Shaking Our Asses Right That Instant... And the Rest of the Evening

I am thoroughly convinced that for his solo shows, when there's no percussion onstage, Rhett Miller uses his hair to help him keep time. It seems to have a mind of its own, swirling around his head and over his eyes as he energetically plays the songs that his fans know every word to. His isn't '80s headbanger hair: it starts out perfectly feathered and carefully blown-dry, but as Miller performs, it becomes drenched in sweat, spraying the members of the audience who dare to stand in the front row. Miller may be playing a solo show, but there are two very visible personalities on that stage. (At one point halfway through his set, he mentioned that his hair was getting in his eyes and he needed to get it cut. Not too short, I hope – what would he use as a metronome then?)

The baby-faced Austinite, whose looks belie his thirty-seven years, returned again to Philadelphia—a city where he confessed to loving to try out new material—playing a sold-out show at the World Cafe on Saturday night. Having seen him perform twice before, and having loved him both times, I wasn't about to miss this show. I've always found him charming, and he didn't disappoint. Taking the stage, he greeted the audience, looked around him, gestured at someone offstage, then said: "So, it seems that I left my setlist backstage. And now... I don't know what to play." The audience erupted with suggestions, and he played a few chords of each song before Michaela Majoun scurried onto the stage with Miller's backpack, which apparently contained the setlist. Laughing as she exited, Miller lifted a glass and said: "Of course, you'll notice that I didn't forget my Jameson's." Then, taking another sip and sloshing the remaining ice cubes around, he looked offstage again, and Majoun reemerged with an entire bottle. Miller hadn't played a song yet, and yet he was already off to a good start.

First song of the night: the awesomely nerdy "Four-Eyed Girl." (Okay, so the lyrics aren't actually as nerdy as songs like "Our Love" and "World Inside the World" – but he's singing about being in love with a bespectacled science teacher, so nerd points still get awarded.) He dove into it, then the Old 97's song, "The New Kid," and several other fan favorites that appeared on either his solo albums or one of eight previous 97's albums. before asking the audience permission to play a few of the songs from the band's upcoming release, "just to try them out." He explained that the new album will be awesome, possibly their best yet – but he still wanted to know what we'd think.

The subsequent two or three songs did not disappoint. Even lacking the full band, it was obvious that these songs would fit nicely into the rest of the canon. Unfortunately, at this point, much of the audience's attention and energy began to wane. The cult of Rhett Miller is chiefly focused on the ability to sing and dance to familiar music. These songs would no doubt eventually be just as familiar to the fans as those to which they'd been bopping around, but at that moment, they were strange and a little foreign and caused a slight lull in the set, even after Miller went back to playing his older material. When you're playing an acoustic set and this happens, it's slightly harder to recover than when you've got a full band.

But recover Miller eventually did, working the audience up to a near frenzy as he told them "I feel like I haven't had time to breathe. It's like I'm in a competition to see how many songs I can fit into a two hour set." And even after many of his most familiar songs were played and Miller left the stage, there were demands for more. Miller returned to play two encores, including a Dylanesque protest song that he's still working on. Even though he didn't play one of my personal Old 97's faves, "Designs on You" (which he definitely played both of the previous times I saw him), it was hard to leave the World Cafe Live feeling anything less than satisfied.

Photo by Phillyist Ross.