About the Artist
Rhett Miller has fronted the Old 97's for 33 years, with the same four members the whole way. The Dallas-raised, New York-based songwriter has also built a life outside the band: nine solo records, a songwriting book on the way from St. Martin's Press, and a weekly class he teaches at The New School. Last fall the Old 97's took home a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association at the Ryman, introduced by Rosanne Cash. His newest solo album, A Lifetime of Riding by Night (2025), came together in a way he never planned.
Rhett Miller
About the Episode (Episode 141)
Rhett Miller: Elder Statesman, Still Hungry
Jason English caught up with Rhett at the 30A Songwriters Festival, a few months after the Old 97's were honored at the Ryman. At 55, Rhett is the youngest guy in his band, with a new solo record out and a to-do list that would flatten a man half his age. The tension underneath the whole conversation: what do you still want when the award is already on the shelf?
Key Conversation Points
The record he didn't make: Rhett cut his vocals a week before vocal surgery, then spent four months in near silence while his bandmate Murray Hammond finished the album. "My wife thought I was crazy. She's like, you're just letting him make the record. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just gonna let go." What came back was quieter than anything he would have allowed himself.
The superpower of saying no: An Irish film director he met on a fishing boat handed him advice he can't shake. "Your greatest superpower is saying no." For a lifelong people pleaser, that one went deep, and Jason counters it with a very different piece of wisdom from a past guest.
What sobriety gave back: Rhett is honest about the morning-after clarity that changed his life at home. "I'm no longer an asshole to my kids now in the morning. I thought that's just who I was." Where he takes it from there is one of the most open exchanges about sobriety in the catalog.
There is more he gets into: cutting a single with Waylon Jennings and the Buddy Holly story he heard firsthand, the night he watched an unknown Brandi Carlile take a room, a TV show in development with a Ted Lasso writer, and why, after all of it, he says he wants to be right where he is. Watch the full conversation, and stay to the end for the live performance.