The Old 97's

Too Far To Care, the 1997 Elektra Records release from The Old 97’s, may be one of the greatest records of all time, but hot on its heels is the group’s new CD, Fight Songs, an album that currently has The Old 97's enjoying some very overdue success. Recently featured on CNN, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Late Show with Jay Leno, The Old 97’s are beginning to greatly expand their fan base, somewhat of an overdue success in my opinion, but then I’m extremely biased because in my humble opinion, The Old 97’s are one of the best bands of the 1990s.

Originating in Dallas, Texas, this quartet of country punkers—guitarist Ken Bethea, bass player / vocalist Murray Hammond, guitarist / vocalist Rhett Miller and drummer Philip Peeples—have earned acclaim through hard work and a massive amount of talent. Their fan base and influences run far and wide, as evidenced by the appearance of former X singer and punk rock goddess, Exene Cervenka, on Too Far To Care’s "Four Leaf Clover," and the wide range of people who will tell you that they love The Old 97’s. Building a following from the ground up by a massive amount of touring, turning out thoughtful lyrical content and consistent great songwriting, The Old 97’s are a little bit Johnny Cash, a little bit R.E.M and a little bit Frank Black.

I spoke with Rhett Miller, prolific singer / songwriter / guitarist and vocalist for The Old 97’s while he was on a short break in Texas.

Great, where are you at?

I love that part of the country, my girlfriend’s sister lives down in Santa Cruz.

It was good. It was long. There was some flying, and that gets a little weird because you never really get enough sleep if you have to wake up and fly. We're lucky because we've always had a sort of a momentum just built and the tour just got bigger and bigger, and that's cool because we feel like we’re upwardly mobile. We all got along. It was our first time in a bus, it's a huge difference.

Oh yeah, we were the ultimate road warrior van band.

Well we kind of did it ourselves. When we toured for our last album on Elektra, we toured in a van, but this time we decided we would do the bus and we would drive all night and each day we'd wake up early and go do radio, in-stores and press. We ended up not making the kind of money we used to make when we were on the road, we ended up just breaking even. It was sort of a career decision, I guess.

I'm in Round Rock, Texas, outside of Austin. My girlfriend is working on a documentary on Rocky Erikson, the late ‘60s psychedelic pioneer from Austin. He's kind of the American Sid Barrett.

They've been working on it for about a month. It's kind of crazy because a lot of the people they are interviewing are schizophrenic and freaks and acid casualties. She’s producing it and my friend Kevin is directing it. It's weird, it's his first time directing, it's a big, weird job.

It was cool. Letterman has always been my favorite of those shows. Although it was the least comfortable to perform on. Ya’ know Leno is the least cool of them, but by far the nicest. Letterman is the most hip but he kind of treats you like nobody—although we are sort of nobodies. But I got to meet Dave Foley.

The new single, "Nineteen."

Very well.

Oh yeah, we had done that interview the a couple weeks before. It was good timing, they ran it the next day. It kind of legitimizes us in all our parents’ minds. The Tonight Show and CNN.

Well I don't know. Growing up, sure. He's our generation’s guy.

Yeah, and he wasn't really around in the ‘80s. Nobody our age is going to watch Carson, he would have the 102 year old woman and the singing parakeet.

When the camera was on he came over and said "Great job guys. That was really great!" and then shook our hands. Then as soon as the camera was off, he just walked off. It wasn't even like a "see you later," it was like a "ok, good I can leave now." I don't blame him, he has to do it every night of his life.

Ken maintains it. We were lucky because we've had a really good Internet presence since the Internet started more or less. Ken and Phillip are both very computer savvy. When we toured in the old days, we had a big metal mailbox—a horseshoe-shaped black metal thing with a flag that comes up like mailbox—and people would fill out cards for the mailing list. We'd sit around and put stamps on postcards. As soon as we figured out the Internet, that was over. Ken keeps it up pretty well, but I'll tell you the much better is the fan site, Hit by a Train. It's incredible. It makes our Web site look like crap. It's really good, he's got pretty much every review that's ever come out on us, tons of rumors, all kinds of stuff. It's really good.

Thank you. It's funny because it serves such a different purpose than the new record. I know some people who think that Too Far To Care was that—the drinking and driving record. Did you guys approve of Fight Songs?

It wasn't too much of a departure?

It was very much sort of a natural progression for us. We've never really sat down and made a studio record before. We've never taken our time and kind of done the whole dynamic range thing, so that was kind of what we were shooting for. It's also a function of the songs I was writing, so that makes it a little different. I think it's less different than people are thinking.

Cool, thank you.

That's not that big a deal, it helped us out in the early days. We'd be ungrateful to moan about it too much.

No. Songs are songs. I'm not trying to write second generation Buck Owens, or third generation Son Volt. People need to call it something and they need to be able to reference it and it's all right.

Murray produced the solo record I did in high school in, like, '88. He and I kept working together and did other bands. Then Ken moved in across the hall from him in our apartment building and that was it. We kind of took off. Making a band is really hard, finding three other people that are like-minded and with whom you can put up. It's an almost impossible sort of task so once we did that it was all downhill from there.

Chicago, The Metro; San Francisco, I don't know what venue I'd say, but I love playing that city. I would have said the Great American Music Hall, but I think it's kind of changed recently. Knoxville—we do really well in the Midwest and the West Coast and we've got this thing building on the East Coast. There are always cities where there is that sentimental attachment – like Chicago was the first city to embrace us. That's always probably been my favorite place to play. They accepted us before people in Dallas did. It was funny because when people in Dallas heard we were big in Chicago then they started taking us more seriously. People are funny—they need validation from outside sources.

That's my girlfriends mom's favorite expression, and I'm learning to believe it myself – but I'm speaking all the time.

I must because things are going really well.

Yes, that I do and the girl whom that is written about is now nineteen. She was fifteen at the time.

So is that what "Nineteen" is about?

I will always have it bad for a number of stick-legged girls.

We'll find out in about three months. He's predicting the apocalypse.

Oh yes, but I shouldn’t go into those.

No, for some reason no. That isn't working as well anymore.

Probably right around here. Right now they are baking in the sun and they're almost unbearably hot. But I like them, I like them better than LA.

No. I think it's ...difficult enough. It's not that it's good, it's that it's bad enough to make a crooked man go straight. In fact I was just there when we did Letterman, I stayed in another one of those $400 hotels and I'm going fuck man, my rent when we got signed wasn't $400.

No I got rid of that house. Now I have a happy home.

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