q u e s t i on s & a n s w e r s Why did you leave Over the Rhine? like any big decision, it's difficult to boil it down to any single factor. let me say that i didn't leave because we weren't more popular or because of the personalities involved. karin, linford and brian are among the people i love and admire most in the world. we have different opinions about some very important ideas, but i completely respect them and hope with all my heart that we will work together again someday. ultimately, i think that i left Over the Rhine, because i wanted to make the kind of music i have been making with Monk. with three writers is the group, there was not as much room for experimening with the kinds of writing and production i wanted to explore. if you look at the songwriting credits on "eve," patience," and "'til we have faces," and compare them with "good dog bad dog" (my favorite Otr record...), i think you'll see what i mean. i was also learning that i like my music to be recorded in a certain way and have a certain kind of sound. part of the struggle with recording "eve" stemmed from my budding ears and stubborn-ness about having things sound a certain way. another way to look at it is: if you listen to "good dog bad dog" you'll hear the beginnings of many of the sounds that wound up on "Quiver" What is that little black thing that you use to make your guitar sound like an oboe (or bagpipes or violins or cats in heat or whatever)? it is called an E-Bow and i don't really know (or care) how it works. it has a battery and i guess it has something to do with a magnet, but again i'm guessing. it rests just over the string your playing without actually touching it and makes it vibrate like crazy. it took me quite a long time to figure out how to make it really work (but i'm kind of slow.) you can buy one just about any music store (i think they cost about a hundred dollars. they are very breakable ( i'm on ebow number five or six right now...) When are you coming to minnesota? (or seattle or los angeles or florida or wherever...) we travel quite a bit with Monk, but it is a fairly expensive proposition to take four or five people out on the road, feed them, house them and pay them starvation wages. we do our best to get everywhere (we are out on the road about four months out of the year, (including one trip ro europe every year .) if you'd like to have us play at your college (or club or civic theatre or wherever...) email us and we'll tell you how you can do it. regular folks do it all the time. we can help with all of the details. What kind of guitars (amps, effects, cables, breakfast cereals, pedals, picks, cases...) do you use? well, in the studio i use a pretty small number (twelve or so) of guitars and maybe half a dozen amps, so it's hard to say that i'm using any single set up for recording. as for live, although it changes all the time i can tell you what it is this week. click here for the latest. ric, i just wanted to let you know that i got "blink" this weekend, and i absolutely LOVE it. live music has always been a fave of mine. i haven't had the opportunity to see you play live yet, since your OTR days, so this really has showed me alot of what you've been up too. i really love your style too...great job! 1) is there any significance to the name "monk"? i know for a brief time you all were called "the art monke trio" but once "quiver" came out that name disappeared. 2) i've seen a couple of websites mention that you have a pre-quiver demo called "a rough shaking" (?) is there any way to get ahold of this? thanks so much, mike gallaugher mike, thanks for all the kind words. it 's really encouraging to get letters like yours. first, there is really no heavy significance to the name "monk" we did sort jokingly play shows as "the art monke trio" (but only when we were a quartet....) Arthur is my "given" first name and i liked the idea of being an Art Monk... or someone who secluded himself to concentrate on beauty. but later i was told that there was (is?) a famous sports person named something like Art Monke....so we shortened the name to Monk a year or so before quiver came out. i do like the mental image that "monk" projects... either monasteries or Thelonius (whose compositions i love, incidentally.) as for "a rough shaking," we did a cassette of some beatle-esque pop songs in the early '90's, but they have long since sold -out and i really can't say that i have a desire to see them circulate. so you'll have to scour the internet for one. i know a few bootleggers out there have them and would be happy to share... peace, ric Click here to send a question to Monk