Live from New York: Rhett Miller’s Holiday Extravaganza

Rhett Miller threw his second annual Holiday Extravaganza at City Winery NYC, and loud liquid revels were had in the name of the somewhat darker side of Christmas.

Miller apologized, with a grin, for so many songs about drinking, sex, and despair.  No one minded a shred – the audience was dedicated to him, and to the band he’s fronted for the past 20 years, the Texas-born Old 97’s.  People already knew the words to the songs he performed from Old 97’s 2014 Most Messed Up – like the title track, and “Wasted“, and “Let’s Get Drunk & Get It On” – as well as standards like “Doreen” (1994) and “Won’t Be Home” (2004). 

Guests were many, varied, and not all musicians.  Miller introduced Jen Kirkman with Singular Girl and Wyatt Cenac with Most Messed Up, and the theme music had a point. Kirkman complained of family Christmases in Boston with Bing Crosby and “Holiday Inn,” while Cenac ripped racism, and, in the end, removed his fashionably distressed Brooklyn canvas coat to reveal the best Christmas sweater ever.  

Dave Hill was an almighty surprise, in his velvet jacket and Royal Stewart tartan trousers.  You knew he was funny, but his story of his only evening – so far – playing Santa, in an unspeakably soiled red suit and beard, when he was a youth in Cleveland, topped anything I’ve heard him do before. When he and Miller began a hilarious version – or perhaps perversion – of George Michael’s Last Christmas, Hill’s “rippin’” electric guitar solos were, said Miller, the only way to redeem this “shitty” song, and he was so right.

Miller served up “Holly Jolly Christmas,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,”  “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” and a swinging “Santa Baby” (with Kirkman) amidst the hard-drinking and sharp-edged stand-up. Slim, long-haired, and blue-eyed, moving his hips like Elvis and whipping his hair and windmilling his strumming arm now and then, Miller’s easy on the eyes as well as the ears. The crowd ate him up with a spoon; whiskey kept arriving on stage, passed up from the audience, and all the performers were quite good-natured indeed about this. The evening closed with a glorious surprise guest and another fellow Texan: Mickey Raphael. Raphael’s harmonica solo on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow“ was a seasonal gift of all time. Here’s hoping the Miller Holiday Extravaganza is now a regular December night at the Winery for years to come.

photographs via Rhett Miller at rhettmiller.com and Instagram