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

E-tickets and Will-call: All tickets purchased online will be sent as e-tickets to the email address associated with your order. E-tickets will be listed within your confirmation email. If you would like your tickets to be in will-call please call or visit the box office during regular business hours. We can sell you a printed ticket over the phone and in person. You can reach us at (812) 323-3020 ext 1.

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Infamous Love Song

I sing
The bebop apocalypse
Lean into you
God’s hands on my hips
Grip the midnight microphone
Steel every cell of my flesh and bone
I wrestle my angel
In smoky stage lights
Climb Jacob’s ladder
Two thousand more flights
Tell St. Valentine, Hey gimme five—
Baby our love song must survive

We were born in the dirt
On our hands and knees
But started out climbing
Deciduous trees
We learned to sway
Ridiculously high
Hungry to taste
Mouthfuls of sky
Now I bring all our secrets
To show and tell
How we dragged each other
Through heaven and hell
It’s our smoking gun
But hey, we’re still alive
Baby our love song must survive

Your third-story windows
On thirteenth and Main
Still glow with an eerie
Mysterious flame
Where we learned to slow dance
By dawn’s early light
And tried to be tender
With all of our might
And just down the street
At the Milner Hotel
Rosie’s sloppin’ the hogs
And the infidels
They all went out of business
When the market took a dive
Baby our love song must survive

There’s nights when I mostly
Just feel like a thief
With a prized possession
A gleeful belief
That love’s both a joke
And a serious matter
You don’t quite know your muse
But you know when you’ve had her
When I first saw your face yeah
It hurt you to smile
Your lips tasted like tears
I could kiss them for miles
On a midnight train—
May it never arrive
Baby our love song must survive

There’s days when we lose
Our appetite
And days when we’re bruised
And losing the fight
Of a lifetime, days
When we’re looking inside
Wondering if
We’re half dead or alive
But the slow honey drip
Of those young nights long gone—
The memory’s a friendly whip
Urging us on
My mouth on your lips
Is just trying to revive
Baby our love song must survive

This love’s the affirmation
Of everything good
The oxygen coursing
Through the blood

The feel of being understood
The belief that, Oh Yes,
Somehow we could
And the milkyway looks
Like a flimsy blouse
But now we’re gentrified
In our civil war house
Safe as a painting
By Currier and Ives
Baby our love song must survive

So I still sing
The bebop apocalypse
Lean into you
God’s hands on my hips
Grip the midnight microphone
Steel every cell of my flesh and bone
I still wrestle my angel
In smoky stage lights
Climb Jacob’s ladder
Two thousand more flights
C’mon St. Christopher, how ‘bout a high five—
Baby our love song must survive

(c) Over the Rhine, from the album, The Long Surrender, Produced by Joe Henry