As you may recall, I recently spent a soggy weekend at Seattle Center catching some great live music at the annual Bumbershoot festival. One of the first best bands on my schedule were the Old 97s, whose frontman and bass player – Rhett Miller and Murray Hammond, respectively – were kind enough to sit down with me before sound check for a quick Q&A. Both Miller and Hammond have recently released solo albums, and Miller will be spending some time touring Europe with Steve Earle this fall. But, this night, they played a fiery set on the main stage, pulling from across their decade-and-a-half history as a band, and even a couple cover tunes. Here’s what they had to say before the show:
Kim Ruehl: How have things changed for you as a band in the last 16 years or so?
Rhett Miller: The nice thing about our career is that it’s been a steady progression. I feel like that’s what we said we would do in the beginning, but I never really imagined that we would pull it off. It feels like it gets better and better. Danny Goldberg, our manager, was just saying to me, “I don’t understand it, Rhett. Your audience keeps growing for the Old 97s.” I guess that’s kind of true.
Murray Hammond: It’s funny – I guess we just got good at it. Even before 2000 came along, we hit [a point where] we knew how to do it. It became easy for us. There wasn’t a lot of pressure or anything. We were able to wake up every day and we know what to do with the band. I think by the time we hit Satellite Rides, which was a 2001 release, it’s been about the same ever since then. I can see it’s going to be like this for as long as we feel like doing it.
RM: I imagine we haven’t had our last fight or our last awkward time. But, the growing pains that derail bands…we’ve gone through them and come out the other side. It makes it a lot easier to play and record. It makes it easier for me to write because I know what I’m dealing with. There have been times when we were figuring out what the Old 97s are, could be, should be…that’s been figured out. I still like the idea of pushing it, but now it’s less an idea of fighting against the other band members to push it than it is finding things we all love that we’ve never tried before.
MH: It never hurts to push. Pushing has always done good things for us. Your solo career has done good things because it’s provided an outlet. You’ve always written almost two records for every record we’ve put out. Finally you don’t have to be constipated.
RM: [laughs] Let’s not get gross about it.
MH: Well you need a laxative for your creativity [laughs]. It’s gummed up til you can get it out. It makes you wonder, “Can I make the band do it all?”
How do you avoid predictability?
RM: I don’t know that we do [laughs].
MH: I don’t think we do. I think, what’s wrong with predictability? I know exactly what I’m going to hear.
RM: We did a four-night stand in Brooklyn recently where we played a different set every night. There was no repeat except for “Time Bomb.” In those four nights we played about 95-96 songs. That was nice because that was the beginning of this summer tour. It meant that, during the summer, we had a lot of songs at our disposal that we’d forgotten. We were able to pull out songs we hadn’t played in a long time. That was nice. But still, when I have dreams of the Old 97s, we’re on stage and it’s always kind of the same. It’s a little bit of Groundhog Day. Not in a bad way. I agonize over the set list, but then it’s done. You just go.
MH: And, because it’s a dream, somebody’s forgotten their guitar, the audience starts filing out and there’s no way to get them back.
Are you going to be playing stuff off your solo record tonight?
RM: One song, yeah. I haven’t made the set list yet, but there’s one song the band backs me up on. It’s not that they back me up on it, it’s that we play it as if it were an Old 97s song, which is nice because it’s not like Ken learned the guitar part that’s on the record, he just made up a guitar part. It sounds cool. We had so much fun doing the “Evening with Old 97s” thing all summer because we got to whip out old songs that we re-learned. There’s the thing…people like to make up drama where there is none, or where there may have been some in the distant past. Around the time of The Instigator, we were figuring out how it would work for me to have solo records and the band to keep doing records. It was a big time of transition, regardless. The record industry, as it was, was folding, Elektra was folding. It was a different time. there was a lot of upheaval. But once we made it past that, it’s been pretty smooth. We’re pretty open. When something bugs us, we speak up. I think it was something good to do this summer to let the fans know we’re a big family. Everyone supports each other. We all love Murray’s solo record and for him to come out and do his songs was great to see every night. I got to do my thing…
Having been at it so long, though, are there songs you forget you ever did?
MH: There might have been one maybe. We play everything. Even the most obscure one will get some time every few years. We always know how to play it because we played it so much in the past that it’s still in our bones.
RM: It’s funny. The handful of songs we were able to pull of when we did our gigs in Brooklyn weren’t even the most obscure songs. Like “What I Wouldn’t Do” – we’ve done that song a million times. Just, for some reason, it didn’t fit on the set list. Sometimes I didn’t have time to think about the lyrics because they’ve always been confusing for me. [Sings] “I’m cracking up on a radio…” I could probably remember them sitting right here just fine… it’s not like there are songs we just can’t pull off. ”19” was always a weird song for us so we never really did it that much. But, we did that song [this summer] no problem, and it sounded pretty good.
MH: The thing is, your set list doesn’t get longer just because you have more records. Your set list is the same amount of time, so that means there’s just less being showcased off each record. Even when we have a new record, we play the new record heavily but everything else is played just as heavy. I always think of how Cheap Trick does their sets. They’ve always got a new record, but it’s the whole catalog. It’s the whole show, that’s what the band’s all about.
RM: I obsess about the set list, so if we’re playing something I feel like is testing [the audience’s] patience, I’ll immediately follow it with a song I know they love. It’s a reward. You were so patient listening to this new song…
Is there anything you won’t play live, or that you’ll never play live again?
MH: I can’t think of anything.
RM: There’s not an Old 97s song, but “Jack the Necrophiliac…”
MH: We’ll play it again one of these days. It just takes circumstance.
RM: that wasn’t anything I wrote either, that was a cover of a crazy obscure song.
MH: Sometimes we have to be talked into it. Sometimes we might not be into it one day but we can be talked into it another day.
RM: Bloodshot is doing a reissue of “Wreck Your Life” and it’s a vinyl double album…
MH: Oh really?
RM: The record on one, and then the bonus tracks, seven-inches, “Crying but My Tears Are Far Away” and all that stuff on the second album. There’s a lot of art work. Somebody wrote liner notes for it, and it’s really well-written. That was a moment in time.
MH: We didn’t necessarily become exactly what they wanted us to become, but who ever does?
What are you guys listening to now?
RM: I’m bad at keeping up with what’s new. I really love Joe Pernice and the Pernice Brothers. He’s got a new novel out that’s fantastic and he released an album of covers to go along with it. It’s got some really unusual covers. There’s stuff you’d think he might do, but then there’s stuff like “Chevy Van.” Remember “Chevy Van”? [They both sing “We made love in a Chevy van and that’s alright with me.”]
MH: Man, if there was ever a 70s sentiment, “That’s alright with me.”
RM: He meets a girl on the side of the road. He picks her up, she’s barefoot. She falls asleep and then when she wakes up they make love and then he drops her off and drives away.
MH: Hippies.
(photo by Carrie Robinson. More photos from Bumbershoot.)
