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Rhett Miller interview from Harp Magazine
Miller's Crossing
By Alan diPerna
"Having a kid appeals to the narcissist in people like me," laughs Rhett Miller. The ace songsmith is reflecting on the forthcoming birth of his second child: "You look at this little creature that you've invented, and you're responsible for filling up their head, thinking, 'Oh, my God, this kid is brilliant! See how well this reflects on me?'"
Not that Miller needs fatherhood to reflect his brilliance. His songs are also filled with great ideas, not to mention superb melodies and an unerring knack for infectious hooks. From his earliest, mid-'90s recordings with Dallas' Old 97's, Miller staked his claim as a major heir to the wistful, sometimes whimsical, always well-wrought songwriting tradition of tunesmiths like his hero Ray Davies, not to mention friends and contemporaries like Robyn Hitchcock and the late Elliott Smith, who is memorialized on the title track to Miller's new solo album, The Believer.
While remaining a member of Old 97's, Miller launched a separate solo career with his 2002 album, The Instigator. His new solo disc picks up where that first one left off and is his most expansive album yet. Producer George Drakoulias (Tom Petty, Black Crowes) teamed Miller with a coterie of hip L.A. players, including Beachwood Spark Josh Schwartz and Beck guitarist and 40 Year Old Virgin soundtrack composer Lyle Workman.
"The first day, maybe I didn't feel like I could communicate as much as I wanted to," Miller admits. "But by the third day, I felt like I couldn't stop communicating."
The Believer is an album that isn't afraid to swagger when it needs to, as on the space-rockin' "Ain't That Strange." Nor does Miller shy away from lavish orchestration--provided by keyboardist Patrick Warren's vintage Chamberlin organ. A sense of high drama imbues "The Believer," while "Brand New Way" ventures into a jazzy ballad mode, which is indeed something brand new for Miller. But for the most part, he continues to walk the straight, true path that links jangle pop and alt-country. This is where his heart lives.
While Miller's earlier songs were filled with a sense of boozy remorse, his focus has shifted over time. It's not that he's grown more optimistic. It's just that his perspective has broadened. He's more willing to look outside himself. Some of his best songs these days are about other people's lives--little narrative vignettes like "Question" (an Old 97's song that Miller reprises on this solo disc)--and the country ballad "Fireflies," with its tale of estranged small-town lovers sung as a duet with Rachel Yamagata.
"I originally had Exene Cervenka in mind for the song," Miller recounts. "But she said, 'Come on, Rhett, have you heard my voice?' So Rachel turned out to be perfect for the song. The way she sang it brought out nuances of meaning I didn't even know were there."
Given Miller's narrative bent, it's no surprise that he's turned his hand to prose fiction recently. He contributed a piece to Dave Eggers' McSweeney's and has another coming out in an MTV Books anthology of writers writing about songs. Rhett has branched out into music for television as well. Another Believer track, "I'm With Her," started out as a prospective title song for an ABC sitcom of the same name. And on the big screen, Old 97's are soon to be seen in the new Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy The Break Up.
Given all this--not to mention Rhett's vulnerable good looks and his fashion-model wife, Erica Lahn--one might be forgiven for wondering if Miller is starting to go Hollywood. But actually the singer has recently abandoned L.A. to take up residence in rural upstate New York with his wife and growing family. It was there, amid starry nights and scenes of domestic tranquility that Miller composed the songs that make up The Believer.
HARP: A stylistic preoccupation with the glam '70s emerges on songs like "Ain't That Strange" and "Meteor Shower" from your new album. Where does that come from?
MILLER: A lifelong obsession with that era. David Bowie is my all-time favorite. I got taken to a Bowie show during his Serious Moonlight tour, which would have been '83, so I would have been 13. I got taken, actually, by Lisa Loeb. We grew up around each other. Her little sister was my girlfriend. So Lisa drove us to the show and chaperoned us. It was awesome getting to see Bowie play. The thing about his whole gestalt, it was kinda my big realization that, Jesus Christ, this is what I want to do with my life.
Outer space and light are two lyrical motifs that run throughout the album. There's space imagery in "I'm With Her" and "Ain't That Strange." There's light imagery in "Fireflies," and "Meteor Shower" brings both those motifs together.
God, you're right. I hadn't thought much about it, but I guess it's true. And those are definite Bowie images. He'd always return to outer space, light--"Starman," that whole thing. But even more than that, I think it was because I recently moved to the Hudson Valley, just north of Manhattan, after years of moving from L.A. to New York to L.A., with big-city traffic, smog and buildings. Now we've got three acres on the side of a hill. We can see such an enormous sky at night from the back porch. That's where I wrote a lot of the record. And, now that you bring it up, I was watching shooting stars while I was writing these songs. It's weird. I didn't realize how many shooting stars there are. If you don't live in a big city, you really notice that.
I don't look up all that much.
[Laughs] That could be a good Sesame Street song, admonishing you to look up more.
I should. People tell me to. Maybe I'd be less depressed.
I was gonna say, the pendulum swings back and forth on this record between bleakly embittered love songs and more upbeat love songs. Which of those polarities do you gravitate more toward in everyday life?
Well, what day is it? No, I'm awfully happy right now. My wife and I have a kid and we're expecting a second one. I generally feel positive about things right now. But when you write a song, it comes from a different place. When I was 17, my parents were going through a long, bad divorce. My mom was sort of searching for herself, and one of the things she tried was Transcendental Meditation. My mom and I both were inducted into the practice of Transcendental Meditation. And while I don't actually meditate that much any more, I realized that I've always done some version of it, starting when I began writing songs when I was 12 or 13. It's just a way to shut off those voices in your head and let the song come through on its own. Stephen King, in his book on writing, says he really hates that style of writing where you just let go and follow the muse and figure out afterward what it's all about. He goes on and on about how you're doing a disservice to your readers if you're not headed somewhere from the beginning and are conscious of it. But that's not the way I write, and apparently he likes my songs. I heard he put me on some list somewhere.
There's always a little ray of hope in your bleak songs, but there's also always some ironic undercurrent in your upbeat ones.
Thanks. That's my favorite part of the whole thing. If there's text, there's gotta be some subtext. Otherwise what's the point?
In that context, one my favorite lines on the record is in "Help Me, Suzanne": "Living on the memory of the dream I once had."
I know. When I sing it, it sounds like some beautiful thing. Like it's nourishing me, this memory. But obviously that's a sad sentiment. That's what you've got going for you? Just this thin wisp of a memory you're clinging to?
The title track was occasioned by Elliott Smith's death?
Yes. I wrote it the day he died. I was at a friend's apartment in Manhattan and I sat down at his dining-room table when I heard the news. All the musicians and friends of Elliott's that I know were so devastated. He had a self-destructive side, obviously. It was well chronicled. But when it happened, you still couldn't fucking believe it. A lot of people who knew him were very angry. And I had that initial impulse as well. But I had to stop and say, "Dude, I could so easily have been a suicide, too." I have a history with that impulse. I had a big suicide attempt when I was 14. I should have died. I drank so much toxic lamp oil, furniture polish and I took all the pills in the medicine cabinet, including a bottle of Valium, which, ironically, saved my life. The Valium slowed down my blood system and the poisons didn't go fast enough. So when they induced vomiting in the emergency room, it wasn't too late. My heart was beating so slowly. So it was just a matter of degrees.
I hear you're working on a novel.
That's ambitious. No. I've been writing short stories. My long-range goal, yes, is to write a novel. I thought I would get down to it at the end of this year, but I ended up getting commissioned to do some short stories instead. But I'd like to write a novel eventually. Something like Kinky Friedman, but a little less goofy.
In an early Old 97's press release, you said that you rip off Raymond Carver.
Yeah, he was pretty seminal for me. I haven't read him a lot lately. Maybe it's because I'm just sappy--I'm like a dad now. Raymond Carver's just so snapshot. Maybe characters are changing and realizing things--all the stuff you look for in traditional short stories. But it's just so dry. Kind of nothing happens. I still love that, but I'm also a fan of mystery novels, where I want something to happen. Juice it up a little bit. At least have sex, or get drunk and have a fight. Well, I guess Carver actually does that.
Pop songs are extremely structured things. There are verses, choruses and bridges. And forms like the mystery novel possess a similarly tight structure. You gotta have discipline to do it.
With the mystery novel for sure you do. But even with the short stories I'm working on, I had such an epiphany one night. I realized it really is like a pop song. I was thinking about the next scene I was going to write, and the ones I'd already written. And each scene is kind of like another verse. A recurring location is kind of like a chorus--the place the story's gonna come back to. The pivotal scene in the story is like a middle eight, a turning point. Each scene has to have something compelling enough in it to make you want to go on to the next one. So it is kind of like putting together a pop song. You've got to keep it moving forward, create interest.
Obviously you can say things in a story that you can't say in a song. It's a little less compact of a form.
Oh yeah, definitely. But so far, songs are what come the most easily to me. So I'm gonna have to stick with that for a while.
So what's up with Old 97's?
We're playing some shows, and the very same week that my solo record comes out, the Old 97s will be featured in a movie called #The Break Up# with Vince Vaughan and Jennifer Aniston. We had a great couple of days filming at this beautiful old theater in Chicago with thousands of extras. I'm not getting my hopes up too much, but a lot of people are going to see this movie. The Hollywood machinery is so much more powerful than anything any record label can muster anymore. So, to answer your question, the 97's are great. It's a cool setup we've got now, where we get to go out every couple of months and play gigs, but I'm also free to go home, be with my family, work on solo stuff, stories, even music for TV. It looks like we're going to be able to use this business model, or band model, until we're a million years old.
First printed in March/April 2006
Miller's Crossing
By Alan diPerna
"Having a kid appeals to the narcissist in people like me," laughs Rhett Miller. The ace songsmith is reflecting on the forthcoming birth of his second child: "You look at this little creature that you've invented, and you're responsible for filling up their head, thinking, 'Oh, my God, this kid is brilliant! See how well this reflects on me?'"
Not that Miller needs fatherhood to reflect his brilliance. His songs are also filled with great ideas, not to mention superb melodies and an unerring knack for infectious hooks. From his earliest, mid-'90s recordings with Dallas' Old 97's, Miller staked his claim as a major heir to the wistful, sometimes whimsical, always well-wrought songwriting tradition of tunesmiths like his hero Ray Davies, not to mention friends and contemporaries like Robyn Hitchcock and the late Elliott Smith, who is memorialized on the title track to Miller's new solo album, The Believer.
While remaining a member of Old 97's, Miller launched a separate solo career with his 2002 album, The Instigator. His new solo disc picks up where that first one left off and is his most expansive album yet. Producer George Drakoulias (Tom Petty, Black Crowes) teamed Miller with a coterie of hip L.A. players, including Beachwood Spark Josh Schwartz and Beck guitarist and 40 Year Old Virgin soundtrack composer Lyle Workman.
"The first day, maybe I didn't feel like I could communicate as much as I wanted to," Miller admits. "But by the third day, I felt like I couldn't stop communicating."
The Believer is an album that isn't afraid to swagger when it needs to, as on the space-rockin' "Ain't That Strange." Nor does Miller shy away from lavish orchestration--provided by keyboardist Patrick Warren's vintage Chamberlin organ. A sense of high drama imbues "The Believer," while "Brand New Way" ventures into a jazzy ballad mode, which is indeed something brand new for Miller. But for the most part, he continues to walk the straight, true path that links jangle pop and alt-country. This is where his heart lives.
While Miller's earlier songs were filled with a sense of boozy remorse, his focus has shifted over time. It's not that he's grown more optimistic. It's just that his perspective has broadened. He's more willing to look outside himself. Some of his best songs these days are about other people's lives--little narrative vignettes like "Question" (an Old 97's song that Miller reprises on this solo disc)--and the country ballad "Fireflies," with its tale of estranged small-town lovers sung as a duet with Rachel Yamagata.
"I originally had Exene Cervenka in mind for the song," Miller recounts. "But she said, 'Come on, Rhett, have you heard my voice?' So Rachel turned out to be perfect for the song. The way she sang it brought out nuances of meaning I didn't even know were there."
Given Miller's narrative bent, it's no surprise that he's turned his hand to prose fiction recently. He contributed a piece to Dave Eggers' McSweeney's and has another coming out in an MTV Books anthology of writers writing about songs. Rhett has branched out into music for television as well. Another Believer track, "I'm With Her," started out as a prospective title song for an ABC sitcom of the same name. And on the big screen, Old 97's are soon to be seen in the new Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy The Break Up.
Given all this--not to mention Rhett's vulnerable good looks and his fashion-model wife, Erica Lahn--one might be forgiven for wondering if Miller is starting to go Hollywood. But actually the singer has recently abandoned L.A. to take up residence in rural upstate New York with his wife and growing family. It was there, amid starry nights and scenes of domestic tranquility that Miller composed the songs that make up The Believer.
HARP: A stylistic preoccupation with the glam '70s emerges on songs like "Ain't That Strange" and "Meteor Shower" from your new album. Where does that come from?
MILLER: A lifelong obsession with that era. David Bowie is my all-time favorite. I got taken to a Bowie show during his Serious Moonlight tour, which would have been '83, so I would have been 13. I got taken, actually, by Lisa Loeb. We grew up around each other. Her little sister was my girlfriend. So Lisa drove us to the show and chaperoned us. It was awesome getting to see Bowie play. The thing about his whole gestalt, it was kinda my big realization that, Jesus Christ, this is what I want to do with my life.
Outer space and light are two lyrical motifs that run throughout the album. There's space imagery in "I'm With Her" and "Ain't That Strange." There's light imagery in "Fireflies," and "Meteor Shower" brings both those motifs together.
God, you're right. I hadn't thought much about it, but I guess it's true. And those are definite Bowie images. He'd always return to outer space, light--"Starman," that whole thing. But even more than that, I think it was because I recently moved to the Hudson Valley, just north of Manhattan, after years of moving from L.A. to New York to L.A., with big-city traffic, smog and buildings. Now we've got three acres on the side of a hill. We can see such an enormous sky at night from the back porch. That's where I wrote a lot of the record. And, now that you bring it up, I was watching shooting stars while I was writing these songs. It's weird. I didn't realize how many shooting stars there are. If you don't live in a big city, you really notice that.
I don't look up all that much.
[Laughs] That could be a good Sesame Street song, admonishing you to look up more.
I should. People tell me to. Maybe I'd be less depressed.
I was gonna say, the pendulum swings back and forth on this record between bleakly embittered love songs and more upbeat love songs. Which of those polarities do you gravitate more toward in everyday life?
Well, what day is it? No, I'm awfully happy right now. My wife and I have a kid and we're expecting a second one. I generally feel positive about things right now. But when you write a song, it comes from a different place. When I was 17, my parents were going through a long, bad divorce. My mom was sort of searching for herself, and one of the things she tried was Transcendental Meditation. My mom and I both were inducted into the practice of Transcendental Meditation. And while I don't actually meditate that much any more, I realized that I've always done some version of it, starting when I began writing songs when I was 12 or 13. It's just a way to shut off those voices in your head and let the song come through on its own. Stephen King, in his book on writing, says he really hates that style of writing where you just let go and follow the muse and figure out afterward what it's all about. He goes on and on about how you're doing a disservice to your readers if you're not headed somewhere from the beginning and are conscious of it. But that's not the way I write, and apparently he likes my songs. I heard he put me on some list somewhere.
There's always a little ray of hope in your bleak songs, but there's also always some ironic undercurrent in your upbeat ones.
Thanks. That's my favorite part of the whole thing. If there's text, there's gotta be some subtext. Otherwise what's the point?
In that context, one my favorite lines on the record is in "Help Me, Suzanne": "Living on the memory of the dream I once had."
I know. When I sing it, it sounds like some beautiful thing. Like it's nourishing me, this memory. But obviously that's a sad sentiment. That's what you've got going for you? Just this thin wisp of a memory you're clinging to?
The title track was occasioned by Elliott Smith's death?
Yes. I wrote it the day he died. I was at a friend's apartment in Manhattan and I sat down at his dining-room table when I heard the news. All the musicians and friends of Elliott's that I know were so devastated. He had a self-destructive side, obviously. It was well chronicled. But when it happened, you still couldn't fucking believe it. A lot of people who knew him were very angry. And I had that initial impulse as well. But I had to stop and say, "Dude, I could so easily have been a suicide, too." I have a history with that impulse. I had a big suicide attempt when I was 14. I should have died. I drank so much toxic lamp oil, furniture polish and I took all the pills in the medicine cabinet, including a bottle of Valium, which, ironically, saved my life. The Valium slowed down my blood system and the poisons didn't go fast enough. So when they induced vomiting in the emergency room, it wasn't too late. My heart was beating so slowly. So it was just a matter of degrees.
I hear you're working on a novel.
That's ambitious. No. I've been writing short stories. My long-range goal, yes, is to write a novel. I thought I would get down to it at the end of this year, but I ended up getting commissioned to do some short stories instead. But I'd like to write a novel eventually. Something like Kinky Friedman, but a little less goofy.
In an early Old 97's press release, you said that you rip off Raymond Carver.
Yeah, he was pretty seminal for me. I haven't read him a lot lately. Maybe it's because I'm just sappy--I'm like a dad now. Raymond Carver's just so snapshot. Maybe characters are changing and realizing things--all the stuff you look for in traditional short stories. But it's just so dry. Kind of nothing happens. I still love that, but I'm also a fan of mystery novels, where I want something to happen. Juice it up a little bit. At least have sex, or get drunk and have a fight. Well, I guess Carver actually does that.
Pop songs are extremely structured things. There are verses, choruses and bridges. And forms like the mystery novel possess a similarly tight structure. You gotta have discipline to do it.
With the mystery novel for sure you do. But even with the short stories I'm working on, I had such an epiphany one night. I realized it really is like a pop song. I was thinking about the next scene I was going to write, and the ones I'd already written. And each scene is kind of like another verse. A recurring location is kind of like a chorus--the place the story's gonna come back to. The pivotal scene in the story is like a middle eight, a turning point. Each scene has to have something compelling enough in it to make you want to go on to the next one. So it is kind of like putting together a pop song. You've got to keep it moving forward, create interest.
Obviously you can say things in a story that you can't say in a song. It's a little less compact of a form.
Oh yeah, definitely. But so far, songs are what come the most easily to me. So I'm gonna have to stick with that for a while.
So what's up with Old 97's?
We're playing some shows, and the very same week that my solo record comes out, the Old 97s will be featured in a movie called #The Break Up# with Vince Vaughan and Jennifer Aniston. We had a great couple of days filming at this beautiful old theater in Chicago with thousands of extras. I'm not getting my hopes up too much, but a lot of people are going to see this movie. The Hollywood machinery is so much more powerful than anything any record label can muster anymore. So, to answer your question, the 97's are great. It's a cool setup we've got now, where we get to go out every couple of months and play gigs, but I'm also free to go home, be with my family, work on solo stuff, stories, even music for TV. It looks like we're going to be able to use this business model, or band model, until we're a million years old.
First printed in March/April 2006