy Junkies has been going out with us for several months. He's just a phenomenal player. He plays just about everything. With OtR he's played harmonica and mandolin, which he's sort of known for with the Junkies. But he also has played upright bass with us…When he stays with Karin and I in Cincinnati, he'll be up in our attic on the piano playing Bach preludes. He just plays so many instruments so well, it's a little bit mindboggling. It's been great for Karin and I the last couple of years to just pick people who inspire us as players and as people, to just welcome them in to the family, hand them these songs and let them work their magic. It's been fun for us to play with the lineup. I've enjoyed that a lot.

AP: Other people who've gone through, like Ric Hordinski, how's he been doing these days?

LD: Yeah, he started his own group, I think that was always his dream-it's pronounced "Rich" Hordinski, incidentally, "c" as in "cello" (laughs)-I came up with that little explanation for him.

AP: That's what I get for getting all my information off the Internet.

LD: (laughs) okay. Yeah, he started his own band. Frankly, I think it took Ric six or seven years to figure out that's what he always wanted to do was front his own group. I mean, more power to him; Rich is a really special player I think and he's probably a lot happier pursuing his own muse.

AP: Well, this would hardly be an Over the Rhine interview if I didn't ask you what you were reading lately.

LD: Aah. I-gosh, what have I been reading lately? I've been reading this author named Frederick Beuckner who a lot of people have never heard of. He wrote a book, a novel that was nominated for a Pulitzer named "Godric", sort of a historical novel. He's I guess on some level a Presbyterian minister, although he's basically been an author most of his life.

AP: So kind of a Batman persona-Presbyterian minister by day, author by night.

LD: There you go (laughs). He's one of those people who asks a lot of the big questions. My father was a minister and I've been trying to make sense of the tangled ball of string I inherited in terms of trying to make sense of spirituality and all that stuff. Music is one platform I've used to try to figure out what I believe is true. I tend to be drawn to the authors who ask the big questions, people like Annie Dillard…Somebody-my sister was trying to turn me on to Anne Lamott, so we're going to pick up Bird by Bird and Travelling Mercies and check those out in the next couple of weeks. Karin and I are playing a writer's conference in late March. Anne Lamott's gonna be there, and Maya Angelou's gonna be there, and Jewish writer named Chaim Potok, who wrote a book called "My Name is Asher Lev"-great book. We're really excited about this conference, or festival actually it's called, it's up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We'll be doing a concert as part of the conference or whatever.

AP: (gushing talk about Anne Lamott) She just told the funniest stories…

LD: Yeah, she is awfully funny. My sister Grace was reading me some stuff. Yeah, I've heard her name a lot in the last couple of months, so it's time to check her out.

AP: We look forward to seeing you here as part of the Cowboy Junkies February 12. Are there any plans to come to St. Louis as Over the Rhine?

LD: It's funny you should ask, we do come to St. Louis occasionally and Karin and I that Saturday we're actually playing an in-store in St. Louis at Vintage Vinyl at 2:30 in the afternoon. That's a chance to see us play in an intimate setting. We've been having a lot of fun doing these in-stores actually. It takes the songs back to their original points of departure, just the two of us in our living room or whatever. It's fun and mildly embarrassing to put them back into their original shape, real naked.

AP: (some gushing about Vintage Vinyl, a local used and new record store) That brings me to think again about GDBD. I think I've pinpointed one of the reasons I like it so much. It sounds very mystical Midwestern if that makes any sense.

LD: Aah, I like it.

AP: And maybe that's why it's appealing-maybe that's why, so far, you have eluded the MTV audience, it's not coastal, it's Midwestern. The Over the Rhine neighborhood reminds me of the German neighborhoods in St. Louis, so there are cultural links with St. Louis and Cincinnati.

LD: Oh, yeah, both big river towns for sure. Probably took their share of hits when the river became less vital to transportation, the flow of information. A lot of history nonetheless.

AP: And the beauty of places where time forgot…

LD: There's something unsung and very real about the Midwest. It does get a bad rap because it lacks the flash and the cutting edge. I love the big cities too, like New York, and we've been spending a lot of time in Toronto, that's quite a great city, London is great and all that. But there's something quiet and-the Midwest makes up in a richness of story for what it lacks in glamour and highfalutin living (laughs). There's plenty of stories to go around. I feel at home there. Karin and I dream of either disappearing out into a farm somewhere tucked away in the middle of nowhere, either that or moving to New York for a couple of years, one extreme or the other.

AP: People will start knocking down your door wherever you end up.

LD: Oh, I dunno. But the Midwest has been a special place. It's where I was born, I feel like it'll always be a part of me.

AP: On that note I should probably leave you to your Iowa experience…

LD: Yeah. Good people out here. I got an Aunt Iva, who lives in Iowa, and her pickled beets are unrivalled. She-

AP: That's a song right there.

LD: There's quite a bit of alliteration or something going on there. But anyway, she's the queen of roadsign vegetable stands. Yep. I got a lot of aunts and uncles spread around these farming communities.

AP: Somebody to tap for stories.

LD: Yeah.