Pages tagged “old 97's”

New gems from the Old 97’s

The latest from veteran Dallas alt.country rockers Old 97’s is an album I thought would never be made. Following 2004’s subdued Drag It Up, lead singer Rhett Miller focused extensively on his solo career, and I figured that the 97’s had finally derailed. Not so fast, buckaroo. Miller, wit firmly intact, contributes 11 of his smartass, lovelorn pop nuggets on this record, and bass player Murry Hammond piles on with a letter-perfect Buddy Holly tribute. The songwriting, as always, is top notch. But the band’s secret weapon has always been Ken Bethea’s Telecaster. He’s back in a big way, playing all the right notes and stomping all over them—moving from Pete Townshend power chords (“The Fool”) to Dick Dale surf workouts (“Dance With Me”) to Keith Richards swagger (“The Easy Way”). He nails it every time. Blame It On Gravity is a welcome return to form.

Longtime twangy-meets-jangly Texas rockers, Old 97's, have announced plans to release their first new album in four years, Blame it On Gravity, on May 13 via New West Records.

In the meantime, through April 9 fans can go to Old97s.NewWestRecords.com and sign up to receive an exclusive digital download of a performance of the new song "My Two Feet." The footage was filmed live at the end of the band's recording session party in Dallas earlier this year.

In late May, frontman Rhett Miller and the rest of the poppy-meets-alt-country Old 97's crew will kick off a nationwide tour at the Meridian in Houston.

Blame this on gravity:

May
30 - Houston, Texas @ The Meridian
31 - Dallas, Texas @ House of Blues

June
1 - Tulsa, Okla. @ Cain’s
3 - Omaha, Neb.@ Slowdown
4 - Minneapolis, Minn. @ 1st Ave
5 - Chicago, Ill. @ Metro
6 - St. Louis, Mo. @ Pageant
7 - Lawrence, Kanas @ Wakarusa Festival
10 - Denver, Colo. @ Gothic Theater
11 - Salt Lake City, Utah @ The Palladium
13 - Vancouver B.C. @ Richard’s on Richards
14 - Seattle, Wash. @ Showbox
15 - Portland, Ore. @ Wonder Ballroom
17 - San Francisco, Calif. @ The Fillmore
19 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Crash Mansion
20 - San Diego, Calif. @ House of Blues

Related links:
Old97s.com
NewWestRecords.com

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

The Old 97’s will release their latest album Blame It On Gravity May 13 on New West Records.

Band members Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond, Ken Bethea and Philip Peeples self-recorded their debut album 15 years ago in their hometown of Dallas. Seven new albums, a greatest hits collection and a special two-disc live album later, the band decided to return to Dallas last year to record Blame It On Gravity, and enlisted producer Salim Nourallah to help re-create the sound of their debut.

New West describes the Old 97’s new album as a mix of various elements from rock, punk, classic country and pop. The album’s first single, "Dance With Me," is now available on the band’s MySpace page.

No word on whether the band will be unveiling any new material when it performs at SXSW next week. The Old 97's will hit the road again in May for a three-week nationwide club tour after Blame's release (dates TBA.)

Blame It On Gravity:
1. The Fool
2. Dance With Me
3. No Baby I
4. My Two Feet
5. Ride
6. She Loves The Sunset
7. This Beautiful Thing
8. I Will Remain
9. Early Morning
10. The Easy Way
11. Here’s To The Halcyon
12. Color Of A Lonely Heart Is Blue
13. The One

Related links:
Old97s.com
Old 97’s on New West Records
Paste: Old 97’s: Revenge of the Chess Club

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I remember the high school chess club. Nearsighted guys with thick glasses and bad dandruff sat around the cafeteria tables after seventh period, contemplating their chessboards and the Sicilian Defense. Everybody else studiously avoided them. Members of the chess club didn’t go to the prom, much less talk to girls. They barely spoke at all, preferring the nonverbal precision of a well-conceived Queen’s Gambit to anything approaching normal social interaction. I know. The hair has improved, and perhaps the social skills have improved, too (you’d have to check with my wife). But I still need the thick lenses.

It’s not quite the stuff of classic rock ’n’ roll. But apparently Rhett Miller also remembers the high school chess club, because he’s written a song about it, “Friends Forever.” And I’m currently pumping the Old 97’s frontman for information about this particular standout track on Drag It Up, the band’s first album in three years.

“No, I wasn’t really in the chess club,” he says, laughing. “But I knew those guys and hung out with them. To tell you the truth —and I’m a little embarrassed to admit this —I was more of a Dungeons and Dragons guy in high school. But the message of that song is that it gets better. I’ve seen it again and again. The cheerleaders and the homecoming kings and queens —what happens to those people? A lot of them end up living these very disappointing lives. They peak at 18. And the nerds end up taking over the world. But yes, I was pretty much your basic, brainy high school misfit.”

That future prediction certainly held true for Miller. His heart-on-sleeve songs and charismatic stage presence have long made him a fan favorite (if not a full-fledged rock ’n’ roll sex symbol), and the doe-eyed poster boy cover of his 2002 solo debut, The Instigator, only added to his reputation as the Casanova of alt.country. From high school pawn to king of the world. Not bad for a self-proclaimed high school nerd.

The nerd and his bandmates have been busy. In the three years between 2001’s Satellite Rides and the new Drag It Up, the Dallas-based quartet has seen wholesale changes. The band moved from the mega-label support of Elektra Records to roots-rock upstart New West. Bass player and songwriting collaborator Murry Hammond married singer/songwriter Grey DeLisle and relocated to Los Angeles. Guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peoples added a couple of second-generation bangers and screamers to the extended family. And lead singer/songwriter Miller got married, had a son and relocated to upstate New York. Two years ago, many fans saw his aforementioned solo album as an omen of their favorite twangcore band’s impending demise.

“A lot of people thought that,” Miller concedes. “But we never broke up, and we never intended to break up. We took a break from one another and lived our lives. That’s all. And now we’re back.”

Indeed. After the British Invasion power-pop leanings of 1999’s Fight Songs and the masterful Satellite Rides, Drag It Up marks a return to the Old 97’s’ cowpunk roots. Songs such as “Won’t Be Home No More” and “Friends Forever” feature the chugging train rhythms and twanging rockabilly guitars longtime fans will remember from the band’s earliest albums. But Drag It Up is far more than a reprise of familiar sounds. Hammond’s “Smokers” features a manic surf-guitar solo that would make Dick Dale proud. With the delightfully idiosyncratic, off-kilter Tex-Mex rave-up “Coahuila,” Bethea makes his singing and songwriting debut, while his swirling psychedelic guitars at the end of the pensive ballad “Valium Waltz” call to mind Sgt. Pepper in old San Antone.

“We were aiming for a stripped-down, distilled version of the early Old 97’s,” Miller says. “Before we recorded I had been listening to a lot of David Bowie, particularly the Ziggy Stardust album. And the thing I love about that album is its looseness. That band had been out on the road for years, and they knew each other so well. And they just went into the studio and played the songs live, and you can hear it in the results. It’s not slick. It’s not over-rehearsed and overproduced. It’s just the chemistry of a good rock ’n’ roll band at the top of its game. That’s the vibe that we were trying to capture with Drag It Up, and I think we nailed it.”

Several of these songs also have a dark, brooding quality that replaces the smart-ass brashness of the early party tunes. Maybe it’s a product of the troubled times in which we live; maybe it’s simply the product of growing up and having kids. But the Old 97’s are making rock for grownups these days, and Miller wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Not to be melodramatic,” he says, “but my wife and I were two blocks away from the Twin Towers on 9/11. We saw people —a lot of people —jumping from the buildings. We had to evacuate our apartment. We ran through the rubble. And we saw a lot of death. I’m not saying that what we experienced can even compare to the great loss that many people experienced that day, but that changes you. It has to change you. And I’ve realized that the stakes are big. There are consequences to what we do, bigger machines that you can either be a cog in or fight against. And I have to say, as corny as it sounds, that it feels great to be a part of something that is an agent for good. It’s a cliché to say that music saved my life, but it’s true. And I feel so fortunate to be able to do what I do. I get to make music with my buddies.”

It’s a sentiment echoed on “Friends Forever,” a pure blast of rockabilly mayhem that finds the four members of the band huddled around the same microphone, screaming the chorus in unison. In a world in which a rock band’s shelf life only gets shorter, and the tyranny of the urgent threatens to upstage the less flashy ebb-and-flow of community and relationships, it’s positively refreshing.

“We’ve been doing this for 11 years now,” Miller says, “and I really see no reason why we shouldn’t be doing this when we’re old men. It’s been a gentle kind of career arc. Really, what could screw it up? Great success? We’ll take our chances. Great failure? We started out playing in dive bars, and we had a great time together. It doesn’t matter. These guys are among my closest friends.”

It’s a long way from high school geekdom to a career fronting one of the best roots-rock bands in the world. Old 97’s have got the list covered, and it’s a pretty good one, one that would make all former nerds and past chess club members proud. Longtime rockers, husbands and fathers, and friends forever. Check.

Let me state at the outset that if I ever decide to spend big money so I can "watch" a concert a quarter-mile from the stage in some mammoth amphitheater or hockey arena, somebody slap me silly and remind me why I go see live music in the first place. There’s absolutely no substitute for a couple hundred people crammed shoulder to shoulder in some little dive bar. That's what I got last night at Cleveland's Grog Shop. It's probably a heterodox view, but I'm convinced that there will be a little corner of heaven (or perhaps purgatory) where some sweaty band will be laying it all on the line while the saints deal with sticky, beer-sloshed floors and secondhand smoke thick as incense. And God will say, “It is Good.”

It does help, though, to have a sweaty band laying it all on the line, and the Old 97's qualified on all counts. They played a 30-song, two-hour set that was light on Fight Songs material (the weak link in the catalogue, IMO), covered just a couple songs from Hitchhike to Rhome and Wreck Your Life, plundered most of the songs with the big hooks from Satellite Rides, offered a couple Rhett solo numbers from his album The Instigator," and reprised almost the entirety of Too Far to Care.

That ratio was just about perfect. They also threw in a half-dozen new songs from a yet-to-be recorded album. According to Rhett and bassist Murry Hammond, the band’s heading to a studio in upstate New York in three weeks to record the long-overdue follow-up to Satellite Rides.

The lowlights: One of the new songs, which featured Ken Bethea, a fine guitarist, on vocals for the first time ever. Ken is a fine guitarist.

The highlights: Almost everything else. Murry is an underrated singer and songwriter, and he handled the lead vocals duties on a half-dozen of the songs. "West Texas Teardrops" and "Up the Devil's Pay" were particularly strong. But Murry's second fiddle in this band and he knows it. The main reason to see the Old 97's is, of course, is Rhett Miller—alt.country/indie heartthrob, manic performer, and resident smartass—and Rhett did not disappoint. Nobody plays with and re-invents clichés the way Rhett Miller does, and he continually amazes me with his ability to turn a phrase you think you've heard a million times, but haven't. He can take the hoariest of sad-sack sentiments and make them sound fresh and timeless:

I got a four leaf clover. / It ain't done one single lick of good / I'm still a drunk and I'm still a loser / I'm living in a lousy neighborhood

And

When I first met Doreen / She was barely seventeen. / She was drinking whiskey sours in the bar. / The way she tossed 'em back / I would've had a heart attack. / But as it is I let her drive my car.

We heard those two last night. But he can also concoct poetic jumbles that belie his roots as a Creative Writing major at Sarah Lawrence College:

Richard Wagner's letters to his lover Mathilde were a mess / He should have quit before he had written the address / They made love on the mezzanine her husband was his friend / Vienna in a fugue-state working on a thing / That when he finished it took almost seven hours to sing / He still found time to write to her his heart-exploding words / Our love surpassed our love so fast / Our love's all wrong our love goes on and on / Our love became our love by name when I wrote it to you in a song / Our love goes on and on / Our love our love

What carries it, of course, is the sound, and these four guys, even after a lengthy hiatus, still sounded tight, whipping up a sonic blast that was equal parts Sun-Records rockabilly and British-Invasion jangle. Their pop sensibilities are impeccable.

"Big Brown Eyes," "Barrier Reef," and "Timebomb" were the final three songs of the night, arguably the three best songs from the Old 97's best album, Too Far to Care. It's hard to do better than that. "Barrier Reef" found the crowd singing along and pogo-ing for all they were worth (you move vertically when you're caught in the crush and can't move horizontally; at least that's my theory for those, like myself, who can't dance, and I'm stickin' with it). This song may feature the greatest non sequitur ever:

The Empty Bottle was half empty / Tide was low, and I was thirsty. / Saw her sitting at the bar / You know how some girls are, / Always making eyes / Well she wasn't making eyes. / So I sidled up beside her, / Settled down and shouted, "Hi there." / "My name's Stewart Ransom Miller, / I'm a serial lady-killer." / She said, "I'm already dead." / That's exactly what she said.

So we tripped the lights fantastic / We was both made of elastic. / Midnight came and midnight went / And I thought I was the President. / She said, "Do you have a car?" / And I said, "Do I have a car?"

What's so great about the Barrier Reef? / What's so fine about art? / What's so good about a Good Times Van, / When you're working on a broken, / Working on a broken, / Working on a broken man? Then "Timebomb" detonated as it always does, a pure shot of rock 'n roll adrenaline, and a happy, sweaty crowd drifted out into the Cleveland cold.

For what it's worth, I sang along to just about every song. Rhett's probably not crazy about sharing lead vocal duties, but since everybody else seemed to be doing it, I didn't feel so bad.