The Old 97’s/Rhett Miller/Murry Hammond; July 21, 2009; Barrymore Theater

The Old 97’s always say how much they love Madison; still it had been several years since they had been to town. It isn’t really that surprising as many of the members have been taking time off to spend with their families. In the interim Rhett Miller has been releasing solo material and continues to tour, having just stopped here in February. I’m not a big fan of The Instigator and I didn’t even buy The Believer or the recent self-titled record, finding much of it rather sappy and nauseating (hard to believe from the guy who wrote something as clever as the “The Other Shoe”). Still I always enjoy his solo shows since he’s so damn adorable and still does a fair amount of band songs during his sets. And well the other stuff makes for a nice bathroom and beer opportunity.

I was initially charmed by the idea of Murry and Rhett doing unaccompanied sets to open the show, until I realized that Rhett’s would likely consist of his solo stuff. Other than “Singular Girl,” an outtake from the Satellite Rides record, that was true. Luckily he spent as much time talking as he did playing and his short set was pretty painless. He has declared Madison the Austin of the Midwest on more than one occasion, and he mentioned it again tonight. For some reason he always ends up talking about commercials in Madison, saying that his mom had told him he should sell the afore-mentioned song to Cingular, you know, when they were still around. And then he laughed and said something about the Chili’s commercial on YouTube had been recorded here. Of course, that wasn’t news to me since I am the one who posted it.

We were sitting at Tex Tubb’s down the street waiting for our food when I realized it was already show time. After a moment of panicky indecision, I decided that I would just have to eat my dinner afterwards and bolted for the theater. After all, of the whole night, Murry solo is the part we don’t usually get to see. I missed three of his songs, and he only did three more after I got there, but it was worth eating soggy nachos later to hear those. Turns out Murry is even more country than I had realized and the songs he did were as high and lonesome as the west Texas plains where he was raised.

There were no revelations in the band portion of the show, just a solid set from a really tight band. A few too many songs from the weak Blame It on Gravity made it into the set, but I suppose that was inevitable given that it was their most recent release. The highlights of their show have pretty much remained unchanged since the first time I saw them at Summerfest over ten years ago. Anything from Too Far to Care is bound to get the crowd going, and “Barrier Reef” and “Big Brown Eyes” did exactly that, the latter finding the 900 plus crowd yelling “yeah!” at just the right moment. As usual, “Doreen” and set closer “Time Bomb” left us on a high note. The Old 97’s could have never released another record after their third and still had an abundance of terrific songs to choose from.

Of course, then they probably wouldn’t still be touring even intermittently, and I would miss them.

Murry Hammond



Rhett Miller


The Old 97's