text: tom topkoff
photos: joe ryan

Just after the release of their latest album Fight Songs, I was privileged enough to hook up with the boys from Dallas' Old 97's. It was the first day of their latest tour and Rhett Miller and company are preparing for a show at La Zona Rosa here in Austin. They encounter a couple of small problems with Rhett's guitar amplifier, but it's not a huge issue. They think they can work with it. As the sound check ends, they decide that they've gotta go to the music store to get a couple of cords and a guitar tuner. Drummer Philip Peeples keeps raiding the Chips Ahoy cookies from the snack table. There's talk about how good the T-shirts look, possible video ideas, and that it takes a couple days to get the rust worked outta you when you return to the road. Guitarist Ken Bethea pops in and digs into the cookies, even stopping to dip them in peanut butter. "This is great, they should put this on the rider every time," he says before leaving for a home-cooked meal at some local friends' house. Yep, sounds like the rock and roll life to me. Rhett sits down to catch his breath as Philip continues to make wise cracks at their roadie, Noah. The rest, as you can imagine, just gets nuttier from here as Rhett gives his philosophy, sometimes digressing into stimulating interchanges with Philip, who sits on the couch across the way.

TT: Let's start with a basic question, because I know y'all are still building a fan base. So, for the uninitiated, how would you describe the sound of the Old 97's? I know how I would describe it, how would you describe it?

RM: Lately, my big line has been "American rock and roll." (Laughter-then with a heavy metal type delivery) "American Rock and Roll!" (More laughter)

PP: Like Huey Lewis and the News!

RM: Yeah. (More laughter ensues) We're not entirely dis-similar. Just songs performed by a band--

PP: Normal guys--

RM: Kinda started out in a bar--we're not virtuosos. Yeah, the obvious way is "alternative country," but I mean---I keep coming back to these things, like if R.E.M. came out today, would they be alternative country? Or if Tom Petty came out today, would he be alternative country? Obviously not the later stuff of R.E.M., but the early stuff.

PP: Neil Young definitely would be alternative country. (At this point they go back and forth on this topic for a bit.)

RM: Yeah, Neil Young, but then again you could argue, that he invented what is now considered---but anyways.

PP: I wonder why doesn't he get credited with inventing alternative country instead of grunge music?

RM: I know.

PP: I hear a bigger connection with alternative country than grunge.

RM: Well, you hear both in different periods of his career.

PP: That's true, that's true. Wow, okay.

RM: And bad electronic music.

PP: Yeah, but everybody goes through that, right?

RM: That's how you clean your palette between stylistic changes. (More laughter ensues)

TT: I know you did a lot of time of the Dallas singer songwriter circuit before getting involved with these guys. Besides the obvious advantage of being able to hone your skills in songwriting, what do you think the club time brings to you in the Old 97's?

RM: That's a good question. I've always believed that you have a certain number of super shitty gigs in you, and you have to get them all out. So, the quicker you can get them out, the better. And you have a certain number of really bad songs that you have to get out. And, you know, they'll still keep bubbling up, like toxins in the human body. But, starting at 15, I had a lot of really bad gigs, so, knock wood. Which I guess it's just a long way of saying experience. And I had to go through a lot of really bad bands with band members that I didn't gel with, or like, or respect, or have anything in common with and finally to meet these guys, and we're all, you know, incredibly close friends and very similar, and we have found ways to move around each other without getting on each others nerves too badly. It's a huge thing just to have worked out all the kinks. It's a lot easier now to do it. I guess that's obvious too because we're better funded and better attended.

TT: What, in your mind, do you need to have to create that great song?

RM: Aye! That's where it gets weird. Psychological problems (Philip chuckles), a girlfriend, or a lack of a girlfriend, but either way it needs to be sort of an extreme (pauses.) It gets said a lot that songwriters need a crisis to bring about the song.

PP: Or artists in general.

RM: Or artists in general, yeah, yeah, they rely on the crisis. And that's probably true and a lot of artists end up ruining themselves, or their lives, or their relationships by trying to bring that crisis on themselves. So, yeah, I don't know. So, the crisis is the one thing you forget. The best interview answer I ever heard to a question like that, somebody asked Steven Malkamus from Pavement what the hardest part about writing a song was and he goes "the third verse." (Laughter erupts again-then emphatically) It was the best answer! It's true, cause the first two verses just come out, and then the third verse, you're like, "shit, I've already said everything!" That's why people always repeat the first verse.

TT: I guess that's why there's punk rock and the minute and a half songs.

RM: Exactly, only two verses.

TT: Your lyrics are, well, as they should be, from a fairly personal level. Is it pretty much all the stories about all the girls and stuff, it is based in a lot of truth and just a bit of blowing up, or is it a lot of blowing up and a little bit of truth?

RM: Umm, (shyly) I don't know. I consistently had girlfriends, but I haven't slept around as much as some of the songs might make it sound. And I haven't had a problem with whiskey, like the songs might make it sound. There's, you know, it's hard to say what's embellishment, but a lot of it is imagined, just like fiction. So I don't consider the songs vastly different from fiction, and that's the way it is, you just kinda make it up as you go. But, if it's gonna sound real, it has to be somewhat real. I mean, I'm a lot nerdier and more boring than it sounds like in the songs. I guess that's the real answer.

PP: You're a true artist, too, you've been fooling everybody.

TT: Well, have any of the characters in your songs come back to give you a hard time?

RM: Yes. That is inevitable. A lot of songs, and, you know, always, you'll have girlfriends who are bothered by songs about ex girlfriends, and the ex girlfriends who are bothered by songs about them, and yeah. And they all show up at the show (chuckles.)

PP: They're all just glad to be mentioned somewhere in there.

RM: The thing about it is, they know where to find you! There are ads in the paper, saying "Come see your ex boyfriend and yell at him on such and such a night at such and such club!" So, yeah, it happens.

TT: In some respects, Murry's tunes seem a little more "down home," so to speak, from lack of a better term, and his harmonies and additions add another dimension to y'alls sound. His background is different from yours how?

RM: He grew up in a small town, and I grew up in Dallas, but, strangely, while that is true, and his song choices are more sorta traditional American country, folk, whatever, his contribution to the band vis avi the British Invasion stuff is much greater than mine even.

TT: Interesting.

RM: Yeah, which you wouldn't expect, but he, Murry, is kind of a musical genius. I worry more about words, and I'm lucky enough to get melodies to go along with them, but Murry is way more a musicologist than I am, and way more of an arranger, and just sort of a receptacle and a fount of knowledge. He knows a lot.

PP: He doesn't know how to use it, but he knows a lot. (More chuckling)

RM: Yeah. His oooh's are all Dave Davies, and his harmonies are half Carter Family and half Beatles. So, I'm lucky. People underestimate Murry constantly. Like Philip.

PP: Yeah! Well, you didn't drive down here with him. But, no he did fine. (More laughter) He's a cruise control freak. I look down, he's barefooted (Noah, the roadie, laughs), he's speeding up behind cars with brake lights on. I'm like, "Hey stop." He's like, "Oops." You know cruise control.

RM: You do it with your hands.

PP: Yeah, he's doing it all with his fingers, it's like "Oh God, don't look."

RM: Anyway.

TT: Why did you call it Fight Songs, 'cuz to me it doesn't seem that angry?

RM: I know, part of the reason was, we wanted to---

PP: We were gonna call it Imaginary Friends.

RM: That sounded kinda wimpy and it didn't give away the sort of the subtext that is sort of angry, slash regretful, slash just tense. There's sort of a tense, unspoken thing beneath a lot of the songs; sort of unhappiness. So we wanted the listener to be clued in right off the bat to look for that 'cuz it's pretty subtle, because so many of the melodies are so upbeat.

TT: "Murder (Or A Heart Attack)" is about a cat, I know that from a Stubb's gig where you were premiering your new stuff.

RM: (Enthusiastically) Yeah!

TT: Does the cat ever come home?

RM: Yes. (Laughter) He came home before I could write the third verse. Which is why there is no third verse on that song (more laughter.)

PP: That solved that problem.

RM: Yeah, solved that problem.

PP: Well, what are you gonna write about? The first verse and second verse has no meaning now 'cuz the cat came back.

RM: From now on (sings to the melody of the song) "I'll be leaving the back door closed" or whatever. Noah the roadie: Let the cat back out and write a third verse! (Laughter)

PP: That's not very nice, though. (More laughter)

RM: Well, anyway.

TT: I'll just wrap this up with this; do you think you're becoming a little bit more jaded as you get older.

RM: (Firmly) Yes. I bought sandals. I mean, look at this; I'm wearing sandals. I'm old! I don't care anymore! I don't think it's important to be hip, I don't think it's important to be cool. I'll wear sandals, and I always thought sandals were the dorkiest thing. Here I am. (Then we digress again.)

PP: Supposedly they're comfortable.

RM: I'm in Austin, and the hippie vibe is rubbing off on me.

PP: At least you didn't buy the kind with the little thing between the toe and the two straps that are four dollars, which I like.

RM: Flip-flops, those are good!

PP: They're very uncomfortable, they hurt your toes. They get up in there-ouch.

RM: Yeah, in some ways, yes, you get more realistic as you figure out how to work this whole crazy world.

PP: It's what you do.

RM: Yes, I'm jaded because we are perceived as having this incredible success and at the same time, I'm making less money than when I worked for the plumber. So there's that. Then again, what am I complaining about? I haven't had a job in years, I get to go all around the country, and it's fun, you know? I get to play video games and sleep late and rock out for a living. Yeah, I get a little jaded and a little crabby, as I'm sure Noah can attest.

Noah the roadie: We all live.

RM: We always have to catch ourselves, the band, and say "We are lucky guys."

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