It was early winter 1982 in Dallas, Texas. Danny White’s Cowboys had just lost to the hated 49’ers thanks to Dwight Clark and “The Catch.” J.R. Ewing had been shot and we were all in the process of finding out by whom. I was a sixth-grader in the midst of my first semester at St. Mark’s, the all-boys private school where I’d fled after public school had proved too brutal for a sensitive kid like me. At the old school I’d been bullied and called names like “Opera Singer” and “Professor Encyclopedia,” all the while convinced I was surrounded by idiots. At the new school I was surrounded by kids who were smarter than me, and the only name I got called was my own except for when Chance Miller called me “Retch,” which I had to admit was pretty clever.

You know what they say though, wherever you go there you are. And I’d brought my noisy brain and inner turmoil with me when I’d traveled from public to private school. I might have found my place but I hadn’t found myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have been too concerned with this at 12 years old, but as previously mentioned, my brain was a noisy place. That’s where guitar lessons came in.

My brother Ross and I used to walk to a guitar store called Arnold & Morgan just down the street from our house and spend hours looking at the guitars. Before long we started taking guitar lessons from a young rocker named Tommy Hiett^1. He had long hair and an easy smile and my brother and I both idolized him immediately. Our dad had been extricating himself from the family unit for a few years by then, leaving me as the oldest male, the man of the house, a role I felt unsuited for but obliged to fill. When Tommy showed up, he was less a father figure than a kickass uncle. Tommy took the pressure off me a little, and I tried to pay him back by practicing my scales, doing my finger exercises and studying my tablature, none of which actually interested me very much.

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I quit my guitar lessons for a few months when the callouses on my fingers refused to provide sufficient padding and the exercises bored me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the opportunities presented by the instrument. I kept getting ideas for songs—my own songs. When I went back in to Tommy and asked if he’d teach me a simpler version of guitar, more of a folky songwriter style than his preferred metal shredder style, he didn’t blink an eye. He told me to bring in a cassette each week of a song that I’d like to learn, and he’d help me figure out how to play guitar in whatever way interested me. He never judged me for my choices even when I brought in Peter, Paul and Mary or The Kingston Trio. He just smiled his big smile and got to work.

My brother Ross and me a year or so before we discovered the guitar.

Tommy must have recognized something in Ross and me. Perhaps he sensed our gratitude for his kindness and attention. It’d be weird to say he loved us, but he definitely seemed to care about us more than twenty bucks an hour would normally buy from a young long-haired rocker. Needless to say we thought he was the absolute coolest. When he invited us to see his band Razin Cain play at a club called The Ritz, Ross and I waged a relentless campaign to convince our mom to take us to the show. If you know our mom, you know she said yes. This was the woman who’d taken us out of grade school to go to the local arthouse theater to see Stop Making Sense and The Wall.

Tommy did some fast talking to get the Ritz to let us into the club that night. Needless to say, we were the only preteens in the smoky nightclub. Tommy assured the security crew that he would keep us with him throughout the night. During Razin Cain’s set, he stationed us next to the monitor board, basically on stage five feet away from him. The band was right there! Razin Cain’s music wasn’t my cup of tea, but their energy was undeniable. Unfortunately, the crowd booed Tommy’s band mercilessly throughout their short set.

The crowd was a pre-goth, post-punk, proto-hipster bunch, there specifically to see the the headliner, a British new wave band called Modern English whose second album After the Snow had just been released overseas on the uber-hip 4AD label, and stateside via Seymour Stein’s Sire Records². The second single off that album, a little song called “I Melt With You” had recently started to climb the Billboard charts but that night, in that humble venue, they were just some underground British band that owed an enormous debt to Joy Division and, from our vantage point next to the monitor board, seemed only vaguely interested in performing.

Modern English circa 1982

They were good though. So good, I thought. An acoustic guitar-wielding frontman playing mopey yet upbeat songs with twisty, inscrutable lyrics, backed by a tight, loud band. This was something very different from the wide-eyed folk to which I’d previously been exposed. And it was live, happening in real time before my eyes. They closed with “I Melt With You” and it was an incredible moment, as if everyone in that room already knew the song would be a classic.

After Modern English finished their set, Tommy took me, Ross and our mom upstairs to the headliner’s dressing room. The band members were all smoking cigarettes, toweling off sweat, and sneering at cans of American beer. Tommy introduced himself and asked if his two young guitar students might get their albums signed. As the guitar player signed my LP, I sat next to him on the filthy couch. Once he’d handed back my album, I stayed there for a minute taking it all in. The smoke. The exclusivity of the backstage. The sense of a job well done. However jaded and cynical these English rockers may have been, they still gave off an aura of confidence, not just in their professional expertise, but in who they were.

Just then the guitarist pointed at the wall above our head where a cockroach was trying to look inconspicuous, and announced, “Oi! Another black beetle.” Then he spun his sweaty stage towel into a rat’s tail and snapped it at the bug, scoring a direct hit, then returning the towel to around his neck. In that moment, I knew in my bones that my future lay in smoky nightclubs and dank dressing rooms.

In the ensuing months, I worked on my guitar skills with renewed diligence. I would never be as technically proficient as my brother Ross, but I only needed to be able to strum chords enough to write songs and front a band. I could hire proper musicians to do the fiddly bits. Within a year I had started writing my own songs and never looked back, and in the immortal words of Modern English, “It’s getting better all the time.”

yrs,

Rhett

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PS (Footnotes after the paywall for full subscribers as a way of saying THANKS, YOU ROCK.)

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I’ve just announced my 2026 Songwriting Is Magic Retreat at Full Moon Resort in Big Indian, NY (in the Catskills!) which will take place September 22-25. The guests are off the hook: Josh Ritter, Amanda Shires and Aaron Lee Tasjan. It’s gonna be beautiful and awesome!

But folks have questions! I’ll attempt to answer some of them here.

Songwriting Is Magic:

The Q & A

with

Rhett Miller

If songwriting is truly magic, how can you even teach it?

When we write songs, we songwriters confront an endless stream of questions: what’s the next chord, the next word, the next note, the next section of our song? I’ve learned over the years that to teach songwriting is not a matter of providing answers, but rather asking questions. The best way to talk about songwriting is to talk about the songs themselves. As we write, we serve as the song’s first audience and we listen closely in order to discover what’s great about our emerging song. We nurture that greatness as we challenge ourselves to build a structure to support it, a world in which it can live.

Former guest-host Rachael Yamagata imparts some wisdom

One of the best-loved daily workshops of the Songwriting Is Magic Retreat, the “What’s Great & What If” Participant Song Workshop, allows guests to share their own songs so that a panel consisting of myself and a guest-host (or two) can work with the fellow attendees to explore what’s great about the song, and offer our own what if’s. This kind of interactive teaching-by-doing has proved an invaluable companion to the traditional lecture-based workshops. After past retreats my guest-hosts have told me that working on the retreat participants’ songs in real time was their favorite part of the experience. I know how much I love it. Songs are communal in nature, and there’s joy in working together to explore the magic behind them.

“What’s Great & What If” Participant Song Workshop is so fun

What kind of activities and events can participants expect?

In 2026 we are lucky to have Josh Ritter, Amanda Shires and Aaron Lee Tasjan joining the Songwriting Is Magic Retreat. We will each host a workshop in which we use examples from our own catalog to share insights into our process. The “What’s Great & What If” Participant Song Workshops allow the hosts to work with randomly selected participants on their own songs. The “Writing in Real-Time” Workshop will see me and a guest-host writing a song together from scratch using prompts and input from guests, and talking through the minutiae of the decision-making and the reasoning behind our choices.

A few years back Frank Black was my guest-host

Every evening after dinner there will be a host performance—on the first night it’s just me, while subsequent nights feature a song-swap format that will offer a peek behind the curtain as my guest-hosts and I share our songs and the stories of how they came to be. Each night will then segue into a relaxed open-mic environment as libations and laughs make The Roadhouse feel like a local pub. The open-mic is always a fun opportunity for me and my guest-hosts to watch y’all sing your songs. And if all of that’s not enough, there’s a late-night campfire for sing-alongs and general merriment.

Open-mic lets you be the star while I sit back and watch

Of course, we will take meals together and soak up the beauty of the Full Moon Resort. I might even sneak in a round of disc golf!

Full Moon has a disc golf course so you know I’ll sneak in a round

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Can participants expect to have personal interaction with Rhett and his guest hosts?

I will be interacting with guests all day every day. The guest hosts will be dining, hanging out and interacting with participants as well. It’s songwriting—we are all in this thing together!

The Barn where many of the workshops take place

Is the Songwriting is Magic Retreat a songwriting intensive workshop designed only for aspiring songwriters?

Anyone can be a songwriter. Every year we have a bunch of participants who identify primarily as fans, and inevitably I hear from them that they’re inspired to write their own song. Regardless, the workshops and events at the retreat are fun and inspiring to both aspiring songwriters and curious music fans alike. It’s a blast!

I hope to see some of y’all in the Catskills this fall.

Yrs,

Rhett

PS (Below are some photos from past retreats.)

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“How do you keep a band together for thirty three years?” This is the second-most-asked question after “What time do you go on?” The answer to one of these questions can be found via a simple internet search and the other defies explanation. As one of the few people on the planet qualified to weigh in on the secret of multi-decade membership in the original lineup of a non-stop rock band, I should be able to explain it, right? In the immortal words of The Who, I can’t explain.

You get lucky? You choose bandmates based on friendship and personal compatibility as much as any musical considerations? You adapt and change to circumstances both inside and outside the band when necessary? You learn to let go of your ego, lose fights, let things go? You sacrifice in some parts of your life because you appreciate how fortunate you are to have this other part, this job, this life, this band?

In the case of my band Old 97’s much of that sacrifice over the years has taken the form of time spent away from our families, missing milestones and moments, trying to connect via payphone, then cellphone, then text message, all of it seeming somehow to increase rather than decrease the distance—as I sing every night, “telephones make strangers out of lovers.” I wrote that line thirty years ago, a vision of a rain-drenched roadside payphone in mind, and it’s even more true now that phones have followed us into our beds and replaced the nighttime, limb-tangled debriefings of yore. In some ways, the current iteration of the telephone has made time spent away-from-home easier and at-home more difficult. But the road will always be the best and worst thing about a musician’s life (finances aside—let’s not even open that can of worms).

Old 97’s at Webster Hall in NYC (photo by Vivian Wang)

Something happened for the Old 97’s in the last couple of years though: we became empty-nesters. We survived the years of child-rearing and family-juggling, and lived to see the other side. So when we concocted this late-winter 2026 schedule of recording and touring, we leaned into our newfound availability. I left my home for seven weeks… and boy are my arms tired, not to mention the rest of me. A few solo dates in the Midwest rolled right into a week of pre-production in Dallas, then straight out to Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Texas near El Paso. A couple of weeks in Texas recording and filming (for a project I’ll tell y’all about soon), and then we flew off to New England to meet the rolling home-away-from-home that is our tour bus for a three-week East Coast run.

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During our years of child-rearing and family-juggling, the sacrifice worked both ways. We shunned long trips in favor of shorter runs and more targeted touring. Recording was done in more quick-hit strategic fashion, and pre-production was often skipped altogether. We prioritized the band, but not to the extent that we’d completely give up on being dads and partners. We saw many of our contemporaries hitting it harder than we were, and often reaping professional rewards commensurate to their personal sacrifice. But we had decided to play the long game. Now that we’ve ushered our young 97’s into adulthood, that decades-long balancing act has finally paid off. If only I still had the stamina and ache-free body of my thirty-year-old self!

The 97’s are having a moment, at least that’s how it feels from my perch inside the ship’s control room. This record we are making right now feels vibrant and joyous in a way you probably wouldn’t expect from a group of grizzled veterans who in another line of work might be expected to shuffle off into their dotage. The camera crews follow us around, the shows are sold out more often than not, the schedule keeps filling up with work that feels more exciting all the time.

How do you keep a band together for thirty three years? I can’t exactly tell you, but I will say this: If you do manage to keep a band together for thirty three years you’ll be pretty fucking glad you did.

yrs,

Rhett

PS (Stay tuned after the paywall for pics from the tour!)

PPS (Also, check out this sweet essay by kickass shutterbug Vivian Wang,)

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The 97’s are in Sonic Ranch Recording Studios in Tornillo, Texas outside El Paso. I can walk to the border from here, a trek through acres of pecan trees culminating in a big weird wall. Mostly I’m holed up in an old adobe building, either strumming, singing, or listening. The vibes are incredible and you’ll have to trust me when I say that this will prove to be not only our best record yet, but perhaps the greatest album ever recorded in the history of rock and roll.

You have to think like that when you’re making a record. People often ask which of my songs is my favorite, and I’m not joking when I answer, “the newest one.” It’s all about right now. What fun art can I make right now? What complicated human moment can I probe right now? God, I love right now.

I brought over two dozen songs into the band for this album. That’s after Murry and I had reduced the stack from almost twice that number. We are down to twelve. The prevailing musical sentiment of that triumphant dozen is straight-up rock and fucking roll. A few more relaxed numbers have found their way in, but the album’s defining moments are big, loud and fun. You know us though—darkness lurks behind every ray of sunshine.

I can’t share much because I don’t wanna spoil the fun we’ll have when it eventually drops in its ultimate finished form, but I will say that there are some serious bangers on this album. We still aren’t going softly into that goodnight. You’d think a band who’d just won a Lifetime Achievement Award would be happy to put their feet up a little, but nah, not this band.

Ken is currently stacking up guitars. He’s killing it. My guitars are wrapped. Here’s a peek at what my guitar world looked like. You’ll see my #1 workhouse Gibson J200, my primary guitar, as well as a few belonging to the folks at Sonic Ranch. Enjoy.

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At the tone it will be time to make a new Old 97’s record.

This will be Old 97’s fourteenth studio album, a rate of one every 26 months or so. During that time I’ve dropped eight solo albums. Before the 97’s formed in 1993, I’d released an album while still in high school (produced by Murry Hammond!), and Murry and I had released an album with our power-pop trio Sleepy Heroes. That’s two dozen studio albums on which I’m the primary singer/songwriter. Sheesh.

Sleepy Heroes era, circa 1990 - photo by James Bland

In addition to the studio albums, the 97’s and I have released a Best Of (twenty years ago!), multiple EP’s, singles and split-singles (notably our recordings with Waylon Jennings), at least two live albums (and a live DVD!), a few odds and sods collections, and a number of multi-album reissues each featuring an entire album of otherwise unreleased demos and alternate takes. None of that is even counting the albums Murry has made solo or with his band Peyote Cowboys, or the “album” I recorded in 9th grade with my folk trio Scarlett’s Garden. Again, sheesh.

I’m old school so for me it’s the studio albums that define an artist’s career. And the Old 97’s stand on the brink of attempting to assemble another career-defining studio album. My understanding is that folks call it a “record” because it’s just that, a record of who and what the artist is at a certain moment in time. It’s that permanent-record quality that often creates tension for the artist. As our friend and forever A&R buddy Tom Desavia likes to say, “No pressure, just remember that everything depends on this.” Thanks, Tom.

The question arises, “Why do we keep making albums? Or, “When is it enough?” Does the universe yet contain enough songs written by little ol’ me? I’ve asked this question of veteran musicians, heroes and friends, and the resounding answer is always some version of this: If it’s still fun and you’ve still got songs in you, why in the world would you stop? I find myself answering a resounding yes to both, so off I go with my brothers of 33 & 1/3 years into the recording studio to do it all over again.

I’ve been writing songs. I’m always writing songs. There’s even a small backlog of quality songs from the last couple of cycles that won’t seem to go away. They haven’t found a home yet, and most of them won’t find a home on this newest album either, but they won’t stop tickling at my frontal lobe. It’s a high class problem, this too-many-songs thing, but it’s a problem nonetheless. In a way, it’d be so simple to have only ten songs to bring to my 97’s bandmates, ten undeniable, polished songs that I know are kickass and perfect for this moment in our band and our world. But then I’d run the risk of my oft-ornery bandmates only taking a liking to, say, six of them, which would leave me scrambling.

POV a songwriter’s office, aka my buddy’s place in the CA desert, February 2026

As usual, this time around I’ve brought the band thrice that number and I feel like I’m still scrambling. I love the songs I’ve uploaded to our shared folder of demos, but what if there’s another even better song waiting around the corner? I wake up every morning with ideas for brand-new songs and revisions for existing songs. When it’s time to put the record to bed, I’ll be able to walk away—I’ve never demanded a finished album be scrapped and re-recorded—but until the mixes are locked, I’ll be grinding towards the platonic ideal of the album, working to minimize any future regrets and maximize satisfaction for the listener, the band and myself. The secret? All that work is a fucking blast.

Old 97’s at Dreamland Studios outside Woodstock, NY in January 1997, during Too Far To Care sessions - photo by Danny Clich (I think)

I can’t tell you what this new Old 97’s album will sound like. I always think I know ahead of time, and I’m always shocked by how far off I am. It’s crazy how different each experience is from album to album. This time around, I’m a father of two young adults, a songwriting professor at a university in Greenwich Village, and an Americana Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. I bring up that last not simply to brag, but to highlight the 97’s elder-statesman status, which, combined with the large amount of time I’m currently spending in the company of brilliant young people who are roughly the age I was when the 97’s formed, gives me a perspective that’s more layered and complicated than ever.

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I’m smack dab in the middle of my fifties but I don’t feel like a relic. I think these days the world agrees that artists should be allowed to retain their relevance deep into their career. In 1988, then-55-year-old Leonard Cohen gave the world his seminal LP I’m Your Man. In 2001, at the same age, Dolly Parton unveiled Little Sparrow, the second installment in her critically-acclaimed Bluegrass Trilogy. On the other hand, Mick Jagger was 55 when the Rolling Stones released Bridges to Babylon to decidedly mixed reviews, though in the words of the great George Drakoulias, “You can’t argue with the sales.” My point is that the only person who can answer the question “When is it enough?” is Leonard or Dolly or Mick or… me and my brothers in the Old 97’s. We do it because we love it. We do it because we can. We do it because it’s what we do.

We can’t wait to do it again.

yrs,

Rhett

PS (In case you’re wondering, that’s not a cigarette on the headstock of my J200 in the first photo, it’s a Tunerette guitar tuner!)

PPS (The Sleepy Heroes photo was from the photo shoot I did for a feature in Seventeen Magazine. just FYI.)

PPPS (Interesting side note: Don Was had committed to producing Old 97’s Elektra debut but had to back out when the Stones hired him to produce Bridges…, resulting in our hiring of relative newcomer Wally Gagel who helmed the album that became Too Far To Care. And now you know… the rest of the story.)

We all start somewhere, a truth I’ve truly learned to appreciate now that I’m a Professor of Songwriting. Starting is easy—you get excited about music and songs, you can’t stop thinking about them, and eventually you get the itch to create songs of your own. Like with most worthwhile pursuits, the learning curve is steep. Like with most artistic pursuits, the learning curve never ends. New songwriters often compare their own early attempts to the songs that inspired them and find their first songs to be shamefully inferior. How and why, then, do we continue?

I wrote my first song at 13, an ode to 60’s cult-leader and serial killer Charles Manson which included the perfect lyric, “Charles Willis Manson/Oh boy look what you’ve done.” No notes. Oh, I knew the song was deeply flawed, as were the first one hundred or so songs I wrote, but I kept at it. Why? I wish I knew. There were probably components of narcissism, spiritual onanism, self-aggrandizement—any lifelong artist must have these qualities in some measure, but there was something else. From that very first song, I could glimpse the machine at work, the chords in their patterns, the lyrics in their lines and sections, the ebb and flow of the verses and choruses and sometimes even a bridge. I knew that if the song was a machine, it could be tinkered with, improved even, and I meant to do just that.

By the time I was 16 I had written a hundred songs and one song that I felt like might actually be objectively good, if there is such a thing when it comes to art. I’d been inspired by a snippet of lyrics I found in a Truman Capote story, lyrics that were part of an old spiritual. I stole them. I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed either—art is theft. The sense of longing in those few lines resonated with my own youthful dissatisfaction and ennui. My melody was simple but the verse lyrics were weird, weird in a way that I now recognize as an early harbinger of what might be pompously described as my “voice.”

Well she opened up the windows

But he took the stairs instead

And a half an hour beforehand

They were rolling in the bed

I feel like that verse could appear anywhere in my catalog. The subsequent verse, however, hasn’t aged as well.

The beer was on the floor

His wife was on her knees

He was pissin’ on Christ

And she was prayin’ for peace

I guess I was experimenting with the boundaries of storytelling and wound up finding the wrong side of the line. That couplet definitely shocked some of my high school classmates and teachers at the firmly Episcopal St. Mark’s School of Texas, which, in retrospect, may have been the point. But in “Song For Truman Capote” I knew I’d found something. I’d built one tiny machine that worked. Listen here.

Performing “Song For Truman Capote” on Hi-Res Diner on Cable Access TV on August 31, 1987.

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As one’s songwriting obsession grows, it helps to make friends with other similarly obsessed people in order to process your successes and failures, and harmonize both literally and figuratively. As a 16 year old I was lucky to enough to befriend a fellow Marksman named Matt Hart who also played guitar. Along with my then-girlfriend Jennifer Peterson we formed a little folk trio called Scarlet’s Garden and played gigs in Dallas’ Deep Ellum neighborhood, mostly upstairs at The Prophet Bar. By then I was seriously grinding on the learning curve—every gig played and every song written was another step up the incline.

Finally we took our little folk trio into my Uncle Ed’s Fort Worth recording studio The Texas Tube Room. In a brick duplex he’d built a proper little studio out of scavenged AM-radio tube equipment, and he ran it like it was Sunset Sound Factory. We recorded a full album of songs that day, an album which, in the intervening four decades, I’d completely forgotten!

A recent email from my old Scarlet’s Garden bandmate Matt Hart revealed a trove of recordings that shocked and thrilled me. These scratchy little songs worked as a time machine transporting me back to my earliest days as a songwriter. That young version of me was so serious, so intent on making songs of his own, so invested in that moment and the future it portended.

Eventually I’ll find a way to get some of these recordings out into the world, but for now I’ll share the song that I remember being the earliest of the bunch, “Cover My Eyes.” Please remember that this song was written by a 15 year old boy, and sung with a couple of friends during what must have seemed, at the time, like a Very Important Moment.

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Todd Snider’s passing, while not wholly unsurprising is as heartbreaking as all get out. There’s no comeback coming; there’s no second act in Todd’s American life. He’s gone.

My friend Ben Greenman and I both knew and loved Todd, so we’ve been processing the loss for the last 24 hours. Ben wrote beautifully about it on his substack, which gave me the idea that he and I should write a song as a tribute and grief-processing mechanism. So we did. It’s called “Song for Todd Snider.” I recorded it in a dressing room at the Madison Theater in Covington, KY just now, and I share it with y’all here.

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I don’t know, man. I ‘m just trying to make something beautiful out of something as heartbreaking as all get out.

“Song for Todd Snider” by Rhett Miller & Ben Greenman

As Todd said, “May your hope always outweigh your doubt.”

yrs,

Rhett

Stockholm Syndrome is a term that dates back to the 1970’s when some Swedish bank robbers were so charismatic that their hostages wound up experiencing positive feelings toward their captors. For years I’ve used the term as a punchline to explain my Taylor Swift fandom. The condition apparently also extends to my love of certain Nickelodeon sitcoms, the Gilmore Girls, and the first book of the Hunger Games series. But in the case of Swift, it was mostly a punchline. I can’t separate her music from my fatherly love for my own Swiftie, whose fandom began when she was six during the Red era and has extended comprehensively in both directions along the timeline. My knowledge is thus similarly thorough if not comprehensive.

My daughter’s view of a Taylor Swift concert.

My view of a Taylor Swift concert

As with all fans of Ms. Swift, my experience with the catalogue contains peaks and valleys. Some (much if I’m being honest) of the very early stuff is too cloying for my ear. But she was a kid! I love the songs Swift wrote with Liz Rose (my frequent collaborator Caitlin Rose’s mom), especially “You Belong With Me” and “All Too Well.” Of course, being a dad of a Swift-loving daughter, “Fifteen” never fails to make me cry. I have favorites throughout the entire oeuvre, especially the Folklore/Evermore era. “Mirrorball” is probably my favorite of her songs.

Who out there is dying to read the opinions of a middle-aged man on the new music of Taylor Swift? I mean, seriously? But I do have opinions. At least I expect to—I am yet to hit play. I haven’t decided which hat I’ll wear while composing this review, dad or songwriting professor, but I imagine it’ll be a little bit of both. Here goes. Commencing my first listen to Taylor Swift’s brand new The Life of a Showgirl now.

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1. “The Fate of Ophelia”

“Her love was a cold bed full of scorpions.” The glottal flip of the falsetto in the chorus, the pop music echo of the yodel. Swift’s self-mythologizing (often using actual Edith Hamilton-mythology) is a huge component of her voice as writer. “You saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia,” which is Shakespeare rather than Edith Hamilton, but similar idea. The epistolary approach is so effective in songwriting—a narrator singing directly to a “you” feels so real and immediate. It lets the listener imagine themself in the story, as the subject of the narrator’s intense lyrical machinations, and as we all know, when it come to lyrics, Swift has a big machine.

This one has some of the grandeur of the Folklore/Evermore songs, but feels a little more academic to me. Not an immediate favorite.

2. “Elizabeth Taylor”

Pop culture figures are game for lyrical fodder and “Elizabeth Taylor” is probably getting googled more times today than she has been cumulatively since the internet was invented. Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith know how it feels after they got the same treatment on the last Swift LP. I’ve always thought of Swift as a master of the slant rhyme. Rhyming “Taylor” with “forever” is so fun—classic Swift. She moves so deftly between the gallop and trot of her laconic/rapid-fire delivery, one of her songwriting signature moves, which creates hooks just by virtue of the meter. For instance, the lazy delivery of the pre-chorus’ “If you ever leave me high and dry,” nestled as it is amongst the spitfire verse and chorus lyrics, makes it stand out and cements it in your memory.

This one’s a banger—a bit much for this old man, but hey, Hollywood loves songs about Hollywood.

3. “Opalite”

Opalite and Ophelia? In this economy? Juicy words indeed, and that’s one thing I stress in my undergrad songwriting classes, always be on the lookout for juicy words. The strummy acoustic sitting so prominently in the mix has me imagining the demo of the song, a folky Taylor writing a simple little acoustic tune as we songwriters have done since time immemorial. “You were in it for real/she was in her phone” is an all time classic line. So good. In class we talk about when it’s okay to pronounce words/phrases awkwardly (as in the way Swift pronounces “for real” here), and this is a perfect example of when it works. Also, the danger inherent in the lyrical construction “Life is a…” is something that comes up all the time, but here Swift once again makes it work (in my humble…) with her “Life is a song/it ends when it ends.” These lyrics are actually working super well for me. I didn’t think I’d like what seems at first blush like an obvious attempt at a radio hit, and it’s true that the production is not my jam, but the song? The song is kinda wonderful. We have to talk about the wordless descending “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” moment at the end of the chorus phrases. That’s a direct lift from doo-wop. Maybe Frankie Valli’s “Sherry?”

Bottom line, the writing overcomes the cheesy dance-flor production on this—too great to hate.

4. “Father Figure”

Immediately giving 1989 vibes which is kinda fun. Who doesn’t love a floor-tom (or it’s 808 equivalent)? Oh… the lyrics are wild. Is this a George Michael reference? Yeah, it’s gotta be intentional. Everything Swift does is intentional. A bigger George Michael scholar than me would have to weigh in on what it might mean. I don’t wanna do a lore-based explication, but this feels like the narrator is singing to a mentor, elder-business partner, specifically in the music industry, what with all the references to “royalty.” Nice modulation at 2:50! Don’t forget about the power of the key change, kids! I like how the tables turn during the course of the narrative, such that by the end, the once-supplicant seems to be telling the former mentor “my dick’s bigger.” Powerful narrative.

Lots of cool stuff in this one, but a little too inside-baseball for my money—songs about money and business leave me a little cold.

5. “Eldest Daughter”

Singing about the internet? Okay. Me cringing at the rhyme of “bad bitch “ and “savage” only proves that I’m Gen-X, ie old af. The use of phrases like “afflicted by a terminal uniqueness” and “cautious discretion” in a song feels awfully clinical. But! I am feeling this song. Musically it does that thing so many of swift’s early songs do, finding the emotional button and pushing it. When the acoustic guitar kicks in on verse two and she sings about “laughing on a trampoline in somebody’s backyard” could be on her self-titled LP all those millennia ago. I love how the bridge hits and brings us sonically back to the Folklore/Evermore vibe. I guess I’m a sucker for lush folk.

After the first lyric I was ready to be a be a big jerk about this song, but by the time the bridge hit I was in. Maybe my favorite so far.

6. “Ruin The Friendship”

I’m loving all the acoustic guitar on the album—as an accompaniment to her vocal, it’s always been my favorite production element in her catalog. As with so many of the lyrics on the album, I feel like there’s context I’m missing. But hey, there’s Abigail! There’s something so evocative about the phrase “should have kissed you anyway.” Talk about juicy. It tangles up regret and forbidden-ness. And oh god, spoiler alert, the un-kissed subject of the song DIES IN THE THIRD VERSE, so we get the rare non-Bauhaus use of the word “grave” in a pop song.

Okay. I like it. The echoes of all the past eras, the high school storyline, the acoustic guitar, the dead body… The Stockholm has definitely kicked in halfway through the album.

7. “Actually Romantic”

A little power-pop guitar off the top. This is fun too. Sounds like the Pixies. Clearly the lyrics are something about a real-life famous-people beef, which makes it harder to enjoy the song, which is too bad because god it really sounds like the Pixies which I love. I mean, as diss-tracks go, it’s pretty good. It never quite cuts loose musically which would have been fun to hear, but we aren’t quite listening to a Sonic Youth album over here, are we? HELLO, Gen-X in the room.

I’m sensing a theme, y’all: didn’t wanna like it but I did.

8. “Wi$h Li$t”

This feels like the T. Swift version of hip-hop. Brands and spitfire rhymes. Preoccupation with wealth. But then the chorus hits and refutes it. Which is the point. Kinda sweet, but not my cup of tea. “Driving down a driveway with a basketball hoop” is a kinda funny line delivered in full hip-hop-Swift-ese.

I get it. Kinda sweet, kinda funny. Sure. She’s batting a thousand on bridges for her career. It’s remarkable.

9. “Wood”

Uh-oh. This music has me feeling like I should sit this song out. Sounds like a 70’s porn soundtrack. Oh, and it turns out it kinda is. Oh god. Yeah. I’ll leave it to y’all to parse this medieval text of metaphor and double-entendre. When she repeats the chorus for the third time I’m reminded of Nick Hornby’s admonition to never include a joke in your chorus as jokes don’t bear repeating.

I hope I never hear this song again.

10. “CANCELLED!”

Another instance of “grave” in the lyrics? Did I accidentally hit play on a Bauhaus album? The accompanying guitar is actually giving goth. Oh wait, Peter Murphy would never sing, “Did you girlboss too close to the sun?” More brand-names and Hollywood beefs. I’ll frequently tell my songwriting students that by using details from your own personal experience, counterintuitively, you’ll often wind up creating something universal. But if your personal experiences are all helicopters and Gucci red-carpet champagne type shit, the advice might not fly. I’m certainly being ungenerous here. There are fans who have a lot invested into the mythology of Swift’s long public life and they need servicing as well.

It’s fine. Don’t listen to me.

11. “Honey”

The conceit of this song is the various meanings of the endearment “honey,” and I like that idea a lot. The 808, clarinet and R&B dress-up is a turn-off for me. I wonder if the presentation was a little more toned-down would I be calling this song a sweet throwback to early-career Swift? I often try to encourage students to separate the song from the production. The songs exists independently of its presentation. And there’s definitely something sweet and inherently clever about this song’s construct, but it didn’t grab me on the first go-round. It might grow on me. I wish I could hear an acoustic demo.

Once again, Stockholm Syndrome aside, I’m not the target audience.

12. “The Life of a Showgirl”

The last song, the title track. There’s that acoustic guitar. Sounds like a Nashville-tuned chimey strummer. “They were glowing like the end of a cigarette.” That’s classic Swift. Pedal steel? Tack piano? I have got to stop talking about the production! Songwriting is strong here. Setup, payoff, great bridge. Masterclass by Swift who just can’t be stopped. “And all the headshot on the walls of the dancehalls/are of the bitches who wish I’d hurry up and die/but I’m immortal now baby dolls/I couldn’t if I tried.” The interior rhymes, the cadence, the hooks stacked one atop another, the way she sticks the landing? Just… chef’s kiss.

Great closing track. The final song of a sequence is an important and tricky spot. This one is perfect.

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Thanks for joining me on this journey, and reading the review no one asked for. I’m off to give my daughter a call and do our traditional debrief.

Much love to you all. And happy Taylor Swift album release to those, like me, who have been conditioned to celebrate such a holiday.

yrs,

Rhett

Most of y'all know me as the lead singer of the long-running, hard-charging, noisy-as-heck rock and roll band Old 97's. But I’m more than just an ass-shaking frontman. With a new solo record dropping soon I'll be hitting the road hard to play "solo shows" in order to support the release of A lifetime of riding by night.

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A number of folks have asked me, "What can we expect from your 'solo show?'" That's a great question. A solo show isn't just a smaller, quieter, less-sweaty version of an Old 97's concert... I mean, it is that, but it isn't just that. Allow me to explain.

When you attend one of my solo shows, you'll discover that, for one thing, I actually play mostly Old 97's songs. This is because the band has thirteen albums to my (soon-to-be) ten solo albums. And those albums are generally better known and more widely appreciated. I'm not angry about that. It's all good. I am a big Old 97’s fan.

At my solo show I will also play a few songs selected from my back catalogue of solo albums. I'll choose some fan favorites, as well as some personal favorites, songs I myself simply enjoy performing and to which I might be able to remember the lyrics.

When I get asked, "Will you play all the songs on your new solo album A lifetime of riding by night?" I respond, "What do you think I am a freaking monster? What do you think I am, some entitled, navel-gazing dilettante?!?" I’ve discovered that a setlist that features more than two or three songs from a new album will drive the audience to outright hostility.

So, yeah, big shocker, I play lots of songs.

But wait! That's not all!

The intimacy of a solo show allows me to do some stuff that would never fly in the context of an Old 97's gig. I can tell stories—people love stories. The origins of songs, the crazy memories of life on the road, the time I knocked out eleven teeth by running into my own face with an all-terrain vehicle. And frequently there is an accompanying slideshow.

Occasionally I will produce an overhead projector and fill out my tax-returns in real-time for the audience. Talk about vulnerability! Talk about transparency!

Speaking of which, one cool thing that only happens at my solo shows is the Visible Stomach portion of the show during which I stand bravely at the lip of the stage and lift the front of my shirt revealing a plexiglass widow installed in my abdomen, allowing the audience to watch my food digest in real time! I could not offer such intimate gastro-artistic expression during the chaos of an Old 97's concert.

What else? Sometimes I'll recite the Gettysburg Address, though, to be fair, I can only do the first minute or so, as that's all I've got memorized.

Oh, and I have been known to provide detailed synopses of my favorite WKRP In Cincinnati episodes. Like, very detailed. Practically in real time. I like to think my Dr. Johnny Fever is one of the best in the biz.

Also, during my solo shows, I might do a little whistling. Not concert-level, professional-grade whistling, mind you, more like the absent-minded, quiet whistling of one who might have forgotten that the audience is there.

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Finally, there's one element that really sets my solo show apart not only from an Old 97's gig, but from any other performance you'll see anywhere. It's something so thrilling that you'd have to see it to believe it. In fact, mere description could never do justice to the sheer awe-inspiring magnitude of this one super-cool thing I definitely do.

What is it? You'll have to come out to a solo show and find out.

yrs,

Rhett

“Confront your fears!” That’s what they say, right? “Dance like no one is watching!” That’s another thing they say. Well, I did both of those things during the filming of the video for my new song “Come As You Are.” The result is my coolest music video ever.

If that VW bus seems awfully high up there, it is!

We filmed the first half of the video on my brilliant friend Felix’s art installation/farm/compound in Wallkill, New York. Felix, never one to go small, has mounted six vintage VW buses on poles of varying heights. The white “Wonder Bread Bus” in which my character (yes, it’s a character, hence all the booziness) wakes up is on the highest pole of all. Is it safe? I mean… Sure?

The three kickass young filmmakers, Myles Flusser, James Hyland and Alex Young, were convinced I’d never climb the rickety, wobbly ladder up into the creaking swaying old rust bucket. And, to be fair, I definitely did not want to. Felix teased me mercilessly. My young nephew Daniel from Austin, pressed into PA service during a friendly summer visit, scampered up into the Wonder Bread Rust Bucket without my permission—bad Danny! In the end, I simply climbed up the ladder and did the scene. What’s the worst that could have happened? Oh, bodily injury or death? Well, I suppose the latter at least would have helped album sales.

I could film all my music videos for the rest of my career in and around Felix’s compound and I’d never run out of insane visual settings and backdrops. Many of his neighbors appreciate Felix. The rest? Let’s just say they don’t get it. Art as an entire lifestyle choice?!? I love it.

Driving Felix’s VW half-bus was a crazy experience. A finicky four-on-the-floor gave me a little trouble but I’m an old-school stick-shift king, so I took to it pretty quick. The roughest part was running out of gas halfway to the ice cream stand. Felix had an old gas can he ran off to grab and we made it to Cherry Top where we reenacted the antique gas can fill-up scene for the cameras.

Fun fact: Cherry Top was also used as a location in Charlie Kaufman’s film I’m Thinking Of Ending Things.

Another fun fact: Felix, a world-renowned graphic designer and visual artist, is a big Old 97’s fan and painted the slogan “You Just Can’t 86 the Old 97’s” under a side flap of his truck bed. The filmmakers had to sneak that little easter egg into the video.

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The one notable cameo in the video (not counting the cameo I’ll share in the terrifying reveal after the paywall at the end of this piece) comes from my one and only daughter, 19 year-old Soleil Miller. She commandeered the Cherry Top window for a few minutes in the midst of a busy summer day (did I mention it was a scorcher?), and delivered an Oscar-worthy performance as a purveyor of soft-serve.

Below is a photograph I took that day. She’s such a goofball. And it makes me so happy to have her show up in my musical world. Yay Soleil!

Oh, speaking of which, below is a photo of budding superstar Soleil Miller and her cousin PA-extraordinaire Daniel Dammert. In case you’re wondering, the face Soleil’s making indicates that she’s roasting me. As usual.

Here’s artist and compound owner Felix Sockwell talking to cinematographer Alex Young.

Here’s another behind-the-scenes photo. This depicts Myles, James and Alex directing me while the four of us get absolutely slaughtered by mosquitoes.

If you’ve watched the video, you’ve seen the lingering vestiges of an adolescence spent studying and eventually teaching ballroom dancing. It was a weird thing for a kid in the eighties to love, but I loved it. So much so that after I’d spent a couple of years as a student at Dick Chaplin Cotillion, where they taught “social dance and etiquette,” I was asked to work as a student teacher, assisting them in classes for kids a year or two younger than I was. I felt so cool.

We filmed the latter portion of the video at one of my favorite restaurants in the neighborhood, Darlings. The decor is so vibey. After hours, with no patrons, the place had such a sweet lonesome air about it. When the directors asked if I’d be willing to walk around playing the song, all I could think was, “This song’s a waltz—why wouldn’t I waltz around?” So I did.

And just like that I was teleported back to Dick Chaplin’s Cotillion. 1-23, 1-23, 1-23…

It was so fun filming this video. I think it will stand the test of time, which is to say that when it appears on a screen somewhere, I’ll be happy to see it.

After the paywall I’ve hidden the coolest image from that whole day of shooting, as well as the most embarrassing image from the video. If you’re a paid subscriber, buckle up…

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By the time I drifted into young adulthood my dad and I didn’t connect on much, but when I was still in my single digits, we both loved the songs of the brilliant satirist Tom Lehrer. I wrote about this connection and Lehrer’s marvelous oeuvre for Dallas’ now long-defunct weekly The Met thirty years ago (see …

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Thanks for allowing me into your inbox, eyes and heart.

I’m back from my summer vacation, tanned and ready to turn it up. How about y’all? Are you working hard or hardly cognizant of what month it is? It’s July, somehow even late-July. You’re welcome.

I have a few things I’m not allowed to formally announce, but nobody said I can’t tease them. And I will, but first let me construct this paywall so that only the hardcore troubadours among you will be subjected to my merciless teasing.

SUP? Does it even count as stand-up paddleboarding if you don’t take a selfie?

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Ten years ago, in a gorgeous hotel room in London’s SoHo neighborhood, I drank my last drink. A celebratory final glass of wine at dinner that evening had turned into a celebratory bottle of Irish whiskey in a dark hotel room late that night, which had inevitably become my final hangover.

Photo by Nancy Newberry

I’d made the decision to reevaluate my relationship with drinking a few months earlier after a particularly unpleasant Easter, then I’d begun the process of unlearning my old habits. I dismantled the alcohol-centered lifestyle that was the only one I’d known since adolescence, and replaced it with a yawning uncertainty. What do sober people even do?

The few sober folks I knew seemed happy and normal, but I’d always assumed theirs was a joyless existence of bitter regret, remembered pleasure and bleak monotony. All they had to look forward to in life was paying down their karmic debts and living down their terrible mistakes. My image of rock bottom looked nothing like my life. I was doing great! Until I wasn’t.

I used to wake up after long nights whose ends I couldn’t quite piece together, and discover notes I’d written myself. A folded receipt in my wallet or a bar napkin in the pocket of my leather jacket would surprise me at breakfast, a missive from another man, my drunken self of the previous evening. There in the furtive scrawl of a hostage, would be a note reading, “it’s time,” or “you’ve GOT to STOP.”

And so I finally stopped. A few last-gasp binges (notably the long day of filming the music video for “Most In The Summertime), and that final bottle in the SoHo hotel were but the sputtering coughs of an engine headed for the scrap heap. The problem was I’d always assumed that engine had been responsible for my artistic output, my success and my friendships. I discovered however that anyone or anything in your life worth keeping can and will withstand your sobriety.

Finding a comfortable sobriety took a while and, like most folks, I didn’t do it alone. I leaned on friends who’d been through it already (music writer Christian Hoard was a good role-model), and read books (Sarah Hepola’s Blackout is a great one), but I couldn’t have done it without the support of my therapist Lois, a brilliant old-school, no-bullshit Manhattanite who didn’t sugarcoat anything. If I got to complaining about family members or band-mates, she’d always wrinkle her nose and say, “We’re not here to talk about them, we’re here to talk about you.”

Alcoholics Anonymous fascinated me, but held no long-term appeal. The stories and shared wisdom are incredible, and I know that the support the program offers its adherents has saved millions of lives, but after a few attempts to find my place within its structure I gave up. Over the last decade I’ve had AA proponents criticize my approach, telling me that without “working the program” I’m nothing but a “dry drunk.” I don’t know what to say; the approach I took worked for me.

If I hadn’t had the support of a qualified therapist, during the crucial first few years, I might afford their accusations more validity, but my journey to sobriety was intentional and ultimately successful. I love my life and I’m so glad to have made it to this place. I’ve been able to keep my family, band and friendships intact. I wake up every day excited for what the day might bring.

A decade into my sobriety, I’m thrilled to tell you that not only was my drinking not solely responsible for the good things in my life, it was undermining, even destroying my happiness and creativity. Sobriety isn’t sad and boring at all, rather it’s consistent, clear and calm. I laugh; I dance; I thrill; I marvel, and I swell with gratitude. On any given day I can take a deep breath and know that I’m in control of my own life—there’s no fuzzy-headed, late-night party animal holding me hostage.

I’m no Prohibitionist. I know that sobriety isn’t for everyone. But I’ll tell you right now that if my story is giving you thorny, complicated feelings about where you’re at in your life right now with regards to alcohol, please do yourself the favor of honoring and entertaining those feelings. You won’t get sober until you’re ready, but you may be ready now. I’ve never known one sober person who regrets having made the choice to live a clear and present life. It’s a beautiful thing.

yrs,

Rhett

PS (I also gave up weed around the same time. My ten-year anniversary for that will come around in August. I may write something about it as well, but despite a 30-year daily habit that certainly had a number of negative effects on my life, I never found marijuana to be quite as devastating or pernicious as booze. That said, I got out before the ubiquity of crippling super-weed to which modern stoners have such easy access.)

PPS (Check out a couple of relevant music videos. Here’s the Old 97’s music video for “Let’s Get Drunk And Get It On” from which I used a still image above. And here’s the amazing Max Nichols-directed video for “Most In The Summertime.” I’d forgotten how many killer cameos there are in this one!)

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Isn’t it ridiculous when people say “I found myself in such and such place” as they’re describing some kickass vacation that they spent months planning? Are they trying to make it sound as if they accidentally wound up in Venice or Budapest? “I could have sworn I was just in Oklahoma City, now what’s this? Krakow?!?”

Twenty-five years ago this month, I found myself in Wimbledon, the posh London suburb famous for its annual tennis tournament. My sister was living with her boyfriend at the time in a house that was tailor-made for a cozy murder mystery. And I did in fact feel an awful lot like I’d just teleported there, between the jet lag and the hashish I’d been gifted upon arrival. But it wasn’t myself I found on that trip to the U.K., rather it was Erica, the woman who’d be my romantic partner, wife and the mother of our two kids.

Erica is not from the U.K. herself, but rather from Brunswick, Ohio the decidedly un-posh Cleveland suburb famous for nothing. At the time Erica was living in Manhattan, and I was living in Los Angeles, but a mutual friend connected us, and we spent an idyllic day hanging out in Queen’s Park picnicking, tossing a frisbee, and watching my sister’s problematic solicitor boyfriend almost decapitate random passers-by with his kite. Cheers, mate!

During the course of that day, we met a charming local couple, Simon and Scarlett, who’d just gotten engaged. They told us the story of his proposal—he had bought a ring, and only had the one day off from work so despite the fact that she was in a bad mood, he pushed through with his plan to take her to their favorite park and propose. Their story made us all laugh, and it stuck in my head. Especially the part about how he’d had to mildly scold her to get her out of her funk so that she would pay enough attention for him to pop the question.

This was all rather lovey-dovey, but I wasn’t conscious of any immediate romantic tension between me and Erica. For one thing, she was very much not available, given that she had a boyfriend, a 6’ 6” model/chef—sheesh, so yeah… not available. But we had a fun day hanging out nonetheless.

That night I had the crazy idea to stay up until 3am to watch the Dallas Stars play the New Jersey Devils in the Stanley Cup Finals. To keep myself awake, I noodled quietly on the guitar at the dining room table while everyone else in the house slept soundly. I didn’t think much of the ditty that came to me. It was a sweet little re-telling of Simon and Scarlett’s story from earlier that day. Two short verses and a simple chorus, and clocking in at only two minutes, it was so little and sweet that I didn’t imagine I’d ever find a home for it. But, hey, at least I’d kept myself awake long enough to watch the Stars get their asses handed to them by the stupid Devils.

Over the course of the following week, my sister and I wound up hanging out with Erica almost every day, and by the end of that week Erica and I had realized that we “liked” each other. So she disencumbered herself of her boyfriend (a really lovely guy whom I later got to know—we even went to his wedding!), and Erica and I reconvened a month later in New York City and went on our first date. Twenty-five years later, we are still together with two brilliant adult children and very cute poodle named Ziggy.

As for the tune I wrote that first night, “Question” went on to become my most played song. It was neither too little nor too sweet, it turns out. It’s been featured in movies, TV shows and advertisements. More than one musician friend has confessed to having had to learn it for a friend’s wedding. I’ve watched dozens, if not hundreds, of people get engaged in the audience while I stand on stage singing the song. It’s profoundly moving to realize that “Question” has played a part in one of the most important moments in so many people’s lives.

It has been a little weird though, I’ll admit. For instance, one night at the Vic Theater in Chicago I asked for a show of hands to see how many audience members had gotten engaged during the two and a half minutes of the song… FIFTEEN BETROTHED COUPLES raised their hands. That’s crazy. I felt like the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

For a while thereafter, we’d allow a fellow (always a man, don’t blame me, I didn’t invent the tradition, I just chronicled it) to get up on stage and propose. Then one night in Houston the guy climbed up on stage drunker than he’d been when he’d made the original request. He was kind of a mess, not gonna lie. And the girl did say yes, but she took what felt like a very, very long moment before doing so. I got the feeling we’d pushed our luck, and since then we have left romantic hopefuls to their own devices.

A sweet proposal from a gig in Santa Ana, CA not long before we stopped acquiescing to on-stage proposal requests. Where are these lovebirds today?

So… I have a question for you.

Do you have a story about “Question” having played a part in your romantic life? I’ll open up the comments to everyone, so please let me hear from you.

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Hooray for love!

yrs,

Rhett

We’d recorded “Four Leaf Clover” on our debut, and decided it deserved a better treatment and bigger audience. Playing it live over the intervening years, we’d learned that it was useful, a bombastic rocker in a set sometimes populated by mid-tempo wordplay. So when we were introduced to Exene by our Elektra A&R guy Tom DeSavia (next photo), we thought she’d be perfect for this song that was built on the kind of propulsive floor tom pattern that was practically invented by X’s drummer DJ Bonebrake.

Exene walked into the studio and asked if I wanted to hear some new poems she’d been working on. This was only about twelve years after I’d become obsessed with her band (and her, if we’re being honest) from their albums and a book I’d gotten called Beyond and Back: The Story of X. The book contains some of her poetry, which I thought was cool and weird. And obviously the lyrics to songs like “Riding With Mary” showed fledgeling songwriter yours truly that rock and roll could feature, and even benefit from, thorny, deep, honest lyrics.

In a dimly lit vocal booth in a haunted recording studio outside Woodstock, NY, Exene read me a poem that contained the line “I’ve been sharpening pencils in my heart all day long.” For some reason that line has always stuck with me. And then she asked if we could change the lyric in the verse she was to sing on “Four Leaf Clover.”

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I’ve got a real-live horseshoe

I hung it upside-down above my door

But it don’t do nothing to impress you

So I don’t know what the hell it’s for

-“Four Leaf Clover” by Old 97’s, Hitchhike to Rhome version

“I mean, ‘Impress’ is such a weak verb,” Exene told me that day. “What if it was something sexy like ‘attract’?” And she was right. Of course she was. Now that I’m a fancy college professor, I teach my songwriting students about what I call “juicy” words and strong verbs, and I encourage them to strive to find a way to create evocative dynamics in even the most granular moments of their songs. “Attract” is not only a better choice, but a juicier, stronger and more evocative word. And it’s the word I’ve been singing ever since.

Here are Exene and I seventeen years later(!) running through “Four Leaf Clover” backstage at the El Rey in 2014.

I hadn’t seen her in years until Old 97’s were joined by Exene on the Atrium stage of the Norwegian Pearl during Little Steven’s Underground Garage Cruise a couple of weeks ago, and in many ways it was as if no time had passed. I was still starstruck despite all the years. Now, Exene’s a little crazy. I admire her talent, creativity, and even her brashness. That said, she’s expressed some views and opinions that I definitely do not agree with. But when I looked to my right that day in the Atrium, I saw she was still Exene, ornery and, yes, evocative, and still the poet I’d fallen in love with back in 9th grade study hall.

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Jack Black just scored a Billboard hit with a song from his Minecraft movie. Clocking in at 34 seconds, “Steve’s Lava Chicken” has set a new record for shortest song on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s catchy as all get out. I did not write it.

I recently shared a story of my experience writing songs for the team behind the Minecraft Movie. It was crazy but ultimately fruitless. I was honored to have been asked, and I worked hard to deliver songs they’d love, but I eventually learned the filmmakers would not be using my songs. Which is fine. I knew it was a long-shot.

[For the record, this is my last Minecraft essay. Don’t worry, I’m not like obsessed or anything.]

In the end, only two of the scenes for which I’d written ended up featuring songs. Other scenes became tighter and used visual devices that made songs unnecessary. The big finale featured a song called “I Feel Alive” written by Jack Black along with proven hitmakers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. They did not go with my comparatively humble “Talkin’ ‘Bout Minecraft,” a demo of which is included in my previous essay. Theirs is a banger for sure. Not really the “Minecraft theme song” I’d been led to believe they were looking for, but totally rocking in an intentionally cheesy 1980’s hair-metal way.

The jingle that the character of Steve sings in A Minecraft Movie, “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” was apparently an ad-lib by Jack and director Jared Hess. It’s great despite Jason Momoa’s character’s assertion that the jingle “suck(s) butt.” My attempts at the theme song were less frenetic, but pretty fun nonetheless.

Forgive the basic-ness of the demos and imagine fully produced versions featuring the dulcet tones of one Thomas Jacob “Jack” Black.

Here’s a kinda slinky electric piano idea:

Here’s a more intense take on the jingle:

And if you REALLY like that one, here’s the extended version:

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It’s a world made out of blocks/And it totally rocks.

These are words I never imagined I’d sing into a microphone. But there I was, not just singing these words, but really emoting them a la Jack Black, whose vocal style is powerful in a mostly ironic way, but powerful nonetheless. What’s more I was trying to sound like Jack Black because I’d written the song hoping he’d sing it in his Minecraft movie.

SPOILER ALERT: he did not.

In case you don’t know what Minecraft is, WHO ARE YOU AND IN WHAT PARISIAN CAFÉ ARE YOU CURRENTLY WRITING POETRY? Suffice to say, kids love it, as do adults who have been kids at any point during the last 20 years. It’s, as they say, a whole thing.

A few days before Christmas 2023, I received an email from a publishing company emissary, asking me to take a crack at writing some songs for Jack Black to sing in Warner Brothers’ upcoming Minecraft movie. I’d been chosen based mostly on a collaboration I did a few years ago with James Gunn. Together, James and I wrote the song “I Don’t Know What Christmas Is” that my alien character Bzermikitokolok sings in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.

For the Minecraft opportunity, I received a “confidential deck” from the director Jared Hess whose brilliant film Napoleon Dynamite is an all-time favorite of mine. This deck included specific songs he needed for the film, along with vibe-comps (reference songs for sonic inspiration), guidelines for lyrics, even drawings of the characters. As is usually the case in Hollywood, they needed this stuff turned around pretty quickly—in fact one of the songs was to appear in a scene they would be shooting just after the beginning of the new year, so they told me to focus on that and get it to them ASAP.

I like a challenge, so as other folks were shopping and wrapping and caroling and guzzling egg nog, I was down in my basement studio channeling Jack Black trapped in a dungeon full of “piglins.” Weird! But as I said, I like a challenge, and I threw myself into this one. In the days leading up to Christmas I ignored my family, and created four distinct versions of the rush order song, sending them off one by one as soon as they were finished. I heard nothing back. So I started in on the other songs the Minecraft folks needed. I was into it now.

As that winter rolled on, I wrote and recorded multiple versions of each of the songs they’d charged me with, offering alternate sonic and lyrical approaches so that they’d have options. My favorite was a song I wrote for Jack to sing at the end of the movie, kind of a Minecraft theme called “Talkin’ ‘bout Minecraft.” When I finished that one, I thought to myself, there’s no way in hell they don’t use this.

SPOILER ALERT: they did not.

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I need help.

The tour kicks off in a week and I’ll be back on the grind. The Old 97’s will be hauling ass up the whole west coast of the USA, and in the parlance of the region, I’m hella stoked!

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But setlists must be created. By me! And they must satisfy both the audience members and the band members — I serve two masters, and they’re both somewhat opinionated it turns out. Good thing I’m a seasoned professional.

My questions to y’all are the following:

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Do humans hibernate? I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing the twelve weeks since my throat surgery. This level of chill is not something that comes naturally to me. I’ve been relentlessly hustling since I was 16 years old. These four silent, stationary months are unprecedented in my adult life. Once, just before the 97’s went into the studio to record Satellite Rides, I took three weeks off and traveled around Europe. Of course during that time I did a solo gig in London’s SoHo neighborhood, met and fell in love with the woman whom I’d marry a couple of years later, and wrote “Question,” my most-spun song, as well as the bulk of the songs on my Elektra solo LP The Instigator.

I’ve never been good at doing nothing.

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And yet, since my surgery December 12th, that’s just what I’ve done. Watching birds. Walking Ziggy up and down my icy road. Vocal rehab exercises that’d crack you up if you had a hidden camera trained on me. Reading — and not just audiobooks, which are a primary component of my on-the-move lifestyle, but actual print books… WITH MY EYES! [On a side-note, I got an advance of the upcoming Joe Abercrombie novel The Devils and OH MY GOD, I’m obsessed with the way he writes — fun, smart, funny, deep and trashy all at the same time.]

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I told myself I would be wildly productive during my time at home but that hasn’t happened. To be honest, it’s been a battle at times to stay positive. Thankfully, due to my ENT’s diligence and my voice therapist’s expertise, my throat is making a strong recovery, and that recovery is the whole point of this maddening work-stoppage. But I, like the shark, must swim or die apparently. Thank god the swimming starts up again soon.

The Old 97’s west coast tour kicks off March 28 in Flagstaff, AZ and continues for the better part of three weeks. Some of my favorite cities and venues appear on the itinerary and I’ll be able to sing ALL THE NOTES this time around. And again, to be honest, I wasn’t completely convinced that I’d ever climb back onto a stage. The handful of outlier horror stories of botched throat surgeries are impossible to ignore. But I’m fortunate to be a success story, so it looks like y’all are stuck with me for a while longer.

In the immediate future, I’m gonna do a little online performing to try and get my voice ready to go out on the road. I’ll be doing a Stageit show on Wednesday, March 12th and then I’ll be doing something special to celebrate the five year anniversary of my doing gigs on Stageit. I can’t believe it’s been five years since circumstances forced me to be an early adopter of online rock and roll, but it’s been a real life-saver. And I still appreciate the opportunity to do my job when I otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

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This year offers a lot to look forward to: a solo record that’s about to get mixed by my producer Murry Hammond(!) and our friend Todd Burke, a bunch of solo and 97’s tour dates, another installment of my Songwriting Is Magic retreat in New York’s gorgeous Catskills (early October, announcement coming soon), and a few unexpected surprises that I’ll be sharing with you as soon as I’m allowed. Oh yeah, and I’ll continue to teach undergraduate songwriters at The New School in Greenwich Village, which has been nothing short of a revelation.

Here’s a photo of last semester’s crew on the day we were joined by the great Rosanne Cash:

Time marches on, and since March is finally here, the roads are less icy, a fact Ziggy and I both appreciate. I’ll miss him when I’m out on the west coast, but I was made for making music and I’m so glad to get back to it. I hope to see y’all out there on the road. And I’m so grateful to get to do all the iterations of this weird and wonderful job.

yrs,

Rhett

I write this to you from the standing desk in my office. I have placed this desk before a large, ground-level window that looks up at the tree where I’ve hung a cluster of bird feeders. It’s amazing I’m even able to type this sentence, given the magnificence of the birds frolicking a few feet away. My gaze is endlessly pulled up and out. The modern impulse to capture it with my phone proves irresistable.

I mean, seriously?!?! In this moment alone I captured a male and female Northern Cardinal, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a Dark-eyed Junco and (my personal favorite) a Tufted Titmouse. I am not such an ornithologist that I can identify these birds off-hand, but now the apps on my phone can do that for me — via a photo or, and this is fun, listening to their songs!

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