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 s lead singer of the Dallas twang-pop band the Old 97’s, Rhett Miller made a career singing about last-call love and beer bottles run dry. These days, his life is quieter and far more stable — he lives in upstate New York with his wife and their son, and they have another child on the way. Singer-songwriters feed off dark days and bruises, so what to do when fate hands you career success and a model bride instead? Miller’s response is The Believer, his second solo album, which trades on hyper-romantic lyrics, bookworm wordplay, and classic melody. When I called at 11 a.m., Miller was just waking up, and he took the phone with a yawn and a stretch. This isn’t odd for a man who spent the ’90s on speaking terms with 4 a.m., but today there’s a different reason. His son Max couldn’t sleep last night, so Miller didn’t either. — Sarah Hepola
How old is Max these days?
He’s two-and-a-half. I was about to tell you his age in months, but you have to stop that at some point. Like, “He’s 324 months.”
It’s hard to switch over. My friend is working on a children’s book series — Baby’s First Year, Baby’s First Tooth — and I was suggesting that, for franchise purposes, she carry it as far as she can: Baby’s First Day of College.
[Laughs] Right. Baby’s First Blowjob. Oh my God, did I just say that?
That’s a good segue, because I was about to ask you about sex. You’ve said The Believer is mostly about sex, but that’s not obvious to me. Can you talk about that?
There’s a lot of subtle, hidden things. Like in “Ain’t That Strange,” there’s a line where I say, “You’re sitting on a goldmine,” which is a bit of a dirty euphemism. The first song on the album has a pretty explicit line, “Sex in wartime is a sweeter than peace / It’s the one good thing about war.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it came from the idea that when you’re aware of your mortality, it makes everything more valuable. Originally I wrote that song about living in a war-torn country, but it doesn’t even matter. America isn’t a war-torn country, but I remember the feeling Erica and I had going back to our apartment after 9/11. [They lived near the World Trade Center and were forced to evacuate.] It took three months to get back, and there were soldiers with machine guns and piles of rubble. I remember thinking, “Wow, I could die.”
So the subtext of that story is that, afterward, you totally boned.
[Laughs] Right.
Is it different writing about sex as a married person?
When I was single, sex was more complex, more fraught with peril. But once you’re married, it’s a different thing because you’re with the person you want to be with. Think about the line [from the Old 97’s album Too Far to Care‘s “Barrier Reef”], “Her on top and me on liquor.” The kind of sex I’m talking about on this record is something very different. Like, in one song, I say, “I came over to cushion your breakables.”
You mentioned “Barrier Reef,” which I consider one of the great drunk-sex anthems, and that’s a crowded category. Do you miss writing big, broken-heart songs?
I do a little. I’ve got enough in my repertoire that I’m not lacking for any. But what I miss is that abject misery. I can’t even really summon it anymore. I’ve got such a sweet little set-up. I’ve been lucky in my career and lucky in my life. It’s not like the days when I would stay up late, getting drunk and smoking every last cigarette and feeling totally entitled to do that. Those days when someone hands you a pill, and you don’t think, “What’s my schedule like for the next few days?”
Is it harder to write from a place of happiness?
Well, who wants to hear about how fucking happy you are? I don’t write too many happy-happy songs. Well, I write a lot of them, but I throw most of them away.
You have a lot of songs named after women: “Victoria,” “Doreen,” “Adelaide.” On this album, there’s “Help Me, Suzanne.” Where do those names come from?
Suzanne was Erica’s middle name, and I used to call her that. When we got married, she took the last name Miller and made her maiden name her middle name and got rid of Suzanne, which kind of made me sad. I missed that as part of her personality, so it was a song about my wife before we were married. I do often use people’s middle names in songs. “Victoria” was about a woman named Vivian, but I wrote another song about Vivian called “Mary Green.” The name Celeste [from Too Far to Care‘s “Timebomb”] came from a fourteen-year-old daughter of a friend who put us up one night. I had promised her I’d dedicate a song to her one night, and then some superstalker girl showed up in, like, a bloody wedding dress, basically, and I totally forgot to dedicate a song to Celeste. So I wrote that song in her honor.
I heard you wrote [Satellite Rides‘] “Rollerskate Skinny” about Winona Ryder.
Yeah, we were both living in L.A., and she was sort of calling me every five minutes and talking about the end of her two-year relationship with, I guess it turns out, Matt Damon. I had just broken up with my girlfriend, and you could feel Winona kind of moving in for the kill. I wrote the song to mean, like, “Are you seriously complaining about your life? Come on.” She came to see me at Largo [a popular L.A. lounge], and I played the song, and that made her even more interested, I guess. She invited me back to her place. And guess who turned her down?
Was it you?
It was. I turned her down. Just because I knew if I went there, it would be for the wrong reasons. And I’ve always had a more idealized view of relationships than that.
Isn’t she kind of crazy?
Well, she liked me and was very nice to me. But to be honest, I think all actresses are a little bit cuckoo.
Is sounding sentimental something you worry about?
I’m aware of it. When you’re twenty-six, you’re a drunk firebrand, and it’s easy to point your beer at the world and say, “Fuck you all.” For me to say that now would be disingenuous. It’s not like I’m driving a Volvo station wagon smoking my pipe, but I am in a very different place from when I was in my twenties.
The cover of The Believer is pretty foxy. When you were first in the Old 97’s, you always downplayed your looks. You had big clunky glasses —
And my face would be all blurry in pictures. [Laughs]
Isn’t that kind of backward — to play up your looks as you grow older?
I feel like I’ve grown into it. When I was a teenager, I had critics calling me this pretty-boy teen folkie. And I would think, “I know he’s saying I’m good-looking, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment.” I’m also something of a late-bloomer. There’s always been something boyish about me, and I’ve always been a little nervous. That’s not really attractive. When I hit thirty, I stopped giving a shit. This guy came up to me once and said, “I wish you looked like Jeff Tweedy. It would make it so much easier to buy your records.” First of all, Jeff Tweedy is cute. I mean, he dresses like a schlump, he has a bad haircut and his clothes are bedraggled, but he’s cute. Second of all, I’m not gonna play that game. This is what I look like. This is how I dress. What is the deal with straight men and Jeff Tweedy? He’s the one guy they feel comfortable gushing over. I know some straight men who would switch teams for him. He’s tapped into something.
The title of The Believer comes from the song you wrote about Elliott Smith. Where were you when you heard about his death?
At my friend Bridget’s apartment in New York. Elliott and I were not terribly close. By the time I got to L.A., he was descending into a bad state. But I was really affected when I heard about his death, because it took me back to that place when I was fourteen [the age at which Miller attempted suicide because of depression]. I mean, it’s a fragile place to be, us sensitive artsy types who tap into their dark side to write music.
You and Elliott Smith had a few other things in common: You both played Largo a lot, and you were both kind of damaged by growing up in Dallas.
I remember the first time I met him, I was doing a songwriting circle with him and Fiona Apple at Largo, and the two of them were so nervous beforehand they were practically bawling. They were basket cases. And I was like, “What’s wrong with you two? If anyone should be a basket case, it’s me!” But he was just a sweet guy, and what he wrote about was really heartfelt and sincere. There was an awkward moment toward the end of his life when he was not doing well. I was at a show on my birthday, and my friend Kevin said, “So what do you know about Elliott?” I had heard something about him doing crack at his house, and somebody had just seen him on a street corner in Los Feliz, and I was saying it’s such a waste. I mean, I really laid into him. And then, after the band finished, guess who was sitting right in front of us? Elliott was like, literally, six inches in front of us. At first I thought, “This is the most awkward moment of my life.” And then I thought, “You know what? He needs to know people are talking about him like this.”
So how does being a father change your life as a performer?
This year will be the hardest year of my life. I haven’t gone on the road for this long. And Max is at such a good age. It’s gonna be really rough.
It seems like fatherhood’s mellowed you out.
You have to get some fucking perspective at some point. I spent a lot of time in my life wallowing. Now, I have to carve out time for things. It’s funny — this upcoming tour is the first time I’ll probably get more sleep on the road. I used to roll out of bed, and I had to get a pen to write something down. Now I pick up the guitar, and Max is like, “Daddy, no guitar.” I’m like, “Really? No guitar?” He’s such a dick. He’s like, “Not that song, daddy.” He only likes “My Valentine” and “Ain’t That Strange.” He won’t listen to anything else on the album.
Those are my favorites, too. Maybe I have the taste of a two year old.
Or maybe you’re both just right. n°
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© 2006 Sarah Hepola and hooksexup.com.
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