By Michael Gaither

When you’ve been doing something right for over three decades, you just keep doing it. That’s what Rhett Miller and his band Old 97’s will be doing this Saturday at Felton Music Hall.

I caught up with Rhett last week on the phone as he was about to hit the road. As far as the longevity of Old 97’s, Rhett says, “I often joke with my family and the band, wondering, ‘When is it going to be enough, or enough records, or enough songs?’ But I love what I do.”

As with most musicians, Rhett’s influences are pretty broad. He’s a seventh generation Texan but “grew up rejecting the trappings of what I saw as the redneck culture. I loved David Bowie and The Beatles and then got into The Cramps and ‘80s alternative like Aztec Camera. I was a little all over the place. And I loved folk music like The Kingston Trio.” Rhett eventually came full circle back to his roots when he “realized there’s great stuff here too, the greats like Hank Williams that I probably had just rejected out of hand.”

The band evolved in Dallas in the early ‘90s right at the tail-end of grunge. It started with Rhett and Murry Hammond, who plays bass. “Before Old 97’s,” Rhett recalls, “Murry and I had a few years where we were trying out different bands. None of them ever felt authentic.” Then Nirvana came along. “I remember when Nirvana was on Saturday Night Live. We looked at each other and said, ‘What are we doing? We’re never going to be as good as that.’ And that thing isn’t the thing we wanted to do, anyway.”

They did a reset: “We took a few months off of doing anything and then decided we’d do this coffeehouse acoustic band that would have no chance of getting signed,” he laughed. “It would take all the pressure off, and we would be doing what we wanted to do.” Six months later they brought in Phillip Peeples on drums “because the songs were asking to rock out a little bit more.”

Rhett adds, “And that’s, ironically, what became Old 97’s. We discovered that if you just plug it in and turn it up a little, it’s basically what we are: Loud folk music.”

Side note and trivia for Marvel fans: If Old 97’s sound familiar when you hear them, you might not realize that they’re the alien band who sort of torments Chris Pratt onscreen in the 2022 “Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.” The band happens to be director James Gunn’s favorite band. “Years ago, I was playing a song swap for Music Supervisors in Nashville,” Rhett recalls. “James walked in and said he’d just used one of our songs over the closing credits to one of his (at the time) early movies, ‘Slither.’” They’ve become good friends, and Gunn pulled Rhett in to cowrite “I Don’t Know What Christmas Is (But Christmastime Is Here)” for the “Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special” years later.

Saturday’s show will be the fifth gig on the band’s California run after a short, four-month hiatus. “I recently had to take a break after I had vocal cord surgery,” Rhett says. “But I’ve gotten back all the range that I had lost. And I’m really excited about being able to perform again.”

Old 97’s is also one of countless bands who have strong ties and memories of their time in Santa Cruz. Rhett adds, “My cousin Amber graduated from UCSC, and I spent a lot of time there. I remember very clearly writing the song ‘Indefinitely’ (off their 1999 ‘Fight Songs’ record) when I was there.”

I love the area, so I’m super excited to come back. We’ll especially bring it that night!”

Michael Gaither is a performing songwriter, radio DJ and the music writer for The Santa Cruz Sentinel.