Old 97s

Old 97's are coming to town in early April. Here's a review I wrote in 2004!

PREVIEW
The Old 97's
The Vogue
January 19, 2004

Come see the first good show of the year: The Old 97's. The hypersonic genre-mixers play the Vogue next Monday to their "we've been waiting two bloody years for this" fans. Once Dallas-based, the band now collaborates via 3 cities: lead singer and guitarist, Rhett Miller, is in New York and bassist, Murry Hammond, in Cali, while lead guitarist Ken Bethea and Philip Peeples hold down their Alamos in Texas. Rhett Miller recently chatted with me and, glutted with vigor and warmth, expressed the band’s hullabaloo for their upcoming album, touting a couple of songs to pique our interest. "Murry's chord progression is the cornerstone to the song "The New Kid," which, ironically, isn’t about my 2-month-old son, Maxwell," he said. The tune "Won’t Be Home No More," from the Ranchero Brothers (former Miller & Hammond band) is being brought in from the pasture and added to the kitty as well. But with five albums, they’re sure to play the old favorites Doreen, Big Brown Eyes, 19 and Timebomb too. Miller stated, "The audience often stands slack-jawed when they don't hear old songs; it's tough to try new songs out on the road, but playing them isn't so much for the audience as it is practice for the band."

Cowpokes with brains, the 97’s are all avid readers and the band’s eloquent writers, Miller and Hammond, construct most of the songs. "I sing the songs that I write and Murry sings the songs he writes—we're even getting Ken to sing a song which he's never done in his life," said Miller. Their catalog casts the net wide, bringing in styles from the Ramones, Jason and the Scorchers, Hank Williams and the band X. Miller's former band Killbilly purveyed his "deliverance" of Bluegrass and they all retain their native y'alt-country style. Hammond named the group from a song sung by Johnny Cash, The Wreck of the Old 97, though "accelerate" seems more their nature. Their music flies open like unfastened shutters in a Texas tornado, executing precision and flare with double-time alacrity. You arrive at their show tired and return home unable to count any sheep.

Miller, rock-n-roll's haute du jour, is the type of guy who answers, "Ah, shucks" to a compliment. Any girl who's ever had an interest in their music has secretly hoped he'd turn up as her mystery date, though he recently became Old 97s-number-4 to marry. Raised in a family of music lovers, he began playing guitar at age 12 and was playing Dallas gigs by age 15. Known as the "weird kid who played folk songs" (or so he said), he opened for the Pixies' Frank Black when he was a mere 18. He opened for Hammond’s band Peyote Cowboys in 1986 and the Old 97's was born. Collectively, the 97’s have all had solo or side projects; most notably, Miller recorded a 2002 solo album on Elektra, The Instigator, that won high acclaim as the perfect pop album. Several local radio stations picked up the single "Come Around," and I spun it a few thousand times myself. The album's infectious lyrics and charm are unyielding and frustrating to critics who love to pan, and its danceable mixture of rhythms forces even the most stubborn toes to tap. Miller should be performing surprise (oops, sorry) solo acoustic songs off Instigator at Monday's show (or so I asked).

The 97's have new management: Vector, to be exact (Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris) and after their January tour lite the band will begin recording their sixth album in February. It will arrive mid-summer 2004 on the New West label. Miller's next solo album, also on Elektra, will fall on the heels of the 97’s’. For now, Miller's greatest ambition and achievement are simultaneously the birth of his son. He sang me Maxwell's favorite song, the backwards alphabet, saying, "We call it his ZYX's – he loves when I sing to him." Ah, the beauty of rock-n-roll.

--Jill Brooks