Low Expectations

For hungry young bands, touring and playing out as much as possible is the best way to get exposure. Hard-working groups spend years hitting the road, taking little or no pay, living off a pittance and often dealing with less-than-comfortable situations when it comes to eating, sleeping, cleaning and traveling — things that the majority of society takes for granted. All this in the name of music, fame and success.

Of course, once a band reaches a certain level, things get a bit easier. The Old 97's have been working at music for the better part of the last decade, and by this point, they've attained a degree of success that affords them bigger venues, a lighter touring schedule and a higher standard of living on the road. But it wasn't always this way.

"In the old days we toured incessantly," says Old 97's frontman and chief songwriter Rhett Miller, sitting at home in Los Angeles, the morning after a promotional show last month in San Francisco at a small club called Foley's. "But in the last five years, since we've been on Elektra, we tour in support of an album, and then we stop and make a record, then tour to support that one, then stop and make another one."

Having a good deal on a major label affords this four-piece — Miller on acoustic guitar and lead vocals, bassist Murry Hammond, electric guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples — freedom from constantly having to be on the road, though it has made them used to a certain level of expectation from live engagements when they do go on tour. The Foley's gig, for example, was an eye opener for Miller and company, a reminder of the way thing used to be when the group played in cramped, hot spaces to tightly packed groups of raucous fans.

"I feel like things have changed and we've gotten a little spoiled, and it's funny because playing in these small place has pointed out to us exactly how spoiled we've gotten," chuckles Miller. "It's been about five years since we played places that size. We're in big theaters now mostly, and last night was so hot I thought I was going to pass out, and it got a little bit scary on stage. That hasn't happened in a while."

The Old 97's started back in 1993 in Dallas, Texas. Though all the band members were born and raised in different parts of the Lone Star State, they all floated away from home for various reasons, and returned a couple of years later, all landing in Dallas. Shortly after their return, Miller and Hammond found themselves in a band called the Sleepy Heroes, which, by Miller's description, was a "total British Invasion-sounding band, jangling, pop-y." But that didn't last too long.

"Ken and Phillip were working real jobs and Murray and I had reached our wits' end with music," remembers Miller. He and Hammond left the Sleepy Heroes after trying hard to make a dent in the music industry, to no avail. That's when the two hooked up with Bethea and Peeples.

"We decided to start a band that had no chance of success, thereby taking off any pressure to succeed," he explains. "We had been worried about getting signed and we'd been thinking that we needed to try desperately to get that. Whatever. Finally we just said, 'To hell with it, too much pressure.' Ironically, the band we started with that in mind ended up being the band that does well."

Though it was Miller's frustration and disappointment with trying to get noticed by the music industry that sparked the beginnings of The Old 97's, it was the attention paid to the music, rather than focusing on its possible ends, that got the band noticed. For Miller, it's much better that way.

"It's a really unattractive trait in a band — that sort of lingering desperation," he says. "We just started a band that we figured would never make it."

The Old 97's' sound is an undeniably catchy mixture of roots country, pop and good ol' rock 'n' roll, a blend that's a little dark and a little forlorn, which makes for some good whiskey drinkin' music. Although Miller hesitates to call the Old 97's a country band, he does readily to cop to the group's musical — perhaps geographically inclined — roots. "We were all raised in Texas, so we all have listened to a lot of Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. I guess it was inevitable that we have some twang to our music," he says. There's a comfortable somberness to much of their sound, but the pop and rock aspects of the music make it livelier and keep it from becoming an alt-country clone — music of that that weepy, depressing, white middle-class indie rock sub-movement known as "No Depression" (named after the magazine that chronicles the genre). Even though the Old 97's don't consider themselves a part of that movement, it rarely bothers the band to be associated with it. "A lot of those people ended up being really good friends of ours, and it only really gets frustrating when things happen like the Too Far To Care review in Rolling Stone, which was so scathing just because we were too loud, basically, because the album was just too rock 'n' roll. They thought it needed to be more country, but when did they get on the board of directors of the Old 97's?"

In fact, says Miller, the Old 97's think of themselves more of as a pop band, which is evident in the music on the group's 1999 release, Fight Songs.

"We never intended to be a country band, or even an alt-country band," Miller asserts, "so I don't think we ever felt pressured to continue in one particular vein. The best songs I had when we were making that record were all poppier, sort of British invasion-pretty songs."

For the Old 97's latest release, Satellite Rides, the group enlisted the producing talents of Wally Gagel, who also worked his magic on 1997's Too Far To Care. The result is something of a mix between Too Far To Care and Fight Songs — the country music undertones are still highly evident in things like steel guitar licks, distinctly country vocal harmonies and shuffling rhythms that hark back to the old west, but the smart pop construction of the songs is responsible for the catchy hooks and sing-along choruses that get the music stuck in your head. The rock is also there as well, embodied in the strong backbone of the sound. Generally speaking, the music rocks.

"I know that there's more rock on this album. I felt like it was more of an electric guitar, big, rock-sounding record. We did put 'Am I Too Late,' on the record, which is a straight-up bluegrass song, but I feel like that's always been in our music," says Miller. The various elements that make up the Old 97's dynamic have become clearer and tighter with time. "It's evolution. We've made five records as a band, and not many bands get that opportunity these days. Every record has outsold the last for us, and I hope that continues. Honestly, when we were making this record, we were thinking about all the great rock 'n' roll albums — obviously Sgt. Pepper's and London Calling and Under a Big Black Sun — stuff like that. We just wanted to make one of those records that stands up from to bottom, where every song deserves to be on it, and I'd like it if Satellite Rides is recognized as one of those records that stays around for ever."

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