The Gypsy Lore Society: “Ludar
The Ludar, or ‘Rumanian Gypsies,’ also emigrated to North America during the great immigration from southern and eastern Europe between 1880 and 1914. Most of the Ludar came from northwestern Bosnia. Upon their arrival in North America they specialized as animal trainers and show people, and indeed passenger manifests show bears and monkeys as a major part of their baggage. Only a handful of items covering this group have been published, beginning in 1902. The ethnic language of the Ludar is a form of Romanian. They are occasionally referred to as Ursari in the literature.”

After various Thanksgiving festivities, the birthday cake came out, and I blessed it with a breath of hot air. While my parents and sister were unable to be in attendance, they received a “radio broadcast” over the phone of the opening of presents. Ted, Nancy, and Sherry then obliged me by somehow letting me win 2 of 4 rounds of hearts. I won’t list my bountiful booty, but let’s just say that I now have enough reading material to last me through 2006 and beyond!

I first saw Over the Rhine perform in August of ought-four at the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe. They were promoting their double album OHIO, and I was moved in a way that I hadn’t been by music in quite some time. (Actually, something must have been going on that summer as I had the experience twice in a short span–with OTR and a Sam Phillips show in Chicago.) In the 15 or so months since that first experience, I’ve now seen the group perform a total of five times: two Glen appearances, a festival in Bowling Green, a show in Columbus this past September, and this Friday last in a tiny little country opera house in Bellville, OH.

The Bellville Opera House is housed on the second floor of the town hall. There’s no signs to speak of; I drove past the place twice looking for it. The only restrooms are entered from outside the building on the ground floor. In fact, I’m convinced that the show was so short precisely because there was no backstage to speak of, and, as Karin informed us, no bathrooms. The floors look like original wood. The walls are painted white with gray insets of trim. The stage is set about four feet off the ground and, off to the right, has a set of wooden steps leading to a door with a door knocker. This is the only entrance to the wings. In many ways, it reminds me of the stage at my high school, which was housed in an old elementary school.

It’s obvious that what keeps the old Opera House going is the people of Highlands of Ohio, a local group interested in promoting Celtic and other traditional music. While the venue is most definitely old, it is very well maintained. Walking into the room, I was immediately offered a wide variety of hors douerves, coffee, and hot cider that was all being provided free of charge. Children, grandparents, teenagers, and a small cadre of OTR junkies milled around the small CD table. There were only about 100 or so chairs set up, and they just about took up all the available space. (Side note: I wondered the whole night about the economics of the show. Even with a sell-out [which it wasn't], the total gate receipts couldn’t have been more than $1500-1800. Given that OTR had their full lineup (Karin, Linford, Kim Taylor, plus a drummer and a guitar/bass player) I have a hard time believing they would play for only that much. Of course, they were just coming off a Kent State festival and were playing Calvin College the next night, so maybe they just needed to fill a spot on the calendar. Still…)

Unlike the Little Brothers show in Columbus where the venue obviously wanted us to buy copious amounts of beverage, the show kicked off right on time with a small set by the rail thin, brown haired, powerfully voiced, guitar thrashing Kim Taylor. I was much more impressed with her performance this time through. Perhaps it was the fact that she did the whole thing with her acoustic guitar; in Columbus, she wailed on a helpless little electric that seemed to have offended her in some way. Even though this Florida girl has lived in Cinncinatti for a good long while now, Taylor did reveal that somewhere around midwinter she still gets angry that that she’s cold. The story would set up a refrain for the night: musicians kvetching about being cold. Of course, Taylor’s website does list some tenative titles for her new record as “I Feel Like a Piece of Shit Because of this Damn Cold” and “95 Things You Should Do That Really Won’t Help Get You Over a Bad Cold Faster.” So perhaps this has been a theme for a while. As for Taylor’s tunes, think of a mix of blues and folk, with a good dash of anger thrown in. Perhaps the stand out tune was the song “Hit Me” about a woman standing up to her abusive partner. I also got a kick out of the tune that declared that she had 95 Things to say to someone. Who can resist a Martin Luther reference?

After a short break, OTR entered through a side door of the venue and climbed the stairs to the stage. Everyone was bundled up in winter coats (someone was in an army green number with a fur-like edging around the hood that caused flashbacks to second grade). I suppose the fact that I was comfortable should have been a clue that everyone else was going to be chilly, but I did think that Linford’s and guitarist’s hats which they wore through the whole night were a bit much.

Having now seen them five times in a somewhat short period of time, one thing I’ll say for Over the Rhine: they do a nice job of changing up the setlist. Sure, they played a good number of tunes from DRUNKARD’S PRAYER as is right and proper when touring in support of an album. But I have yet to go to a show where I didn’t hear at least one or two tunes that I hadn’t heard before. This time around, they opened up with “Drunkard’s Prayer” and “I Want You To Be My Love.” They then went into an extensive version of “Little Blue River,” a nice gospel number that gave the band some space to stretch out and jam a bit. I was particularly pleased by the inclusion of “ETC. Whatever.” Kim Taylor joined the group for some rollicking versions of “Spark” and “Lookin Forward.”

Apart from excellent tunes and great musicianship, I really enjoy the banter between Karin and Linford. It’s slightly off-kilter and makes you feel like you’re sitting around the table with them drinking coffee. There’s jokes and conversation between them, a bit of that “Oh, should I tell them about…” “Sure, go ahead.” About midway through the set, the band left the stage and Karin started riffing a bit about how much she liked the songs of Cole Porter and that her other favorite songwriter is Linford. She then revealed that after 9 years of marriage she still finds her husband to be incredibly sexy, and began playing a song that had been a belated birthday present for Linford this year. Looking at some message boards, I find that the song made its debut just a couple of weeks ago in a series of Dayton shows. At any rate, the song “Trouble” with the line “Baby if you’re here to make trouble, make mine a double” is certainly the kind of smouldering torch song that would make Cole Porter proud.

A few songs later, the group closed down the main set with “Cruel and Pretty.” As they entered the wings, the side door out into the venue opened and closed once or twice. I’m guessing they were deciding whether they could dash out for a bathroom break because when they did–inevitably–return to the stage Karin informed us that “You knew we were coming back. There’s nowhere for us to go back here. And we all really need to use a bathroom.”

All in all, the show was precisely what I’ve come to enjoy about OTR: well-crafted songs performed with passion. Linford, despite the chill, kept the keys warm all night and wowed the crowd with some fantastic solo work. (He also displayed his versatility by also taking turns on guitar and bass.) Karin, with a scarf wrapped around her neck protecting those supple vocal cords, loosed her lythe voice upon this small group in a small venue in a small town with as much verve and skill as she does in a crowded theatre or at a gathering of artistic peers.

Setlist:

Bellville Opera House
November 18, 2005

Drunkard’s Prayer
I Want You To Be My Love
Little Blue River
Etc. Whatever
What I’ll Remember Most
Suitcase*
Born*
Spark*
Lookin Forward*
Little Did I Know
Trouble
Show Me
Cruel and Pretty
_____________________

Firefly
When I Go

*w/Kim Taylor

MusicTAP - Music Flows Here :: Updated 11/07/05 12:01a ET :::

“Another offender comes from the band MercyMe, a Christian band that does a power ballad about “surrender to your love”, ostensibly about surrendering to the love of Christ. However, they went all cagey about it, writing the song in a way so that it could also be interpreted as a generalized love tune, and that’s when things get creepy. They go on about “the beauty” and “the wonder of the touch” and one has to think that, by the ardor of the lyrics that this is a man singing about his love of a significant other, except in this case, the significant other is the Lord Jesus Christ Almighty. This is a particularly thorny subject for me, as I know of several bands that have professed their love of God in a myriad of more engaging ways, and they remain virtually unknown. However, MercyMe and other upstart crossovers have found a new way of communing with their creator–by asking them to the Prom. Hey, if that’s your idea of a night out, that’s your business, but don’t expect anyone to turn the Hawaiian Punch into wine, capice?”

While the other offenders in this article are innocuous tunes perpetrated upon the public by in-store “audio architecture,” I was somewhat dissappointed with the revelation that the “love song for Jesus” genre is alive and well. I suppose I had naiively believed that CCM had gotten past that little metaphor that never fails to create just the kind of creepiness the author reports.

After a warm October and some absolutely miserable days of dreary clouds and rain, the trees finally decided it was time to pack in the canopies, show their true colors, and shed. For a few days, the view outside our upstairs windows was wild with red and orange and even some stubborn green. A couple of cloudless days added a dash of blue.

The sights were so inspiring I pulled up the blinds, put away a bevy of boxes, and made the office a bit more livable just so I could spend some time sitting in a chair looking over the trees. The kitties seemed to think the colors were pretty cool too and joined me in appreciating God’s painting. Of course, they couldn’t bear to be in the same window, so Tigger took up a post looking North, and Emma settled on to the West-facing sill.

Now, a few days later, we’ve had some rain, and this morning we were buffeted with >40mph winds, so many of the trees have lost most of their leaves. There are still a few stubborn clumps that won’t admit that winter’s on its way, but I imagine that by the end of the week they’ll be gone too. I expect the groups of kids offering to rake leaves for a few bucks will start making the rounds, and I’ll have to start getting serious about giving the lawn its final cut. When we were in Georgia, I complained that I missed the turning of the seasons. Sure we had hot summer and a lengthy spring; fall was even somewhat lengthy–although living in a pine forest didn’t offer many colorful views. But there was always something missing. The lawn was always green–well, brownish green–and it never got wintery cold. In a month or two, I’ll be looking out my office windows at pure white yards bisected by steel gray roads backed with a greyish sky. The trees will be barren. And it will be that whitening death that will make the wild resurrection of spring so sweet.