Our memories of Katie Laur are mostly personal. We are not Cincinnati natives so we missed a lot of her early history with the city, her days singing at Aunt Maudie’s down on Main Street, and her early years with the Katie Laur Band.
I moved to Cincinnati in 1989 after graduating from a Quaker liberal arts college in Canton. Somehow I ended up in the neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine, renting a third floor apartment at 1229 Main Street for $100 a month. I could see no tree from my apartment windows.
That same year, I asked Karin Bergquist if she wanted to start a band, and she said yes before I could get the sentence finished. She packed a few suitcases and left the little town of Barnesville, Ohio, where she was raised. Her mother referred to me as Svengali, but eventually forgave me.
For lack of a better idea, we borrowed the name of the neighborhood for the band. A place called Over-the-Rhine sounded weirdly beautiful and mysterious. The streets were ragged and considered dangerous by white suburbanites. Maybe our songs could live up to all of it, and in the words of the great Woodie Guthrie, maybe even “afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted.”
And what a place. Neither Karin or I could believe our eyes. It was as if someone had lifted an entire European neighborhood and flown it across the Atlantic, setting it down intact, just a ten-minute walk north of the Ohio River.
It was around this time that Maria McKee of Lone Justice recorded her song “Dixie Storms,” and it included the line, “When a big city beckons, you have no choice but to go.”
I still have no idea exactly how Katie Laur, a Paris, Tennessee, native, who grew up singing with her family, ended up in Cincinnati in 1966. I know her family migrated north to Detroit after World War II, looking for work. Apparently she was made fun of for “talking Southern,” but thank God she never lost her accent, one of the most musical southern drawls any of us will ever encounter.
We first heard Katie’s voice on the radio. By some generous impulse of the universe, in 1989, the very year we settled in Cincinnati, Katie was invited to host a radio show on WNKU, the community NPR station based at Northern Kentucky University. She hosted Music From The Hills Of Home for 27 years.
Karin quickly developed a Sunday afternoon ritual. She would get in her car and drive east along the Ohio river on Route 52 listening to Katie until the signal faded, and then turn around and drive back to her new city.
Katie had a vast knowledge of traditional music, and it was obvious she had met most of the musicians whose records she was playing on her show. Stories abounded, and Katie’s laugh (more of a joyful wheeze) was utterly contagious. Listening was a delight and an education.
Katie was one of the first women to front a touring bluegrass band in the U.S. She always said it didn’t matter if she was “the first” or not. She played festivals around the country in the days before air-conditioning in vehicles. She would change in to her show clothes in portalets, because there were no dressing rooms for women. She played on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, and she was a regular visitor and performer at the Carter Family Fold. She was paving the way for other women who soon followed.
I couldn’t believe Music From The Hills Of Home wasn’t syndicated. All sorts of interesting folks would call in with song requests and dedications, or send letters which Katie would read on the air. Lucky us, it was regional radio at its best.
In the early 1990s, Katie moved across the street from my apartment building and lived above Kaldi’s, the famed OTR coffee house and bookstore. We all met and a treasured friendship ensued.
Linda Rondstadt tells the story of hearing Emmylou Harris sing for the first time, and she had to decide whether to be threatened and competitive, or friendly and supportive. She chose the latter and still talks about how grateful she is that they became friends.
Whether or not Katie was competitive, she exuded love and joy and found countless ways to be encouraging to us and others. Her sparkling eyes, endless stories and instinct for a memorable turn of phrase all reinforced the fact that maybe the greatest gift we have in this life is simply laughter with friends.
It was a beautiful thing for me to watch the friendship that developed between Katie and Karin. They both knew they wanted to sing from a very early age. Something about singing just felt good, and neither of them were ever far from a song.
Katie recorded Karin’s song, “Poughkeepsie.” She invited us to join her and other Cincinnati musicians for some live broadcasts of Music From The Hills Of Home. The Katie Laur Band performed at our wedding in Eden Park. Katie would occasionally join us for our Cincinnati Christmas Concerts at the Taft Theatre and do a reading during the concert. She could enthrall a large audience with just a story and the sound of her voice.
Karin helped organize a surprise 60th birthday party at Kaldi’s for Katie, with lots of other Cincinnati musicians present and of course, Katie ended up singing at her own party.
When Karin and I moved to a small farm east of Cincinnati and started Nowhere Else Festival, Katie arrived on the scene for our inaugural year and performed with The Comet Bluegrass All-Stars and shared stories. People still talk about that show.
The writer and editor John Baskin, who lives just up the road from us, was also present at that inaugural festival and had met Katie years ago. What a gift that he was able to help Katie collect dozens of her stories and essays into a recently published memoir called, Red Dirt Girl.
In the early years of their friendship, Katie confided to Karin the tragic loss of her partner and band mate, who was struck by lightning at Coney Island east of Cincinnati. Katie had insomnia for months and would walk at night with her little dog. She would often walk across the bridge into Newport and Covington and then return at dawn.
Karin wrote the song, “Anything At All,” as a tribute to their friendship.
I follow you from town to town
I need it
I'm better off when you're around
I mean it
Sooner or later
Things will all come around again
Sooner or later
I won't need anything
Anything at all
I walk these streets alone at night
When it hurts me…
It hurts to say goodbye, Katie. Your life was an embodiment of so much good: good music, good stories, good friendships, good laughter. Now we get to be grateful.
Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist still record and perform nationally and internationally as Over the Rhine. They host Nowhere Else Festival on their small farm east of Cincinnati every Labor Day Weekend. This year’s musical guests include Valerie June, Chris Smither, John Fullbright and many more.
