Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Old 97’s, Telegraph Canyon to play Bass Hall on August 21

By Pegasus News wire

The Old 97's and Telegraph Canyon will perform at Bass Performance Hall for their first time each on Friday, August 21. Tickets go on sale this Saturday, June 27 at 10 a.m.

Old 97's

The Old 97’s have spent more than 15 years crafting clever and melodic songs that pay equal homage to classic country, early punk, and contemporary pop. Rolling Stone magazine has called the quartet “outstanding,” and All Music Guide says, “…chief songwriter Rhett Miller turns a phrase like a doorknob and opens doors to dusty barrooms and tattered bedrooms.”

Originally based in the Dallas area, the band – Miller, bassist/singer Murry Hammond, guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peeples – has released seven albums, including last year’s Blame it on Gravity. Miller says the record carries on the group’s tradition of touching on the fire and friction between two people.

“I’m never gonna write about war-torn Bosnia or some political issue,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News. “I’m just not good at that, and I’m not interested in writing political or topical songs. But I do really get fascinated by those moments between two people that are just so fraught with misery. It’s those complicated moments when people are trying so hard to connect, and they can’t do it.”

Miller has been writing such songs for most of his life – as both a solo performer (he recently released his fourth solo album, Rhett Miller) and member of the Old 97’s. Some of the ‘97’s most popular songs – “Big Brown Eyes,” “Buick City Complex,” “Wish the Worst” – poetically deal with the day-to-day hardships of personal relationships.

Photo by Laura SeewoesterLaura Seewoester

Laura Seewoester

Telegraph Canyon

“(Gravity) opens with “Nobody Says I Love You Anymore,” which has these machine-gun drums over a waltz, over these really weird, dark lyrics,” Miller said. “But it felt right, and it felt strange. It felt like I was uncomfortable with it – in a good way, like I’m actually growing. This far in, 20 years after I made my first record in high school ... I’m still growing.”

Formed out of the ashes of Miller and Hammond’s previous band, Sleepy Heroes, the Old 97’s came together in 1993. “We’ve been doing this together for a long, long time,” Miller said. “Murry was my mentor. When I was 15, he was a few years older, and we were both dating girls named Jennifer who were best friends. Eventually, the Jennifers fell by the wayside, and he and I stayed friends and became partners in music. He taught me all these things that I still think about and am still obsessed with.”

After two independent records, the group signed to major label Elektra and released the critically acclaimed album, Too Far to Care, which the Fort Worth Star-Telegram named best album of the year. Intentionally shying away from the “alternative country” tag that the group had been labeled, the quartet followed up Care with Fight Songs, a more polished record that cracked the Billboard charts and landed the group a hit song, “Murder (or a Heart Attack).”

“Alt-country, at the beginning was something that just felt right, because we were running around with all these other bands that were doing some sort of variation on American roots music,” Miller said. “When we made our first record for Elektra, it still fit pretty well, but after a while it just began to feel derivative, or reductive and insulting. I really felt that we had so outgrown that classification.

“I’ve kind of come around now to the point where I really don’t care,” Miller said. “People need to talk about music, and the people who like alt-country music, whatever that is, tend to be pretty cool, and I talk to them and I like them and I like a lot of the bands that we get lumped in with. So I’ve kind of come full circle – from embracing it, to begrudging it, and now I’m back to being fine with it.”

Opening act Telegraph Canyon is one of the most exciting new bands in Fort Worth’s music scene. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram described the group’s 2006 debut, All the Good News, as “timeless yet immediate … it’s the sound of America, torn from the depths of an observant soul.” The band recently finished recording its second album, Telegraph Canyon.

Source: Bass Performance Hall

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• Telegraph Canyon to open for Broken Social Scene at Palladium this Friday, August 7 (Aug. 4, 2009)

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• Arts > Popular Music > Alt-Country / Americana
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