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The good ones can string together words and ideas full of consequence. They swaddle the words with a melody and adorn them with rhythm and, often, rhyme.

Songwriting is an art — a labor-intensive, soul-bearing, ear-straining, smile-inducing craft. Twenty-six letters are pieced together over and over again, forming words that are twisted and tamed until something meaningful — or maybe just fun — is formed.

And Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist - the husband-and-wife duo better known as the band Over the Rhine — are pros. Or, at least, committed to the craft, and committed to teaching and encouraging others to hone their own songwriting skills.

Over the Rhine is bringing its earthy/jazzy/soulful Americana pop to Puccini's Golden West Saloon on July 28. Detweiler and Bergquist will then head to Santa Fe to lead a songwriters forum as part of the faith-in-arts-themed Glen Workshop at St. John's College.

The Tribune caught up with Detweiler for his thoughts on songwriting, including tying in faith and paradoxes.

Trib: Talk a bit about what the workshop is about.

Detweiler: This is our fourth year in a row attending it. We were invited by a literary journal out of Seattle. There are poetry workshops, short story workshops, mosaic, memoir writing. It's a lot of interesting people around. We had been invited out our first two years to be musicians in residence. We contributed music every evening and a then a full concert every week. I did a poetry workshop and she (Bergquist) did a poetry workshop and a life-drawing workshop. Last year, they asked us if we'd be interested in a songwriting workshop; they hadn't done that (before).

Trib: What, in your view, makes a good song?

Detweiler: Fresh language. We don't want to regurgitate something that's been said a thousand times. We feel a song needs a focal point that can bear the weight of a song.

Trib: So there's no formula? No magic words?

Detweiler: One of the last things we talk about is the X-factor - something dangerous you can't quite put your finger on. Something you can't quantify or explain completely. When it comes to music, it can be a little out of control.

Nobody's reinventing the wheel, but you feel something on your skin.

Trib: How do you know when you're there?

Detweiler: I think it probably comes with practice. Just developing your intuition and knowing when something feels complete, and knowing when to leave it alone and walk away. It always helps to have a writing partner. We can be brutally frank with each other if we feel something's not working.

Trib: How do you encourage that and teach being a good songwriter?

Detweiler: People who want to write songs, music has been really important to them in their lives. It gets tangled up in who they are and what they care about. We encourage people to push themselves to do their best work and keep their work connected with who they are and where they come from.

It's not about trying to write a hit song. It's about real American songwriting at the end of the day that I feel has the potential to connect to where we come from, where we're moving.

We tend to be big-picture people in our workshop.

Trib: Clearly, you have a love of words. How do you nurture that?

Detweiler: Just hanging out with people who can write better than we can. Words, playing with words, having fun with words, it comes from a love of reading, language and stories. We nurture that first of all by surrounding ourselves with good writers, whether that's good books or friends.

Trib: "The Trumpet Child" (the upcoming Over the Rhine release) is musically quite different from older OTR recordings. Did you plan on a different sound, or did it just happen that way?

Detweiler: We were going for a pre-rock-'n'-roll era on this record. We definitely wanted horns and strings (and) a little bit of clarinet that feels like it could be played in New Orleans. For a number of different reasons, we knew the palette would change.

Trib: I've noticed your penchant for paradoxes: songs unabashedly sultry following songs profoundly spiritual; solemn and lonely songs beside songs that seek out company; complicated words layered over simple melodies. How carefully do you plan those?

Detweiler: I don't know if it's something that we premeditate or not. I see sexuality (and) spirituality as being dancing partners. They're always fairly closely connected in my mind. We're trying to rescue both of them from larger cultural generalizations or whatever.

A sexuality that can be multidimensional and not trite, and a hard-won intimacy as opposed to some disposable little pop-hook version of sexuality. We're inviting people into something more complex and layered.

Spiritually — in some ways, the church sometimes oversimplifies things, as well. There are catchphrases that circulate, and people make assumptions. We invite people into dangerous and mysterious expressions of spirituality.

Trib: Define your relationship with the Christian music industry.

Detweiler: I think it would be an exaggeration to say we have a relationship with that industry. Speaking of dangerous, they've always kept us at a safe arm's length. I think they're very happy to let us function outside that subculture. My father is a minister, and I grew up in the church. That's kind of in the water.

From a very early point in our career, we just knew we wanted to get out into the general marketplace. We wanted to open up a conversation and our audience could be this wonderfully messy, diverse group.

There are people who are aware of our church background and the spirituality in the music and our faith. But there are probably way more people drawn to the songwriting, the vibe, Karin's voice.