Fighting chance
Is the new, radio-friendly album by Old
97's a lightweight or a heavy hitter?
04/29/99
By Thor Christensen / The Dallas Morning
News
little voice shows up in Rhett Miller's
head from
time to time - the voice of an anonymous
Old 97's
fan speaking to him from the future.
" 'It's too bad the Old 97's tried to
sell out,' " Mr.
Miller says, imitating the voice, " 'and
still ended up
as total failures.' "
He laughs, as if to imply he's only
joking. But press
him a bit and the singer admits he is
indeed gun-shy
about reaction to Fight Songs, the
Dallas quartet's
new album that
hit stores Tuesday. Fans used to the
punky, twangy
rock 'n' roll of the group's first three
albums could
be startled by such poppy, radio-minded new
songs as "19" and "Murder (or a Heart
Attack),"
the CD's first single.
"I was really worried a month after we
[recorded]
it. I thought, 'Oh no! We've gone too
far.' But I'm
not really scared anymore," he says.
"Some people
aren't going to like it. But our real
hard-core fans . .
. they're still satisfied. They like it
and have forgiven
us the departure."
Forgiveness is a new concept to Mr.
Miller and his
bandmates. Formed in 1993 and named after a
Johnny Cash song, the band spent the
next five
years cranking out an uncompromising mix of
country, rock and punk that made them
darlings of
the alt-country scene championed by No
Depression magazine.
Acclaim from No Depression is nice, but
doesn't
earn you a gold album. The group's first
CD for
Elektra Records, 1997's Too Far to Care,
sold
26,000 copies - well below the
break-even point
for a major-label band.
So for Fight Songs, the band and Elektra
decided
to smooth out some of the edges by hiring
producer Andrew Williams of the Williams
Brothers (nephews of pop crooner Andy
Williams).
"Andrew made it more cohesive and
prettier and
did the things that don't come naturally
to us," Mr.
Miller says. "Rocking out and screaming and
jumping around come naturally to us. But
these
songs that I'd written and
[singer-bassist] Murry
[Hammond] had written were a lot more
introspective and quieter and prettier,
and I wanted
somebody to do justice to those."
On Fight Songs, prettier often
translates into
"much more marketable." With its breezy
melody
and ska-flavored, singsong guitar,
"Murder (or a
Heart Attack)" would sound right at home
on a
pop radio station next to the latest
hits by Sugar
Ray or No Doubt.
If "Murder" does become a radio anthem,
it would
be the first hit about a runaway feline:
Mr. Miller
wrote it about his roommate's cat,
Charlie, who
bolted from a window he'd left open.
(The cat
returned before the song was even done, Mr.
Miller reports.)
But while he says he's happy with the
way "Murder
(or a Heart Attack)" turned out, he
sounds almost
apologetic about "19," the other Fight
Song you
might hear blasting from a million car
radios this
summer. Elektra has already convinced
Fox TV to
use the tune in an ad campaign for the gooey
college melodrama Felicity.
"The world always has more room for
three-chord
songs where the chorus gets repeated a
lot," he
says of "19," an ultra-catchy pop ditty
about a guy
who realizes, in retrospect, how naive
he once was
about love. Mr. Miller says he penned
the song
hoping Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and
Linda
Ronstadt would record it for their Trio
II album.
(They didn't.)
"I wrote '19' as an exercise for
somebody else to
[sing], knowing that the Old 97's
wouldn't be doing
it. But when I played it at sound check,
[guitarist]
Ken [Bethea] loved it and then the record
company got excited by it."
Of course, excitement at a big record
label has a
way of turning into ambivalence and
apathy in two
blinks of an eye. But Mr. Miller says
Elektra "is
treating this like a band that can sell
records,
instead of a glorified indie band. . . .
With the last
record, the label didn't even push a
single. But this
time, they've gone nuts. They really see
potential."
And part of that potential seems to
involve pushing
the photogenic Mr. Miller to the front
of the band.
"Chief songwriter/singer Rhett Miller
has been the
97's' secret weapon, but that's about to
change,"
trumpets an Elektra press release
accompanying
Fight Songs. The singer - sans bandmates
- will be
seen modeling designer duds in an upcoming
Interview magazine spread on "rock 'n' roll
fashion."
However, Mr. Miller says you shouldn't
read too
much into his decision to start wearing
contact
lenses in place of his trademark
eyeglasses (which
he adopted years ago after local
publications
started calling him a budding "teen idol").
"I just got so sick of not being able to
see the
audience or the guitar, because my
glasses were
fogged up and sweaty," he says. "It
would be a
better story if [Elektra] said 'Ditch
the specs, we
want to sell more records.' But that's
the real
story."
