Rhett Miller is tireless. Need proof? Check the Texas native’s ceaseless creative itch over the last three decades: 22 studio albums between his work fronting alt-country mainstays Old 97’s and his poppier output as a solo performer. He even started offering songwriting classes and workshops in recent years. Yet a recent development interrupted the 55-year-old singer/songwriter’s ability to perform: Doctors found a cyst on Miller’s vocal fold in late 2023. Rather than having surgery immediately, Miller decided to record his recently released solo effort, A lifetime of riding by night, before undergoing a procedure to fix the issue.
“I was trying to put on a brave face during the (recording) sessions,” Miller said in a recent interview with NPR. “And I love making music, so being in the studio was a joyful thing. But at the same time, I was really scared. I know that the success rate of the kind of surgery I had is pretty high, but I also knew that it wasn’t a 100 percent chance of success.”
The resulting songs on A lifetime of riding by night reveal a new level of vulnerability, as Miller’s voice struggles to reach notes previously attainable amid stripped-back, acoustic-laden tunes produced by Old 97’s bandmate Murry Hammond. There’s also a more personal element to Miller’s lyrics, which often address the listener directly about his move from untamed loverman to dedicated partner.
“I’ve learned to open up as an artist, as a songwriter,” Miller said in the same NPR interview. “I’ve learned to think in a more analytical way about songwriting. Like, if I sing to a ‘you,’ if I sing the word ‘you’ in a song, it’s like this little spell that I cast on the listener.”
Curiously, it looks like Old 97’s songs dominate Miller’s current solo tour setlist, which will thrill fans of the conversational, ache-ridden flirtations that dominate his main band’s catalog. The casting of spells might also occur despite the sparsity of tunes from A lifetime of riding by night.
Rhett Miller plays Madison Theater on Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. More info: madisontheater.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Nov. 12 print edition.
This article appears in Nov. 12-25.