Over the Rhine holiday show returns to Columbus December 10 at the Southern Theatre

CAPA presents An Acoustic Christmas with Over the Rhine, the Cincinnati-based, husband-and-wife folk-pop duo of Karin Bergquist (vocals, acoustic guitar, tenor guitar) and Linford Detweiler (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards), at the Southern Theatre (21 E. Main St.).

When you listen to Over the Rhine, you quickly fall under the spell of Karin’s timeless voice “which has the power to stop the world in its tracks” (Performing Songwriter). But then the songs start hitting you. Paste Magazine writes, “Over the Rhine creates true confessional masterpieces that know neither border nor boundary” and included Bergquist and Detweiler in their list of 100 Best Living Songwriters.

Tickets, which start at $35, go on sale at 10 am Friday, September 13, and may be purchased at the CBUSArts Ticket Center at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.), online at www.capa.com or www.CBUSArts.com, and by phone at (614) 469-0939.

This beloved holiday season tradition began when Bergquist and Detweiler were a young musical pair, invited to perform some seasonal songs on a public radio station in Cincinnati. The performance of carols, traditional tunes and poetry was well-received, and the duo began receiving inquiries as to whether they had recorded any of their Christmas songs.

In December of 1996, Over the Rhine recorded and released its first song cycle of Christmas carols, along with a few original tunes, on The Darkest Night Of The Year. The duo played a special “darkest night” release concert on winter solstice in an old 1300-seat theater in Cincinnati. Every last seat was full. Folks began snatching up copies and seemed to agree that they hadn’t heard anything quite like it.

Over the Rhine began touring the Midwest at the holiday season, and has since recorded and released additional Christmas material. By the time of their third holiday album of original songs, Blood Oranges In The Snow, in December of 2014, Karin suggested the pair had discovered a new genre of music: Reality Christmas.

“In 2024, more than 25 years after releasing our first holiday CD, we are still at it. This year, we will be leaning into some harmonies and making an intimate but hopefully holy ruckus. It won’t be all Christmas music: we’ll certainly mix in tunes from many of our records along the way. But hopefully it’s still true: hopefully you haven’t heard anything quite like it,” Detweiler wrote.