Old 97’s

Old 97’s have managed to survive as one of the finest alt-country bands around today, consistently making records that seem to get better with age. Founders Rhett Miller and Murray Hammond met when Miller asked Hammond to help produce his solo record in 1989. They worked together on another project, which didn’t quite materialize but became the basis for Old 97’s ear-pleasing alt-country sound. After adding guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples, the band released their debut Hitchhike to Rhome in 1994. Their underground buzz grew, as did their fan base — so much so that Elektra Records picked them up, releasing the band’s third album Too Far to Care. As their records pushed them further into the spotlight, the band worked to mature their sound. With each new album, they polished their melodies, adding more pop flair to their repertoire. In the fall of 2010 came their ninth album, The Grand Theater, Vol. 1. (Appearing with Those Darlins at The Vic on February 19) –text: Adrian Sobol

Old 97′s

It’s hard to stay angry for that long of a time. It’s exhausting. When you get older, you can’t really be bothered to be pissed off all the time.

story by Derek Wright

It’s almost noon on this particular day in mid-May, but Rhett Miller nevertheless is still animated when he talks about his previous night’s gig: an on-ice performance in between periods of an NHL playoff game for his beloved Dallas Stars. Although it’s something that Old 97’s has done in the past (the frontman has also sung the national anthem for the team on occasion), his enthusiasm beamed when on the line with Chicago Innerview.

Even 15 years into the band, Miller still is the excitable youngster in his Dallas ensemble. At 37, the 6-year age gap between the singer and his bassist/longtime collaborator Murry Hammond isn’t as drastic as it was in the early days. But that doesn’t stop Miller from feeling like the same upstart he was when Hammond produced the then-18-year-old’s solo debut in 1989. And it’s why he’s just as giddy about last night’s performance as he was the first time that he joined his favorite professional team.

“Kurt Vonnegut had an idea in Breakfast of Champions about aging,” Miller said while discussing his band’s seventh album, Blame It on Gravity. “It’s the idea that you’re always the same person. A baby, an old man — that same person exists forever, and who you are at this moment is the same person you were at an earlier moment.”

It’s an idea that fellow Texan Richard Linklater explored in both Waking Life and Slacker. And though those films’ characters examine humankind’s evolving curiosity, the sentiment echoes clearly: our dispositions are ingrained early. Our true demeanor might be masked in youth, and other times it gets hidden with age. But at some point, it’s on the surface. And one key to happiness is deciding which is real and which is the façade — that is, if you buy into the same train of thought as the director and novelist. “I remember that Linklater thing, when he’s in the back of a cab,” Miller said, recalling the opening scene in Slacker. “It reminded me of the Vonnegut passage when I was watching it.”

It’s fitting that Miller defaults to Breakfast of Champions pages, though, instead of the likeminded films. It gives credence to the belief that the legendary writer was on to something. Maybe Miller never has put his own fiction days behind him. Maybe in middle age, he’s still the same guy who earned a creative writing scholarship to Sarah Lawrence College. Maybe that’s why he’s in the midst of reading three books, has been planning to pen his own mystery novel for years, and is as quick to recall seminal literature from his teen days as he is the records that helped shape his childhood.

But if the theory is, in fact, correct, then today’s now pop-laden Old 97’s are just the same band that sauntered to notoriety with twangy alt-country tunes about booze, sex and drunken sex. And to buy into Vonnegut’s idea, then Miller would have to acknowledge that he’s no different in 2008 — married with a pair of young children, two recent solo albums under his belt, and finally embracing his good looks — than he was a decade ago when he was a brash youngster tucked behind big wire-framed glasses. To accept that people develop their psyches early is to turn one’s back on maturation, or at the very least, to say a band can’t shed earlier genres.

“When you’re 37 and you play a song that you wrote when you were 27, it can take on new meanings — even though I know what I wrote it about back then,” Miller said. “Back then, you actually have this crazy optimism that is even beyond the invincibility of youth. It’s almost the omnipotence of youth. And it’s great to re-live it — to recall mentally, physically, spiritually, or whatever, to the time when you wrote those songs. It’s great to remember how you felt when you were that age.”

But the vocalist stops short of saying that it would be great to still feel that way. “It’s hard to stay angry for that long of a time. It’s exhausting,” he reflected. “When you get older, you can’t really be bothered to be pissed off all the time.”

Maybe people do change after all — even if they don’t realize it.

Old 97′s :: Metro :: June 5.

Old 97′s

…we’d have to go play Chicago in the early ’90s just to make $400 so we could pay for gas to go lose money in Cleveland. That’s the way it works.

story by Don Bartlett

Old 97′s guitarist Ken Bethea isn’t exactly the embodiment of the rock and roll lifestyle these days. Speaking with Chicago Innerview from his Dallas home recently, he had just returned from such Keith Richards-like chores as dropping his son off at daycare and picking up some groceries. The Dallas quartet has just released their sixth full-length record, which has lived up to the band’s tradition of mixing things up.

With 11 years and six records behind them, the Old 97′s still comprise of the same four friends from Dallas. Bethea, guitarist/vocalist Rhett Miller, and bassist Murray Hammond were neighbors back in the early ’90s. “Rhett, Murray and I lived in some apartment next to each other and started playing some songs together. We eventually booked some coffee shops, just playing as a 3-piece. I had known Phillip from another band and he came out and hooked up with us.”

Their live show was helping the band build a solid fan base and when their second album was picked up by the esteemed Chicago insurgent-country label Bloodshot, their popularity migrated north. “We got popular in Dallas and popular in Chicago, and that was really kind of it. So we used those two towns to springboard into St. Louis and other cities. So we’d have to go play Chicago in the early ’90s just to make $400 so we could pay for gas to go lose money in Cleveland,” Bethea recalls. “That’s the way it works.”

The relentless touring paid dividends, and the band signed a 4-record deal with Elektra Records. Their major label debut, Too Far To Care, was a country punk masterpiece, recalling label mates The Mekons more than the alt-country bands they were finding themselves compared to. 1999′s Fight Songs found the band trying on a pop vibe for size, led largely by principal songwriter Miller. The songs were crisply executed and Miller’s penchant for writing irresistible hooks was on full display. Satellite Rides followed in 2001, giving the band a hit single in the song “King of All of the World”, but their steady success wasn’t enough for the hit-happy label.

“We got dropped from Elektra, which by the time we got dropped was kind of good,” Bethea explains. “Just like everybody says, all the people who signed us and all the people who worked with us over the years all got fired. You get stuck with people who want to sit around and tell you how great the new Third Eye Blind record is, and you don’t really have that much in common with them. So it’s kind of time to move on, if possible.” Miller agreed to do a solo album (2002′s The Instigator) with Elektra to finish out the contract and after dispelling endless breakup rumors, the band moved on.

The band hooked up with Austin-based New West records and saw the benefits of dealing with a smaller record company immediately. “We basically made an agreement with them over the telephone and recorded the record before we did a contract or anything,” he says, “and then went back and got everything signed later. And so far it’s been wonderful…our new record debuted one slot higher on Billboard than our best Elektra record ever did.”

Drag It Up is a bold step back towards the Texas country sound of the band’s earlier records. Pleasantly surprising, however, is that Miller’s now signature hooks haven’t been abandoned. Standout tracks “Won’t Be Home” and “In the Satellite Rides a Star” are evidence enough that solid songwriting and infectious melodies are still a big part of the Old 97′s repertoire. Most striking about the new record its raw, bare-bones sound.

“We didn’t trick up the record at all. It’s just an old 8-track recording with hardly any overdubbing at all. Nothing got bounced or anything. It’s straight up. There are no more than eight tracks on any song on that record. But it’s doing what we want in that it’s a little different than anything we’ve ever done before. And most of the fans seem to like it, because they’ve followed along long enough to expect our albums to be different.”

The praise, Bethea admits, hasn’t been universal. “We got some really bad reviews on the album that mainly didn’t like it because it was slow, or the lyrics weren’t really funny. I don’t know….we try to wear our honesty on our sleeves, and in 1997 none of us were married, and all of us were really into playing gigs and drinking and chasing girls. And that is why those albums sound like they do. And these days reality is not that,” Bethea admits candidly. “And there are people who bemoan that, and I just don’t know what to say,” he says, before adding, “nothing is going to smell like a turd more than a bunch of 50 year-olds playing 21 year-old music.”

The greatest success of the Old 97′s might be that in the age of instant hits and just as instant failures, they have consistently increased their fan base over a career that spans more than a decade. Bethea is the first to admit that it hasn’t always been easy. “You’ve got to have band members that can do whatever it takes, especially if you’re not making any money, or if you’re just making normal money like we are. You’ve got to have band members that are willing to deal with the sacrifice of everything – from egos to lack of drug usage or lack of cheating on your wives – in order to maintain this lifestyle. That’s something that more than anything I’m proud of about our band is that it’s the same four guys. We deal with the ups and the downs of it. And that’s cool. I like it.”

Old 97′s :: The Vic :: September 9.