With his fifteen-year-old alt-country outfit, the Old 97’s, releasing their seventh record in May and a solo album in the works, Rhett Miller has a lot to be excited about this year. He’ll begin a string of solo acoustic dates with a stop in D.C. at the Black Cat tonight at 9 pm. Speaking by phone from his home in New York State, Miller shared with us his thoughts on fatherhood, politics and the future of the music industry.

I know you have been in the studio recording your seventh full-length studio album with the Old 97’s; what is the status of that record now?
It’s in the mail coming to me, the final mixes … I’m not going to get into hyperbole, or, you know, build up your expectations too much I hope, but it’s the best record we’ve ever made.

How would you characterize its sound in relation to the other albums, and how do you think fans are going to react? Obviously all your albums are very different.
It’s got a lot of variety on it, but I don’t think it sounds too schizophrenic. Ken [Bethea], our guitar player … says it’s “Too Far to Care” meets “Hitchhike to Rhome,” of all things, our very, very first indie album … it’s very much a guitar record.

I know in the past the band kind of made a decision not to bring in extra musicians to the studio so you could more fully reproduce it live. Did you still consider this on the last album?
I guess it did come up a couple of times, the “How am I going to do this live?” … We worked with Salim Nourallah, who is from Dallas, an amazing up-and-coming producer … He really pushed us in a lot of ways. There are things on this record that we have never had before. There is one song that has a Hammond organ on it, which is a thing that Murry [Hammond, bass player] has always been inexorably, vehemently opposed to. Maybe it’s because he’s named Hammond .

Really, so you think is the one, this is the one where everything really came together?
Yeah, funny that you should say that. Probably I shouldn’t bring it up but right now our working title is “The One.” I just liked the positivity of it and that’s the only song that we’ve pulled from sort of our back catalog of unrecorded material, a song called “The One” that I wrote around “Too Far to Care.” At the time it seemed like “It’s sort of silly to think about this, you know, sort of cocky song about how we’re going to get all the money from the major label.” And now it’s just kind of funny because that’s not even a thing anymore, like that sort of dream of getting signed by a major label and getting rich. It’s not even really a thing anymore, whereas twelve years ago when we signed to Elektra, it was. Everybody thought that was it, that was the end goal, signing to the major label. Now Elektra doesn’t even exist.

I like that. I know that when you released your first solo album, there were certain rumors going around that you were going to maybe pull a Ryan Adams and leave Old 97’s. You’ve clearly proven them wrong. How would you compare your solo acoustic live show to the full-band set up with the 97’s? Obviously there’s an entirely different dynamic there.
When I play solo acoustic, it’s not like folk music necessarily, it’s not like a quiet, coffee-sipping situation, it tends to be as raucous, if not as loud, as an Old 97’s show. The thing I love about playing the solo acoustic gigs is that I get to veer off into whatever tangent strikes my fancy. I get to pull songs out of my hat and just play them without having to answer to anybody. And I do that some with the band, I call audibles a lot, I have to run around to each band member and beseech them and try and make a case for it, “Come on! You can remember it!”

You’ve been known for being pretty careful about making your setlist specific to the audience and show of the night. What kind of considerations go into what you would play on a certain night and are there any songs that you absolutely always play, that have never not been on your setlist?
The good thing about those gigs is I don’t feel like I have a lot of rules, I just feel like I get to sort of follow my muse … When I can I try to go out and walk through the audience and see the opening act and get a feel for the vibe. It’s like, are people crazy, is it “Barrier Reef” times 100 night? Or is it “World Inside the World,” kind of quiet, you know? Then you’ve just got to ride the wave … I’ve always prided myself on being able to read an audience. I think it’s indicative of something that’s in my personality that’s not even necessarily a good thing, like trying to please people and being sort of obsessive about the other person. I shouldn’t give a shit basically. I think about it a lot. I spend about two hours a night before every gig and during the gig half the time I’ll realize that I need to do something even weirder and different that I hadn’t thought of.

When you write songs, do you consciously write either “solo” songs or “97’s” songs, or does that decision come later?
It’s sort of after the fact. Actually that’s not true anymore. It used to be very much after the fact. I didn’t know until I’d played it for the band and they’d turned it down it or fallen in love with it or grudgingly accepted it or whatever. But now I can really feel it as I’m writing it. I can tell.

You worked with Jon Brion on both “The Instigator” and “The Believer.” Do you plan to work with him again on future solo releases?
I don’t know. I mean I love Jon, he’s such a magical guy. If you can have him on a record you want to have him on a record … Jon’s in a different sort of space right now too. He’s doing a lot of movies and a little bit of production. I think he’s gotten his heart broken so many times by the system, you know, records that he was so proud of, and seeing them taken away from him and remade by other people.

So you’re living in NY now. How do you balance your life with your family with the demanding schedule you have as a touring and recording artist?
I’ve compromised a little bit of my road dog ethic in the last few years, but starting in May, it’s back to work. Even that said I’ve had to be gone a lot … This is really going to be the hardest time because my 4-year-old can talk so well it’s just gut-wrenching, and my one-and-a-half-year-old is so sweet and she’s just starting to talk and be hyper-aware of everything … I’m not sure if I’ve got the answer but I’d rather do this than sell insurance.

That’s for sure. So what are you listening to these days? Are there any artists that you are particularly excited about?
I really love Jenny Lewis’s solo record. And I just got the new Rilo Kiley record, and it’s good but it’s weird, you know? … It’s like everything these days, you’ve got to cherry pick. They put out an album, but what is an album anymore except a suggested playlist? You pair it down and pick the four, six, eight songs you like and the rest of them get deleted, and you rearrange them in whatever order, and flip them into whatever other playlist you’ve got. So I’m consuming music these days like everybody else, which is to say, you know, primarily on an iPod. It’s kind of cool in a way, I mean it really puts so much power in the hands of the listener. You can carry around your entire music collection, and that’s got to be good for music.

You’re talking about the future of the music industry, I know you recently re-launched your website. How important do you think, now, an online presence is to a musician’s career?
It’s it. That’s it, that’s your main thing. I guess it used to be about the waiting for our article to come out in a fan magazine or waiting for the band to come around on tour or the little scraps of information you can get, but now, if you don’t exist digitally you don’t exist … I have not signed another record deal for my solo stuff, and my manager is talking to some major labels that are interested. I’m just not sure if I believe in it anymore. I just don’t really see why I couldn’t record an album myself and put it up on my website and then that’s it. You know you don’t get paid for this stuff, that’s not how musicians have gotten paid in years unless you’re a superstar. So why not? Why not just leave them out of the loop?

I read recently that you’re scheduled to open for Wyclef Jean in Atlanta during the NHL All-Star Weekend. How did this come about, exactly?
It’s a benefit for Usher’s charity, hosted by Usher, and Wyclef is headlining and the Old 97’s are opening. All I can say is if I don’t get to hang out backstage with Wyclef and Usher I’m going to be pissed. I don’t really know, maybe it has to do with the fact that we recently played in Toronto with a band called Blue Rodeo that’s huge in Canada—they pull 20,000 into the Molson Ampitheater—we opened for them and got to hang out that night with a bunch of NHL illuminati and we’re all huge hockey fans.

Before the last presidential election, the “Future Soundtrack for America” on Barsuk Records featured an Old 97’s cover of “Northern Line.” In this election year, do you have any plans to be involved in anything like that?
I don’t know. I’m really torn because I feel strongly about it but also it feels so futile but I guess that’s what the people in power want you to feel … I’ve got a song right now that I’m really torn about what I’m going to do with. It’s called “Government Man” and I wrote it about a friend of mine who is in the service. He just got back from a year in Iraq and we’re afraid he’s going to get sent back. And he challenged me, “Well nobody’s writing songs about how they’re pissed off about this.” And the only way I could do it was to write a song to this unseen government man talking about my friend the soldier … I can’t figure out how in this sort of post-modern, ironic world, it’s like they’ve neutered the fringe, the left, you know. It’s like the people who should normally be angry and outspoken feel stupid to be angry and outspoken because it’s such a cliché, and you know, like “Well I’m not some hippy just holding up a peace sign and trying to get laid.”

So what are your plans for the rest of 2008?
Well the record comes out in May, and between now and then I’m definitely going to start working in earnest on the next solo record, which I’m not going to get impatient and push. I’m going to let it happen naturally. I have a feeling it will come out in early 2009. So the 97’s will start touring in May and go through the whole end of the year, hardcore touring. I’ll try not too miss too many birthdays, and “first’s.”

Rhett Miller is playing at the Black Cat, located at 1811 14th St. NW tonight at 9 pm. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here.

Interview conducted by Eileen Lohmann, photo courtesy of Gold Village Entertainment

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.