T he Bandcamp page for the streaming version of Ric Hordinski’s freshly minted new album, Flesh and Ghost, features the following descriptors: “alternative,” “indie rock,” “instrumental,” and “Cincinnati.” Those words certainly pertain to Hordinski and his latest work, but there is so much more to say about a guy who’s made music his overriding passion for four decades.
Flesh and Ghost is Hordinski’s first album in six years, 11 songs that range from melancholic to menacing, each marked by its creator’s dexterous, stylistically expansive guitar playing. The lead track, “Benediction,” opens with acoustic guitar and brushed drumming as Hordinski’s modest but affecting voice delivers lyrics about making the best of a given situation: “May every stumble become a dance/ May every struggle become a new romance.” Violin, cello, bass and female backing vocals add texture, and Hordinski’s minimalist production aesthetic only heightens the intimacy. It’s as if the listener is in the room while the band is playing—in this case, recorded in Hordinski’s long-running Walnut Hills studio, The Monastery, a repurposed church he procured in 1995.
The wisp of a second song, “Eat Your Monsters,” is an instrumental synth-guitar mediation that would work well as the score to a documentary about filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. And then the curve ball of a third track, “A Weapon Is an Unhappy Tool,” a mood-juicing curiosity featuring jagged guitar emissions and the spoken-word vocals and evocative lyrical contributions of Elsa Kennedy, a Northern Kentucky native who sounds like Laurie Anderson after three shots of absinthe.
Crafty sonic juxtapositions continue through the run of the record, from the unexpectedly funky “The Needle’s in the Red” to the pensive album-closer “Pavane,” an instrumental consisting of Hordinski’s intertwining acoustic and electric guitar lines. You can judge for yourself when Hordinski plays the Woodward Theater on November 23; singer-songwriter Kim Taylor opens the show.
Hordinski’s genre versatility should come as no surprise to those who’ve followed his musical trajectory over the years. The lifelong Ohioan surfaced most prominently as the ace guitarist in local mainstays Over the Rhine from 1989 to 1996, followed by a continuing run as a solo artist, touring sideman, and contributor to various musical endeavors both inside and outside of Cincinnati.
Hordinski grew up in Willoughby Hills on the east side of Cleveland and started playing drums in elementary school before switching to guitar at age 15. “In high school I just fell in love with the guitar,” he says in a recent phone conversation. “I remember in the band room where I was playing drums, I opened a closet one day and they had an electric guitar in there. It was a freakish sight, like something in a Kevin Smith movie. It was like it was glowing. I remember I literally went home and dreamed about that guitar that night. Not too long after that I bought a cheap garage-sale guitar and went on from there.”
Rush and Van Halen were the popular rock acts of choice in Cleveland in the early 1980s, but Hordinski favored Elvis Costello and the new wave stylings of Bram Tchaikovsky and English Beat. Yet live shows remained a foreign experience through his childhood and early teen years.
“I grew up in a really religious family, so concerts were kind of frowned upon,” Hordinski says. “And because of that, through a series of weird, dumb luck, I wound up seeing this kind of virtuoso guitar player named Phil Keaggy, who is also an Ohio person. It was Christian music, but he’s such an amazing musician that it blew my mind when I saw him. That was my first live concert experience. I was probably 16 or 17 when I saw that. I just hadn’t been exposed to anything before that. It was kind of a weird childhood in that sense.”
Hordinski studied guitar and musical composition at Malone College, a Christian institution in Canton, where he met future Over the Rhine bandmates Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler. Hordinski eventually landed in Cincinnati as a hired-gun touring musician. But it wasn’t long before he yearned to write his own songs.
He enticed Bergquist, Detweiler, and drummer Brian Kelly to move to Cincinnati in 1989, and a series of spellbinding, uncommonly affecting albums as Over the Rhine followed. But Hordinski grew creatively restless again, leaving the group after 1996’s The Darkest Night of the Year to do his own thing.
Hordinski formed the band Monk, started producing other artists at The Monastery, and found work scoring films and creating string arrangements for myriad clients and collaborators. Flesh and Ghost seems like a culmination of all that work, a melting pot influenced by his various endeavors over the last 25 years. “At this point in my life, I have a lane that I’m in stylistically,” he says. “I don’t know how you would describe it, sort of junkyard ambient or something. I’m kind of working within some strictures, but within that I still want to have a lot of freedom.”
That freedom extends to The Monastery, a creative oasis that allows for limitless sonic exploration. “It’s always been a place where I’m doing my work,” he says. “I fell in love with unconventional recording early on, listening to Daniel Lanois, Tom Waits, even somebody like Robin Guthrie from Cocteau Twins or Peter Gabriel, people who are taking unconventional spaces and recording in them. That just always really appealed to me.”
There’s also a more practical aspect to recording at The Monastery. “I’m not spending $1,500 a day for another studio,” he says. “That’s obviously a big plus. You can take more chances. I can retouch things over and over and over. That’s the downside too—you can never finish. Was it Martin Scorsese who said that movies are never finished, they just escape? I feel like that about the music thing. If you don’t have a deadline, you could easily spend the rest of your life working on one record.”
Hordinski has lived in Ohio his entire life, including the last 35 years in Cincinnati, thus an obvious question arises: How have his particular environs impacted his work as an artist?
“I remember once doing an interview on the Echoes ambient radio show,” says Hordinski. “And the guy said something about me having a very Midwestern sound, and I remember kind of bristling at it, like, What? What are you talking about? I’m very urban and sophisticated. Looking back on it, I think there’s some kind of pastoral thing you get just from living someplace where you’re going to drive through cornfields at some point. But I’ve never lived in a rural place. I’ve never wanted to live in the suburbs. I’ve always lived in the city. On a very practical level, living in Cincinnati gives me so much freedom to own a beautiful recording studio. If it were in Brooklyn, it would be completely unaffordable.”
And now, after years in the making, interrupted by a worldwide pandemic, Hordinski is ready to take Flesh and Ghost to a live audience. “I love playing music for people,” he says. “It’s my favorite thing. When people choose to go see live music, it’s a beautiful kind of commitment. I don’t want to be overly spiritual about it, but no one owes me time and attention. If someone comes out to my show, I’m legitimately grateful.”
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