SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Before he was rolled into the operating room, Rhett Miller made sure to hit the recording studio.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COME AS YOU ARE")
RHETT MILLER: (Singing) Riding the heels of seven-day stone, laughin' together and drinking alone.
SIMON: It was late last year, and the singer and songwriter needed to have a cyst removed from his vocal cords. Before we get to that surgery, let's talk about the results of those studio sessions. "A Lifetime Of Writing By Night" is Rhett Miller's tenth solo album, and he joins us now from a tour stop in Massachusetts. Thanks so much for being with us.
MILLER: Thank you so much, Scott. It's nice to be with you. How are you?
SIMON: I'm fine, thanks. And we'll get to you.
MILLER: (Laughter).
SIMON: When you're not working solo, of course, you're a lead singer of the band, Old 97's, which was recently honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Americana Music Association Festival in Nashville. What's that mean to you?
MILLER: It was a trip. I am not going to lie - sitting in the Ryman Auditorium with all those brilliant artists there. And I had my mom with me, who's in her early 80s.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MILLER: (Singing) Well, I got timebomb in my mind, Mom. I hear ticking but I don't know why.
Rosanne Cash got up there on that historic stage and she'd written a speech. And it was incredibly moving. I mean, Rose is a friend, but she's still Rosanne Cash. I didn't think an award or a recognition like that would mean that much to me. Because for years, I've sort of said that it's not - this isn't the beauty pageant, this thing we're doing. But it did - especially a lifetime achievement award. I felt like it was pretty cool.
SIMON: You know, it occurs to me. What a blessing for any group of four people on this earth, but particularly four people involved in the same enterprise of which they care deeply about to stay alive and be together.
MILLER: Yeah. We laugh about it sometimes, wondering, you know, who's going to be the first to cry uncle? I don't know. I - knock wood...
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCK)
MILLER: I think we might make 50. It'll only have to be 17 1/2 more years, Scott.
SIMON: All right. I'll be counting down.
MILLER: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A LIFETIME OF RIDING BY NIGHT")
MILLER: (Singing) One of us will wind up buried by a trail with just a moon to keep a watch. Campfire gutters and the ghosts begin to wail. We leave a cross made out of rocks.
SIMON: I have to ask, of course. All that singing, all that touring can take a toll on the voice. When did you begin to think, you know, this isn't just a sore throat?
MILLER: We were in Europe, and it was pretty bare bones, and we didn't have our in-ear monitors that I've gotten really dependent on for not screaming on a stage. And at the end of that run, we were in Edinburgh, and I was trying to make noises come out of my mouth on stage, and it was pretty much not working. And I knew then that something was terribly wrong, so I had to go to the doctor.
SIMON: Who said...
MILLER: He said, you have a giant cyst on your vocal fold, which is the same thing apparently as a vocal cord. And it turns out, when they talk about a giant cyst on your vocal fold, it's the size of a piece of rice.
SIMON: So what led to your decision to record this album before your surgery?
MILLER: I wanted to be able to make sure I got at least one more record in the can in the case that something went wrong. And I used to - in my more fraught, younger years, you know, when my mental health wasn't as stable as it is now, I used to think, if I make this record and it's good enough, then whatever happens is fine. Like, I've put out this record in the world. And then as the records stacked up, it became sort of a moot point. Like, OK, now there's enough records. I'm just staying alive because I actually like being alive (laughter).
SIMON: No embarrassment in that, all right? I mean, now.
MILLER: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PEOPLE ARE LIFTED")
MILLER: (Singing) At all times of the morning, at all times of the day. People are lifted and carried away. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. People are lifted and carried away.
SIMON: When you listen to this recording and hear some of the effort you put into some of the notes you sing, I hear - and tell me if I'm wrong - something reminiscent of when Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra recorded in their later years. I'm very moved by it.
MILLER: Thank you. I was trying to put on a brave face during the sessions. And I love making music, so being in the studio was a joyful thing. But at the same time, I was really scared. And 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% chance of success.
SIMON: Look, you've worked with Evan Felker of Turnpike Troubadours and Jesse Valenzuela from Gin Blossoms and some other folks on this album. What do collaborations offer?
MILLER: I love writing songs, and I've never felt like I needed other people. But guess what happens? When you work with other people, they bring something out of you that you would never think to access on your own. And it's something I've really discovered since I've been conducting songwriting workshops, and now I'm a songwriting instructor at a college in Greenwich Village.
SIMON: Yeah. This is The New School, right? Yeah.
MILLER: At The New School, yeah, in New York City. And the collaboration that we do is - I mean, it's at the heart of music. I mean, it's all about coming together to make music with other people. And when you write a song as vulnerable as that is and as weird as that is and magical - when you do it with somebody else, it can be even more magical.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A LITTLE SONG")
MILLER: (Singing) And I think I stole a melody to stop you now from leaving me. A little song make you sing.
And I've learned to open up as an artist, as a songwriter. And then, of course, I've learned to think in a more analytical way about songwriting. Like, oh, yeah. If I sing to a you - if I sing the word, you, in a song, I can do this. And it's like this little spell that I cast on the listener. And now when this song comes into their ears, they're in the song because the you that I sang put them in the song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL FOR YOU")
MILLER: (Singing) All for you. Every single bit of it is all for you. Every stupid little thing I do, all for you.
SIMON: May I ask, how are you feeling?
MILLER: Talking to such an esteemed broadcaster as yourself, having just received a lifetime achievement award while sitting next to my mom in the Ryman Auditorium, about to embark on a West Coast tour - I feel hopeful.
SIMON: I mean, all of that, it should be more than hopeful. My word (laughter).
MILLER: Yeah.
SIMON: Hopeful is when you're 16.
MILLER: You're right. Maybe there's that - I'm ashamed to admit it but, man, I just - I'm - I feel pretty good about all this stuff. It's - I love it. I mean, it's true. You know, I kind of joked about not being sure if I wanted to stick around on this planet when I was younger. But, oh, man, is it so worth it having stuck around all these years.
SIMON: Rhett Miller - his new album, "A Lifetime Of Writing By Night." Thanks so much for being with us.
MILLER: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHETT MILLER SONG, "BRAND NEW HEART") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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