PART 2
And it's really beautiful, kind of lovesong-y, with a lot of accordion and piano
and fiddle and a lot of female harmonies." He pauses, long enough to
catch his breath. "It's gonna be the flip
side of the coin to this Old 97s record,
both sonically and lyrically."
Happily, Miller runs down the list of
new solo material – "Wanderlust," "Escape Velocity," "My Little Disaster," and
the number of which he's proudest,
"Most In the Summertime." How did he
wind up with so much material? It's like
this, he says. When he came to his band
(guitarist Ken Bethea, bassist/co-vocalist Murry Hammond, and drummer
Philip Peeples) with potential fresh material, he had roughly 25 cuts. "And half
of them were the Most Messed Up songs,
which was like this concept album about
life in a rock band and on the bottle, or
whatever," he says. "And then the other
half were these really beautiful, sweet,
pretty songs. And Ken, our guitar player,
was really nervous about doing these
Messed Up songs, with all the cursing
and the talking about life in rock. But
after a coule of weeks, he called me up
and was like 'Dude – these are the best
songs you've written in years! If we didn't do this record, it would be such a stupid move. So I'm okay with it – I'll
explain it to my kids somehow."
Again, the rapier-witted frontman
spins off on a zany tangent. Bethea
might've banned salty sonnets like "Intervention," "Nashville," "Wasted,"
"Wheels Off," and the self-explanatory
"Let's Get Drunk & Get It On," but
Miller's son managed to sneak a few listens of the decidedly adult material.
"And it's so weird to hear him walking
around the house, singing the songs," he
chuckles. "I'm like 'Oh, God!' But he hasn't heard all of it." He suddenly snaps his
fingers. "That reminds me! I did a charity gig in New York City with a bunch of
comics the other night, and I took the
whole family. And Sarah Silverman was
down in the dressing room, and she was
being super-sweet to Max and asking
him all these questions.
"And then five minutes later, she was
onstage and telling the raunchiest jokes
that I've ever heard. And I'm sitting there
with my hand on Max and Soleil's shoulders, watching nervously. And then she
gets to this one joke where I just thought
it was beyond okay for my kids...you
can still salvage the situation if you can
muster a 'Ta-daaaaa!' And I was like
'Okay, we're gonna go out to the candy
table now, kids!' But hopefully, it goes
over their heads, ya know…."
And now, finally, the man is ready to
delve deeply into the topic of Most
Messed Up, which is – as Bethea correctly
assessed – one of the man's best collections of songs in years. But it has its aesthetic roots in the group's early history,
circa '95's Wreck Your Life and '97's Too Far
to Care, two rollicking, twang-infused efforts that practically defined the cowpunk sound. And Miller was a lyrical
Continued on page 61
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24 illinoisentertainer.com june 2014