{"id":219009,"date":"2026-03-25T01:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T01:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/219009\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T01:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T01:51:13","slug":"it-is-gonna-be-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/219009\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It is gonna be weird\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the very un-rock hour of 5:45 p.m., the long line to get into Sons of Hermann Hall was somewhat slowed by the consent waiver everyone had to sign. Untitled Old 97\u2019s Documentary will chronicle the band\u2019s history and current chapter, according to a producer. So far that has included trailing the beloved Dallas-bred Old 97\u2019s<\/a> as they record a new album, their 15th, and on Monday night, filming them at back-to-back sets of Too Far to Care, their 1997 classic of booze and broken hearts. <\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of ground rules,\u201d said Robert Wilonsky<\/a>, editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News, introducing the band at the packed early show as a camera crane swooped back and forth above the audience. \u201cDo not take pictures. Do not record. Do not use your RadioShack recorder to bootleg. Do not hire a courtroom sketch artist. Just do what we did in 1995. Drink a beer, stand in the Sons of Hermann and enjoy your favorite band.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Old 97\u2019s busted out in the early \u201990s, playing a toe-tapping mix of rock and honky-tonk that was then called alt-country, now Americana. 1995 was when the band opened for Wilco at Sons of Hermann, but its first show at the venue was a year or so earlier, at least according to Wilonsky, who heard the band that night, sitting with Funland\u2019s Peter Schmidt and Mark Rubin from the Bad Livers, the evening\u2019s headliner. Over the next three decades, Old 97\u2019s have torn it up at Sons more times than anyone cares to count, but this show would be different. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is gonna be weird, because as much as we would like it to be otherwise, the priority tonight is that we\u2019re filming,\u201d said frontman Rhett Miller<\/a>, talking to the audience like old friends, and by this point, many of them are. <\/p>\n

News Roundups<\/p>\n

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Dallas audiences have grown up with the Old 97\u2019s, raised their children to the Old 97\u2019s (several of those now-grown kids appeared to be in attendance Monday) and stumbled into middle age with the Old 97\u2019s. Too Far to Care is a brilliant time capsule of smoke-choked bars and such pre-internet lines of longing as, \u201cI\u2019m calling time and temperature just for some company.\u201d You\u2019re probably plucking out gray hairs if you recall the ritual of punching numbers on a landline phone so an automated voice could tell you it was 6:43 p.m. and 82 degrees, which might be the Dallas Gen X version of walking a mile in the snow. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember being up in the garage apartment on Goliad, looking across the alley at the Blockbuster parking lot,\u201d said Miller, launching into an explanation of that line before the crowd favorite \u201cBig Brown Eyes,\u201d the eighth track on Too Far to Care. \u201cI was missing my girlfriend, and I would go over to the wall phone, which had a super long coily cable, and I literally called time and temperature, because I was lonely.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Old<\/p>\n

Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller performing in 2014, which through some miracle of age-resistance, is basically how he looked performing on Monday at Sons of Hermann Hall.<\/p>\n

Jim Tuttle \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

Untitled Old 97\u2019s Project promises to be a stiff shot of nostalgia for anyone eager to re-enter the Deep Ellum haunts and East Dallas dives of the bustling \u201890s scene, but it will also track a band that\u2019s done something extraordinary, which is to make great music<\/a> for more than a quarter-century. The show kicked off with four new songs, all instantly lovable. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an intense month of being filmed while also trying to make a new album,\u201d said Miller via text. \u201cIt definitely made for quite a few emotional moments. We have never given in much to the temptation to wax nostalgic, but once we were forced to do so, it made for some sweet memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

The in-fighting and jealousies of the band\u2019s middle years have faded into a brotherhood bound by melody, although that raises a question: Given the thrill of bust-up docs about famous bands (The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, I could go on), is it possible the Old 97\u2019s like each other too much for a proper documentary? <\/p>\n

\u201cDelish fighting isn\u2019t quite the same as delish friend banter,\u201d admitted bassist Murry Hammond<\/a>, when I posed this question over text. \u201cIf they ever catch us in a proper onstage donnybrook, it would just be us dissolving into a riot of verbal snark and sarcasm.\u201d <\/p>\n

Less backbiting and soapy drama, more laughter and music. I think I speak for the roaring audiences at Sons on Monday night when I say: We\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n

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The Oak Cliff filmmaker\u2019s extraordinary drama vies for four statues at Sunday\u2019s Academy Awards \u2014 and Bentley is just getting started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the very un-rock hour of 5:45 p.m., the long line to get into Sons of Hermann Hall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,12605,278,5351,4661],"class_list":{"0":"post-219009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-high-profile","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-performing-arts","14":"tag-pop-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}