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Rhett Miller celebrated his 38th birthday last weekend, but it’s pretty likely that the party had to start without him. The bash, at his three-acre spread in New York’s Hudson Valley, was set for the middle of the Dallas Cowboys’ regular-season opener against the Cleveland Browns, and although Miller hasn’t lived in Dallas for years, he clings to his love of the Cowboys and the Stars the same way he loyally clings to the Old 97’s, the band he formed in Dallas with old friend Murry Hammond in 1993. Over the last 15 years, the group, frequently lumped into the alt-country subgenre, has released seven critically praised studio albums, while Miller has found the moonlighting time to make two slightly poppier solo albums, 2002’s The Instigator, and 2006’s The Believer (he says he’s currently sitting on “a pile of songs” for what he expects to be a quiet, acoustic solo record). Four months ago, the Old 97’s returned to action after a four-year dormant period, with a new album, Blame It On Gravity, that ranks among their best. So it’s a little surprising that Miller will be coming to Sam’s Burger Joint on September 17 as an acoustic solo artist. Like his birthday plans, however, the mini-tour can be connected directly to his need for a Lone Star fix. “There was that week before the ACL Festival, and I wanted to bring my whole family down to Texas for the week,” Miller says. “So I figured if I booked a few shows it would justify the trip, make a little dough, and keep my chops up. It’s just fun to do.” Miller attended Dallas’s private St. Mark’s School in the ‘80s, two years behind a bad-boy football player named Owen Wilson. He remembers hearing from classmates that the teenage Wilson, who he describes as “immensely popular in a sort of effortless way,” had offered $15 to anyone who would beat up Miller, causing the future Old 97 to hide in the bushes for the entirety of a Friday-night football game. A sensitive outcast with soft, feminine features who’d failed at athletics, Miller went through a dark stretch in his mid-teens. He’d barely survived a suicide attempt at 14 and didn’t really find his emotional way until he devoted himself to music. Early on, his desperate need to reach people with his songs occasionally steered him away from his natural strengths. By the time he formed the Old 97’s, he had nothing to lose. Four years earlier, at the age of 18, he’d generated national attention with a folky solo album called Mythologies, which reflected his teenage David Bowie preoccupations and the literary bent of his songwriting approach (“Song for Truman Capote”). When a Billboard review suggested that major-label A&R men would soon be knocking down his door, Miller became fixated on scoring a record deal. He tried on and disposed of new bands like socks, including one short-lived, Nirvana-inspired punk outfit named Rhett’s Exploding. No one in Dallas could deny his knack for clever wordplay and winsome melodies, but some scenesters had taken to joking that if it was a new week, Rhett surely had a new band. Miller recalls the post-Mythologies/pre-Old 97’s period as one of extreme artistic confusion. “It’s hard to second-guess anything, but I think a lot of the attention I got really early made me waste a couple of years,” he says. “When [the Billboard review ran], I kind of took that to heart a little bit, and I think I spent two or three years in there trying to make music that was going to be commercial. I think I was focusing so much on trying to score a major-label record contract, which is so funny that that’s what you shoot for: ‘I can’t wait to sign a contract. Boy, that’ll be great.’” The Old 97’s took a deliberately low-key path, playing small, unpublicized shows in Austin, but it didn’t take long for them to catch on. They were never country purists, but they borrowed country’s rhythmic swing, which perfectly suited ironic, understated Miller narratives such as “Lonely Holiday” and “Indefinitely.” “Murry brought so much of that [country influence] to the table,” Miller says. “He was the one who introduced me to a lot of the old-timey country music that really made it possible for me to like country music again. He’s the one who’s pushed that agenda a little more than I have over the years. But it’s good, because in the end it’s really just folk music, and that’s what I grew up loving, with the Kingston Trio and Bob Dylan.” The band’s devoted fan base has long included actor Vince Vaughn, who wrote them into his 2006 comedy film, The Break-Up , for an extended concert scene (Jennifer Aniston’s character invites ex-boyfriend Vaughn to an Old 97’s show, and he stands her up). “It was a really good exerience,” Miller says. “It’s not like it made such a real difference in our career necessarily, but if somebody says, ‘I don’t really know who your band is,’ you can say, ‘Did you see that movie?’ It validates us in their eyes.” Married with two young children, Miller has learned over the last five years to adjust to the loss of the solitary time that most songwriters depend upon. “I built an office in my garage, and the door locks, but as soon as I get down there and come up with an idea, [the kids] are knocking on the door. They’re so sweet, I can’t kick ‘em out. You know, they’ve always got ideas for their own songs. They’re always about poopy or martians.” Since 1998, the Old 97’s have followed the Pavement long-distance band model, with Miller, Hammond, lead guitarist Ken Bethea, and drummer Phil Peeples scattered across the country. It’s a testament to the band’s confidence that they’ll often begin a tour with no more than a long opening-night soundcheck for rehearsal. “It’s funny,” he says. “Every single night of my life I have dreams about being in the band - being in the hotel or on the stage. It’s almost like I see those guys every night in my dreams anyway. How can I miss them if they won’t go away?” Gilbert Garcia, SA Current, September 10, 2008
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Alt-country favorites the Old 97's are as reliable as a worn pair of cowboy boots and an old flannel shirt. The band has been playing for 15 years now, and they just released the album Blame It On Gravity. Guitarist and vocalist Rhett Miller takes a break from their summer tour to talk about the group's new album and the band's career. Miller also performs some new songs and a few old hits. In addition to playing in the Old 97's, Miller has a successful solo career, having released three albums. His most recent recording, The Believer, was well-received by critics...listen to Rhett being interviewed and performing here. NRP
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Sunday night at the Belly Up Tavern. An acoustic show by the singer of an alt-country band, whose solo work is even more mellow that than of said band. These are the things that should have tipped off this writer to the fact that the show would probably run on the earlier side. Unfortunately, I failed to recognize this fact and, in doing so, completely missed out on hearing opener Jennifer O’Connor. Her album Over the Mountain, Across the Valley and Back to the Stars has garnered a lot of praise recently, so this was a bit of a let-down. However, I managed to catch every minute of Rhett Miller’s set. I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of material, since both his solo career and the Old 97’s catalog are quite extensive. What the audience got was Rhett with an acoustic guitar, singing his heart out and playing a mix of solo and Old 97’s songs. All told, I counted twenty-two songs in his set list. Four of those were brand new Old 97’s songs that are going to be on their new record, out May 13. It still lacks a title, and when he told the audience this, someone yelled out “Call it ‘Rhett Sings!’” At that, Rhett chuckled and said he didn’t think the rest of the band would like that too much. Even with such a long setlist and just one performer, everyone in the room was captivated. Rhett is an extremely charismatic person, and his songs are both endearing and witty, often conjuring up opposing imagery such as “She was a thin girl / But she had substance.” The man has a way with words in his songs as well as his on-stage banter, and more than a few times he had the crowd laughing along with him. With many other performers, songs recorded with a full band (such as his work with the Old 97’s) played acoustically often leave a little something to be desired. But with Rhett, it just allowed his voice to take center stage, and he conveyed such passion through his voice that I never noticed the lack of other instruments or band members. At the end of his encore, people were yelling for one more song, but we all had to be content with the promise of a return (with the Old 97’s) in June. Natalie Kardos, Impose Magazine, February 15, 2008
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- Don’t overthink your plot: “I used to pore over every lank aspect of my protagonists, but now I don’t think about it so much,” cedes professional Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller, who’s simultaneously releasing a short story (“Weakest Shade Of Blue,” inspired by a Pemice Brothers song) and his second solo set, The Believer, in late February. “I had a big epiphany,” he says, “wherein I realized that a short story is a lot like a song – you go from vignette to vignette, and each vignette is like a verse, with recurring characters that are sort of like the theme or the melody.”
- Find inspiration in the commonplace: The “Make up your ma-ma-mind” chorus in Believer’s opening anthem “My Valentine” had its genesis in the pre-verbal babble of Miller’s two-year-old son, Max, and the gentle “Meteor Shower” was a collection of observations made from the singer’s rural Hudson Valley property. “When I sit outside all night,” Miller says, “I see shooting stars all the time – all you’ve gotta do is just look up and try not to blink for a minute.”
- There’s tragic eloquence in societal misfits: In the Old 97’s, Miller used to hotdog like a brainy brat. Now, he fines off brilliantly underneath lines like “She drove a blue car around Bloomington / She was a thin girl, but she had substance.” Whether real or imagined, his subjects, he says, “represent that dichotomy that exists within us all – real beauty and some really tragic stuff, too, because I never like the cut-and-dried.”
- The hero doesn’t have to save the world: While briefly attending Sarah Lawrence Colledge, Miller constantly argued with his writing teacher over “this feeling that in the course of a short story, the main character has to go through some life-changing event, and I just never really bought into that. People don’t really change, but maybe they grow a little bit. And that’s the thing I look for, that little bit of growth.”
- Prepare for your characters to take on a life of their own: Miller conceived “Fireflies,” his duet with Rachael Yamagata, as a breakup post-mortem. “But oh my God, what Rachael did with that song!” he says proudly. “I got choked up on the middle break – when she sang ‘I must’ve had a reason for leaving,’ I say, ‘It must’ve been me,’ and then she comes in with, ‘It must’ve been me.’ The girl’s taking responsible for the breakup – I didn’t expect that when I was writing the song. And she made the last verse so sexy, instead of feeling like the guy’s getting kissed off, you feel that maybe they’re gonna disappear together. At least for the night.”
Tom Lanham, Paste Magazine, February/March 2006
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For his 2002 solo album debut The Instigator, Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller wrote pain-stricken post-9/11 pop numbers that tried to make sense of an increasingly senseless world. Here, the songwriter emerges from his cloud of doubt to embrace the more palpable pangs of heartache. Despite finding himself on the losing side of love, Miller sounds more confident an upbeat than ever as he and his band explore styles including 1980s rock (“Mr. Valentine”), Byrds-esque jangle (“Help Me Suzanne”) and T. Rex-influenced glam (“Ain’t That Strange”). J.W., Giant Magazine, February 2006
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After more than a decade of strum and twang with Dallas’s alt-country pioneering Old 97’s, Rhett Miller is releasing his second solo album, a heaping mound of creamy pop confection-albeit a twisted sort in which the title track wrestles with Elliott Smith’s suicide and the album credits throw shout-outs to Albert Camus, David Cross, Owen Wilson, and Kurt Vonnegut. And those aren’t exactly random muses: The Believer is literate, funny, sexy, and geekishly scientific. (At one point, a fatal attraction is actually blamed on plate tectonics.) That it is all of those things and still eminently listenable makes this the most interesting pop album on shelves this month. With studio assists from the vaunted Jon Brion and the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris, the melodies and harmonies are unimpeachable, hitting the often unhittable middle ground between Elvis Costello and Matthew Sweet. Miller’s sly come-ons and offer to “come over and cushion your breakables” are above-standard fare for an album almost wholly about sex and the moments leading up to it. When he sings that “talking to you is like doing long division,” Miller delivers it convincingly as a compliment, something with which lesser songwriters would struggle. For a quick taste of just how potent this record really is, download “Fireflies,” a gorgeous yet cheeky ode to one-night stands featuring Rachel Yamagata, herself one of last year’s sexiest surprise stories. Keep listening and you’ll realize there’s really not a clunker on here. The title track, in which Miller’s teenage suicide attempt and Elliott Smith’s more successful stab at it someone meet halfway through the narrative, is one of the most deftly written songs in recent memory. It all points to The Believer as the thinking man’s pop record – one that’s got very little do with country, a lot to do with great songwriting, and more than enough to fall in love with. Andy Langer, Esquire, February, 2006
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My mom used to play the Beatles’ Rubber Soul for me, and now I play it for my son, Max. Whereas I was a Lennon kid, Max responds most enthusiastically to Paul McCartney’s “Drive My Car.” When it’s over, he invariably hollers, “Again!” This is about as much fun as listening to Highway 61 Revisited and never making it past “Like a Rolling Stone,” but anything that makes my kid happy is all right with me. Beep-beep, uh, beep-beep – yeah! Rhett Miller, Time Out New York, January-February 2006
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As artists from the Jayhawks and the Black Crowes to Tom Petty and Tift Merritt have recognized, when you hire George Drakoulias as producer, you’re going to get produced. Which is a good thing as far as Rhett Miller’s second solo album is concerned, for the ornate embellishments and ambitious arrangements not only distinguish Miller’s work from that of the Old 97’s – the band he still fronts – they enhance his most ambitious and radio-ready music to date. In contrast to the comparatively straightforward alt-country of the Old 97’s, The Believer relies on the tension of contrasts: propulsive guitars against synthesized strings, eternal innocence against hard-bitten experience, buoyant popcraft with a sardonic streak, the permanence and impermanence of love. Even the title of the album is a two-edged sword, a proclamation of faith amid a world that tests such a belief at every turn. With backing from pop/rock mainstays such as guitarist Jon Brion, keyboardist Patrick Warren and drummer Matt Chamberlain 0 and with yearning harmonies from the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris and a vocal duet with Rachel Yamagata on the evanescent “Fireflies” – the music fashioned by Miller and Drakoulias uses the studio as a sonic laboratory. The results conjure comparisons that extend from Dwight Twilley (“My Valentine”) to T. Rex (“Ain’t That Strange”), from David Bowie (“Meteor Shower”) to Elliott Smith (“Brand New Way”). The album revels in contradiction: The hardest-driving song here is titled “Delicate”, while material that on the surface appears to be a collection of love songs turns out to be an extended meditation on the passage of time. Don McLeese, No Depression, January/February 2006
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