Rhett Miller always looks game for a show, whether or not he’s with his great band The Old 97’s, or even after experiencing vocal cord surgery. Kicking off his latest tour last week at Union Stage in Washington, DC, he came with his acoustic guitar and high energy gumption, his orange guitar case behind him spelling out his name, but also, crucially, the name of his regular band.
So instead of stressing his latest solo album, A Lifetime of Riding by Night, he tore into the classics from his band, from “Jagged” and “Won’t Be Home” to start to “Question” and “Timebomb” at the end. And a room full of longtime fans was happy to sing along at every turn. Fully three-fourths of the 21-song set were Old 97’s classics, and nobody was complaining.
As chief songwriter and singer for the band, Miller, of course, can carry off acoustic versions of them, given that the playing is aggressively energetic. And it’s fun to hear them presented in such close proximity. But it wasn’t as if the band, recently given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americana Music Honors, wasn’t missed. Driving acoustic guitar is fine, but it can’t provide the sonic blast that Murry Hammond, Ken Bethea, and Philip Peeples bring to performances.
Still, the ever-youthful-looking Miller at 55 did what he could to provide engaging stagecraft by wagging his locks or windmilling chords on his guitar. Impending holidays gave him an excuse to bring out a couple of songs the band provided for The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Holiday Special, portraying an alien band called Bzermikitoolok and the Knowwheremen, playing both “I Don’t Know What Christmas Is (But Christmastime is Here)” and “Here it Is Christmastime,” which Kevin Bacon sang in the special.
As weird as an alien-sung song about discovering the holiday was in the special, Miller provided examples of even more twisted verses that Disney rejected. Miller teased that he’d fill the rest of the show with Christmas songs, just as he teased that the rest of the show would be his new album, but once added that he was just kidding. “I know the rules of entertainment,” he said. And that meant more crowd-pleasing Old 97’s anthems.
In addition to favorites like “Rolleskate Skinny” and “Champaign, Illinois,” he was also able to perform a couple of more vocally demanding songs, such as “Come Around,” which he had written off as never performing again after developing a cyst on his vocal cord.
The prolific songwriter says he gives first dibs on anything he writes to the band, leaving the rest for his solo albums, which now number 10. But he’d do well to stress more of that material in his shows. As it was, he performed “Come as You Are” (not the Nirvana song), a collaboration with Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours, and by special request, “Point Shirley” (which required a lyric sheet).
Picking a song from the new album, he said it was only logical that he’d do “Ellie on the Wharf” if only because the club is part of a development called The Wharf. Miller writes about what he knows, and a lot of that involves touring, playing clubs, trying to be charming at barrooms, and going on the road. Indeed, the title of the new release tells of A Lifetime of Riding by Night.
If there’s an underlying theme, though, it’s aging in a field where he’s still surrounded by the young, noted explicitly in “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive,” which ended the main set. That contrast was in visual display when he was joined by his young, and young-looking opening act Alice Carolyn to duet on “Fireflies,” the only song he did from 2006’s The Believer.
Carolyn was a first-year student in Miller’s songwriting class at New York’s New School, and her appearance on the tour represented the best kind of passing grade (Miller came out to specifically introduce her set, beaming like a proud professor).
Hailing from Portland but based in New York, she had a lot of good songs, though, even if some reflected lessons she might have picked up in class (when wondering how to end a song, for example, you can always repeat the first verse). She did say Miller gave her some advice about her lovelorn setlist: Maybe something more upbeat?
Her highlights included her song “No Wasted Time” and a particularly well-chosen cover, Tom Waits’ “The Day After Tomorrow.” She wasn’t treated like a star pupil all night, though. She had also been enlisted to sell merch.
