Tremendous interview from NPR’s David Greene with Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist — the husband and wife duo behind Over the Rhine. This conversation took place last year shortly after the band released Meet Me at the Edge of the World. This is one of my favorite questions and responses.
GREENE: Do you kind of draw a line anywhere to not get too religious because you don’t want to alienate some people? How do you deal with that?
BERGQUIST: Well, you don’t choose your audience — they choose you. And the more diverse our audience is, the better. Many different people have found our music, and I think part of that is because they are sort of landing where we are. I can summarize it best by the Rainer Maria Rilke quote that he wrote in Letters to a Young Poet where he says, “Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” And I love that quote; I embraced it in my 20s. It really does explain where I live and, I think, where a lot of our listeners live, as well.
Please listen to their music and read the rest of the interview HERE.