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Sunday, December 2nd, 2018

3:00pm

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Old 97's with Caseymagic (DIY Punk Rock Magician), Rhett Miller (solo) "Rock and roll's been very very good to me," Rhett Miller sings on "Longer ThanYou've Been Alive," an epic six-minute stream-of-consciousness meditation on hislife in music. It's a rare moment of pulling back the curtain, on both the excesses andtedium of the world of a touring musician, and it's the perfect way to open the Old97's new album, 'Most Messed Up.'"I wrote that song very quickly and didnt rewrite one word of it," Millerexplains. "It's sort of a thesis statement not just for this record, but for my life'swork."To say that rock and roll has been good to the Old 97's (guitarist/vocalist Miller,bassist/vocalist Murry Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea, and drummer PhilipPeeples) would be an understatement. The band emerged from Dallas twenty yearsago at the forefront of a musical movement blending rootsy, country-influencedsongwriting with punk rock energy and delivery. The New York Times has describedtheir major label debut, 'Too Far To Care,' as "a cornerstone of the 'alternativecountry' movement[that] leaned more toward the Clash than the Carter Family."They've released a slew of records since then, garnering praise from NPR andBillboard to SPIN and Rolling Stone, who hailed the band as "four Texans raised onthe Beatles and Johnny Cash in equal measures, whose shiny melodies, and fatalisticcharacter studies, do their forefathers proud." The band performed on televisionfrom Letterman to Austin City Limits and had their music appear in countless filmand TV soundtracks (they appeared as themselves in the Vince Vaughn/JenniferAniston movie 'The Break Up'). Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan told TheHollywood Reporter that he put the band on a continuous loop on his iPod whilewriting the show's final scene.'Most Messed Up' finds the Old 97's at their raucous, boozy best, all swagger andheart. Titles like "Wasted," "Intervention," "Wheels Off," "Let's Get Drunk And Get ItOn," and "Most Messed Up" hint at the kind of narrators Miller likes to inhabit, menwho possess an appetite for indulgence and won't let a few bad decisions get in theway of a good story."A few people in my life said, 'You can't sing 'Let's get drunk and get it on,'" Millerremembers. "I said, 'What do you mean? I've been singing that sentiment for 20years! I was just never so straightforward about it.'"It was a trip to Music City that inspired Miller to throw away his inhibitions assongwriter and cut right to the heart of things."For me, this record really started in Nashville on a co-write session with JohnMcElroy," he says. "I really admired his wheels off approach to songwriting, And Iliked the idea he had for how he thought I should interact with my audience. He said,'I think your fans want you to walk up to the mic and say fuck.' It was liberating." Itreminded me that I dont have to be too serious or too sincere or heartfelt. I justhave to have fun and be honest. I felt like I kind of had free reign to go ahead andwrite these songs that were bawdier and more adult-themed."The magic in Miller's songwriting lies in the depth that he lends his characters. Uponcloser inspection, the hard partying and endless pursuit of a good time often revealsitself to be a band-aid covering up deeper wounds and emotional scars."There's a lot of darkness hidden in this record," he explains. "One of the big Old 97'stricks is when we write about something kind of dark and depressing, it works bestwhen it's a fun sounding song. So it's not until the third or fourth listen that yourealize the narrator of this song is a complete disaster."If that description calls to mind The Replacements, it's no coincidence. Miller is a fanof the Minneapolis cult heroes, and now counts Tommy Stinson among his ownfriends and fans. Best known as bassist for the Mats and more recently Guns 'n'Roses, Stinson joined the Old 97's in the studio in Austin, Texas, to lay down electricguitar on ## tracks, elevating the sense of reckless musical abandon to new heightsand lending the album an air of the Rolling Stones' double-guitar attack. It's acollaboration Miller never would have even imagined in 1994 when the bandreleased their debut."We didnt think we'd last until the year 1997," Miller laughs. "We thought the namewould get a little weird when it became 1997, but we decided none of our bands hadever lasted that long, so let's not even worry about it. But as it all started to unfold,we realized we could maybe make a living doing this, and we were all reallyconscious of wanting to be a career band. It was way more important to us tomaintain a really high level of quality, at the expense, perhaps, of having hit singlesor fitting in with the trends of the time, and I'm glad we did that."Twenty years on, it's safe to say rock and roll has indeed been very, very good to theOld 97's.