WashingtonPost.com: The Old 97's

Ken Bethea, guitarist of the Old 97's, answers a few key questions. Q. If you were stranded on a desert island with one album and one book, what would they be? A.The book would have to be really long, so I would say "Aztec" by Gary Jennings. It was one of those books people told me to read for so long, and when I finally did, it blew me away. It follows the life of an Aztec Indian and has wars and sacrifice and the most crazy sex you can ever imagine. Wild stuff. As for a record, I'd say the Ramones' "It's Alive." It's cheating, you see, because it has all the songs from their first three records, so you get three for one. Q. Name your favorite line in a song: A. "Everybody at your party, they all look depressed. Everybody's dressing funny, color me impressed." -- "Color Me Impressed," The Replacements Q. Favorite guitar lick: A. It would be something off an AC/DC or Queen song. Probably "Hells Bells." (He sings the beginning.) Q. Favorite video game: A. Twisted Metal II on Sony Playstation Q. Favorite food: A. Diner breakfast food. Eggs and biscuits and bacon and that sort of thing. Q. Favorite movie: A. "Brazil" and "Schindler's List."

After all, they're a little bit country, a little bit rock and Ramones.

Old 97's straddle one world of cowboys and honky-tonk and another of lounge swingers and art-pop. In the appropriately big year of 1997, the Dallas-based band has recorded both with Nashville outlaw Waylon Jennings and punk diva Excene Cerevenka of X and toured with the alternative country No Depression as well as with the teen-angst-ridden Lollapalooza.

They're all over CMJ (College Music Journal) and Gavin college charts, touring with Social Distortion and getting reviewed in Rolling Stone. But unlike the title of a new album, "Too Far to Care," the band members do care about getting their unusual brand of music to the masses. They care very much.

Band members hope the release of a video this fall will lead to exposure — MTV would be nice — for "Timebomb," a quirky psycho-billy ode to a woman named Celeste.

"When we first got together, we were trying to be unpopular," singer/guitar player Rhett Miller says in an interview at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Chapel Hill. "We were just playing around town for fun." Eventually, though, the band got serious, signing lead guitarist Ken Bethea, 34, and drummer Philip Peeples, 30, to mix up tempos — country-influenced rock with old bluegrass standards by the likes of Bill Monroe and Bob Wills.

The band got its start in Dallas in 1986 when Miller opened for bassist/vocalist Murry Hammond's rock band, Peyote Cowboys — the start of a long friendship and partnership in music. It was Hammond, a train buff, who gave the group its name, inspired by an old railroad standard, "The Wreck of the Old 97."

Miller, 26, whose baby blues, horn-rimmed frames, floppy bangs and high energy make him a bit of a latter-day Buddy Holly, is the sort of guy who tells knock-knock jokes and sings whatever song pops into his head as he bounces down the street. Today, it's "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper, which he picked up after seeing a consignment boutique of the same name. He is also one of the few guys in the somewhat obscure alternative country genre who attract as many women to their shows as men. He shrugs off the magnetism.

"The secret to our band is that we're a bunch of geeks," quips Miller, a drop-out from the prestigious Sarah Lawrence College creative writing program. "We like to read in our free time."

Indeed, each of the band's four members are rather self-depreciating. With a characteristically wry smile, Hammond, 33, recalls his days installing cabinets in Rockville and tells how other band members spent their pre-rock-star lives as teachers and draftsmen. Playing their first Chicago gig in 1995, they were astounded at the crowd's rousing reception — not knowing they were just hours north of where the alternative music scene had its local explosion with the formation of the now-defunct Uncle Tupelo, the Bottle Rockets and Jason and the Scorchers. After being jilted in Texas cowboy country, Peeples says band members were stunned when people at the Chicago show sang along to their songs and women in front of the stage flashed them.

"It was such a shock for us to go to Chicago, because there was a group of listeners who actually liked us," Peeples says. "We had never even heard of Uncle Tupelo before then."

Chicago's Bloodshot Records signed up the Old 97's in early 1995 to record a song for its "Insurgent Country, Vol. II." Soon after, the group recorded "Hitchhike to Rhome," with the achingly catchy "Wish the Worst" — a pleading tune beginning with the words "Why aren't you here?" that is sung by the crowds at shows everywhere they play these days. In 1996, the band released its second album, "Wreck Your Life," which is still among the top 200 best-sellers at Tower Records.

After doing a showcase performance at Austin's world-renowned South by Southwest (SxSW) music festival in March 1996 and touring at Swiss and Norwegian music festivals (where they first performed with X's Cervenka), the Old 97's signed with Elektra. They recorded "Too Far to Care" in January 1997 and with Waylon Jennings in February (Hammond wrote one of the songs for Jennings) and hope to release a 7" single of the work in October on a yet-to-be-announced label. While they enjoyed working with Jennings, band members say they want to take their sound to a new level — out of the vaults of its devoted alternative country fan base and into the headphones of indie rock lovers, who usually jam to Pavement, Morphine and Guided by Voices.

"We don't need to tour with Son Volt or any other well-known alternative country band," Bethea says. "We want to expand our horizons outside of the Bloodshot Records scene. That's why we did Lollapalooza."

And despite being targeted as a hot, breakthrough band among Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo and Pavement on the college charts, the Old 97's admit they still have not exactly made it — especially among the legions of teenage Snoop Doggy Dogg and Korn fans at Lollapalooza.

"For us, coming away from the club background, where everyone knows you, it was a shock. We just weren't used to that kind of crowd — 15- and 16-year-olds who hate their parents," Bethea says. "We were the ones everyone rolled their eyes at. We were practically their parents' age."

The teens might not have a taste for them yet, but among alternative radio lovers, the Old 97's are starting to pick up steam.

"We are the real alternative," Hammond says.

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