Last Friday night at the 9:30 Club in northeastern Washington, D.C. was a night like any other: four loud, relatively unknown, alternative acts took the stage and made the place shake with the sound of it. The headliners were the Old 97's, an alt-country-slash-barroom-rock-slash-power-pop foursome from Dallas led by singers/songwriters Rhett Miller and Murry Hammond. But for those of you in the audience who'd had a few too many, as well as to the blissfully unawares, Friday night was different for two reasons. First, the Old 97's the best unknown band in America, and second, they were playing to a sold-out club.
Their set started out at the beginning of the band's history -- that is, with the first song from their first album, "St. Ignatius," from the 1994 debut Hitchhike to Rhome. Back then, guitarist Miller had just forgone a creative writing scholarship to Sarah Lawrence college in favor of trying his hand at music. He and bassist Hammond picked up lead guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Phillip Peeple's, who together developed a sound that was self-limiting in its adherence to a few general song styles (rockabilly, Texas swing and Hustle beats only, please), but made brilliant by its own simplicity, as well as the genius of Miller's songwriting, his strident voice, and the forthright twang of the record. They even did impressive covers of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" and Webb Pierce's "Tupelo County Jail."
On Friday, as Bethea's open-note lead line burst into the stuffy air, it was as if they were beginning a history lesson on the band. "St. Ignatius" faded into the gritty, wordy pop of "Rollerskate Skinny," a standout track from 2001's Satellite Rides, the band's only offering to garner them any real attention from the press. The band showed tremendous energy from the start, with lead singer Miller thrashing about in his (kind of lame) silky club shirt. Watching Hammond play was certainly a highlight of the show, because it was a lot like watching a professor of rock and roll bass pluck the strings. Murry nodded his head comically in time and looked at the thick wire-frames perched low on his nose with an almost academic flare.
Moving on, the set covered material from all over their catalog: a louder, more fuel-injected "Lonely Holiday," originally from Fight Songs, "The Streets of Where I'm From" and "Salome," both from the band's first Elektra release, Too Far To Care, and even a version of what is possibly their best song, "Singular Girl," unreleased apart from a bonus CD that came with Satellite Rides. The banter became more comfortable, with the other band members making fun of Bethea for his inane commentary that "playing music is fun."
"Who gave you a mike, Ken?" asked Miller from center stage.
As the foursome picked up momentum, it became clear that their year-long break in touring had done very little harm to their on-stage sound. After the release of 2001's album, Rhett Miller took a year-plus-some-hiatus from the band to record his uber-poppy solo release, The Instigator, and to go on tour in support of it. The history lesson continued accordingly, as only Miller took the stage with an acoustic guitar for the encore after an explosive, set-ending version of "Four-Leaf Clover." He played the solo album's opening track, "Our Love," and set about jamming pretty hard to his own solo guitar chords, swinging his hips around like a maniac. More amazing, however, was his encore version of "Question," the song Miller wrote to propose to his wife. After the first chorus of "Someday somebody's gonna ask you / A question that you should say "yes' to / Once in your life," Miller announced that the song was for two friends of his, "Brian and Heather." Suddenly, 10 feet to my right, the crowd parted slightly, and a man got on one knee and pulled out an engagement ring. As his proposal was accepted, the crowd erupted.
They finished the night with some of their louder tunes, including "Time Bomb" and "Murder Or A Heart Attack," but the ringing didn't die out until we got outside, and as I plodded through the throng, I found myself wondering, why is that band so good? And more important, why are they still so unheard-of? Is it their lyrics, with quippish lines like "You're a goddess, you're the oddest / Oddity I've found. / We could go swimmin' in our skin and / Hope that we don't drown," and "Love feels good when it sits right down / puts its feet up on the table and sends the bowl around?" Is it the way they wear their Texas country influences on their sleeves, yet haven't forgotten their punk adolescences? Is it their "loser" rock star personalities? In my book, those are all advantages. Maybe I should look at my second original point: the sell-out crowd. Maybe the Old 97's fire is just starting to catch, and the band is bigger than I think. In that case, the thousand-some people at the 9:30 last night are a sign that good songs and a genuine sound are on then upswing, that real rock and roll is making a comeback (not those smarmy, no-talent New Yorkers and incestual Detroiters) and we should keep some faith after all.
