Clips

“After Sandy,” The New York Times Aug. 4, 2019:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html

Rhett Miller Interview, KXUA/UA Traveler 07/29/10:

“It was a lonely holiday/I was alone, you were away/in Fayetteville or in another state/There’s so many towns I hate.”

Thus begins the Old 97’s song “Lonely Holiday,” from their 1999 album Fight Songs. Being a big Old 97’s fan and a life-long Fayettevillian, that line has always irked me a bit. When I got to interview Rhett Miller (lead singer for the band), all I had to do was mention the song; “I know, I know” he offered. His apology was to explain the song in a way I had never interpreted it; I had always viewed the song as Miller’s angst at a girlfriend abroad.

I had inverted their roles: the song is from the point of view of a girlfriend, mad at Rhett’s absence due to touring. In fact, he termed her the enemy in the song (bad breakup, I’m assuming). He reassured me that he loved Arkansas; his great-grandmother is from Pine Bluff. The town serves as the backdrop of the song ‘Am I Too Late?’

Location is undeniably a part of the band’s identity; particularly their country roots. Most songs are peppered with Texan references, although that does nothing to restrict their appeal. Indeed, whenever Miller forgets what song he’s on, he simply thinks back to where he was when he wrote it. ‘Big Brown Eyes,’ a song he assured me he’d play, was written in the kitchen of an apartment he shared with the guitarist from the Toadies, on a night in which he drank four tallboys.

Out of curiosity, I asked which would be his most exotic song.

‘She Loves the Sunset,’ he replied.

A song that seems you should be sipping drinks in coconuts with cocktail umbrellas, gazing upon hula girls was, in reality, written on the porch of his in-laws house in Cleveland. Exotic? Perhaps not. But it isn’t Texan.

Fighting the urge to get quiet and contemplative in their old age, their latest album—Blame It On Gravity—returns to their roots in Rhett’s mothers garage some 20 years ago. Expect a mix of classic Old 97’s hits, and a few sneak peeks from their upcoming album, The Grand Theatre, Volume 1, when they play George’s this Friday night.

Expect to hear more from them, too, as Miller assures me they’ve been harassing their booking agent to get them more shows in Arkansas. “It’s ridiculous we aren’t playing as many shows up there as we are in Houston.” Fayetteville is, at the least, “incrementally cooler than Dallas.”