OTR (Trio) Concert at Southgate House 26-August-2001

REVIEW BY: Bruce Lachey.

The show last night at Southgate was really fun, great sound.

Kim Taylor opened, and she was WAAAY better than I thought she’d be. It seems hard for me to retain interest in a live performer after 6 or so songs I’ve never heard, but she did great. Much looking forward to her CD.

I couldn’t snag a setlist after the show, but if my memory serves, it went
something like this:

• Go Down Easy
• Bothered
• The Last Time I Saw Jesus
• I Radio Heaven
• Lucy
• Little Blue River
• Faithfully Dangerous
• Orphan Girl
• Curse These Dreams
• Holy Rain
• World Can Wait
• Hello Ohio
• Jack’s Valentine
• Miles
• —
• Green Clouded Swallowtail
• Anywhere At All

Hmm. It seems like I’m missing a song. I could probably recall who played what for each song but that would even bore me. Linford manned the keyboard for about half of the songs, and also played acoustic guitar and some accordian. Karin played acoustic about 1/2 the night and keyboard for Hello Ohio. Jack played acoustic, electric and lap steel and sang lead on Holy Rain.

“Go Down Easy” was slower than the CD, and the acoustics in the room were dandy. The audience is SO quiet, it’s astonishing. Karin had a lot of ad-lib vocalizations at the end that were beautiful.

“Last Time I Saw Jesus” was something apparently recently completed, and Karin said it was conceived when they were recording in New Orleans (probably Eve). It’s from a woman’s perspective, I think the first few lines are “the last time I saw Jesus, I was drinking bloody marys in the South” and “New Orleans” works it’s way in there at the end of that/the refrain.

Karin and group seemed to be in reasonably good spirits and glad they were playing live. She talked about the recent troubles she’s been having and told a story about watching the Wheeling news on TV at her mother’s house last week. Apparently some dude was arrested for walking around naked in town, and when asked what he did for a living, he said he grew marijuana. Sure enough, they went to his house, and he does. Karin then kinda “dedicated” I Radio Heaven to her naked pot-farming TV buddy. It was a groovy version, just two acoustic guitars, kinda strumming along. It was one of the few songs of the night that wasn’t shifted downtempo of it’s original version.

They said something offhand about taking requests, and someone requested “Green Clouded Swallowtail”. Karin joked that that was a mouthful to say; it’s much easier to yell “Freebird!” and maybe they should make their song titles shorter… She told the girl that they might be able to pull that one off later.

“Faithfully Dangerous” didn’t have Linford on keys at all, but on acoustic guitar. Still spiffy.

Talking about the current tour (which if ya don’t know was only a handful of dates that weren’t canceled), Karin said the original plan was to just put the three of them, no crew or anything, in a van and take backroads. They started in Arlington VA, and took 50 all the way from Cincinnati. 500 miles later (and still on US RT 50!) they were at the club. Although the tour was cut short, they hope to play like this in the future again.

“Orphan Girl” is that same Gillian Welch song they’ve been playing for years. (Yawn) Pretty and all, but (yawn).

Karin said they were at one of her favorite parts of the setlist, and they played two songs from Jack’s fine fine new CD. If you bought the first one and were afraid of his singing, lemme tell ya it’s VASTLY improved. The songwriting still seems top-notch. The first one, Karin sang and Linford had GREAT piano adds from midway into the song on. “Holy Rain” was similar to the MP3 download from a few months back (which Karin referenced).

Jack ups and leaves stage. Karin says, “We should play something from that record we just put out… That’s a novel concept” or something, and they launched into a nice “World Can Wait”. Piano part was way more varied than the CD.

Then Linford and Karin stand, Linford leaves, and Karin mans the piano. Says “with a man like Linford around, who needs to play piano” but that she still likes to write on it. She talks about growing up in E Central OH, about 20mi from where Linford grew up and how mining-focused the whole area is. She says how other couples grow up looking at the same moon or something all the time, she and Linford were looking at the same strip mine machines. She continued talking about growing up in that environment, going out with friends, etc. Also about losing a neighbor boy or something to drowning in a strip pit. Anyway, this all leads to “Hello Ohio”. It pretty much was a song about the things she just talked about, and the chorus if you’d read it on paper or here would read a little dopey maybe (“I know Ohio/like the back of my hand” was the second line of the refrain) but under her great playing and emotive voice, was a really special song. The bridge had a lot of names of friends (Holly/Mary/Natalie maybe) and that and the whole of the song conjured a lot of beautiful images. The last line of the chorus was something along the lines of “it’s hard to see, the story end”.

Then the group rejoins stage, Jack plays acoustic, and they rip into “Jack’s Valentine”. Linford skips the “part about the paintings, ‘cos I frankly wish I had never written that part”. Pretty fun.

“Miles” was arranged pretty differently than any of the other millions of ways it’s been played live. Nice to hear it again. As were the encore tunes. During the insufferably long “Little Blue River”, Megan and I wandered ’round the venue stirring up trouble here and there. From the balcony just behind the stage, I thought I saw four songs listed on the setlist for encore, but only two were played.

As always, it was good seeing y’all listfolk out on a Sunday (Melissa H, Rick C, Dan T, Megan L, Drew V, Andy S, Jacob M, Brian S, Jon W, I’m sure I’m forgetting some more) and your posses.

Hmm.

That’s all I can think to write.

Your sort of human being,
Bruce