grew up knowing of Rhett Miller. People nudged each other when he walked into our public school cafeteria. Girls whispered when he appeared at the occasional Battle of the Bands, his silky dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, his sad doe eyes staring up at the stage. Who is THAT? He was there to watch his younger brother Ross, a drummer in a band called Nirvana Pilgrims (this was at least two years before Dallas discovered half that name was kind of taken). And he was there to see Megan, his girlfriend, one of those girls whose hips and lips had graduated long before the rest of her. There were rumors she dated one of the teachers, but in her junior year she belonged to Rhett Miller, the musical wonderboy of St. Marks, the one with the pretty face and the cornsilk hair. Rhett even wrote a song about her. "Candy Apple Corkscrew Hair." We all knew it. We were so jealous.
I was 14 then. I knew Rhett's brother Ross, kind of, but we were getting closer. Along with the youth congregation of Highland Park Presbyterian Church, Ross was hoping I might convert to Christianity. I was hoping I might convert to popularity. We both failed. But for a few months, we had a run of it. We bonded over scavenger hunts and all-you-can-eat pizza. Sometime around that point, I saw my first live local act, an evening suggested by my new buddies in the youth group: Rhett Miller at Greenville's Arcadia Theatre. He stood on the stage with his acoustic guitar, wore round glasses and laughed shyly, sang folk songs with mythological allusions. I still remember some of those songs: "Morning felt like heaven / And I bottled up the air / And the raindrops fell like fishhooks / And got tangled in your hair." He was great. Jesus, he was brilliant. He was ... what? 17?
In the Nineties, Rhett Miller became the lead singer of an alternative-country group called the Old 97's. They were the best thing to come out of Dallas since somebody shot JR. Album after album was a fucking revelation. Hitchhike to Rhome, Wreck Your Life, Too Far to Care, Fight Songs, Satellite Rides. I've been through each of them, wore them out like perfect black shoes (every day, past repair). Even better were their live shows. "That man is sex incarnate," one friend said once of Rhett Miller, who ended most concerts with his hair and his shirt clinging to his sweaty skin. "All the women want to sleep with him," another friend said, "and all the men want to be him."
I am notoriously uncomfortable at live shows -- I've been known to walk in and walk right out -- but Old 97's shows are like a party with friends I just haven't met yet. These are my people: We may spill our Budweisers, we may ash in your drinks, but we're really quite nice. And we know every blasted lyric, so that the last time I saw the band at Austin's La Zona Rosa, the songs became this musical conversation I could have with strangers.
"Someday somebody's gonna ask you..." one cute curly-haired boy might say, to which I replied, "... a question that you should say yes to." And then we moved on.
Not everyone got it. After one show, a guy I knew shrugged and said, "Eh. It's like the Violent Femmes with less hooks."
Okay. Whatever the fuck THAT means.
For me, there are only a handful of live shows (Christ, Tom Waits) I would rather see. And now, on August 27, Rhett Miller is coming out with his first solo album, The Instigator. It's produced by Jon Brion, frequent Aimee Mann collaborator and a great musician in his own right, and all of us who love Rhett Miller, who watched Rhett Miller from the barstools and crowded dance pits, who waited and crossed our fingers with every album release wondering, like silly little schoolgirls, "Would this be THE ONE?" -- this is a big moment. Will he explode like Ryan Adams? Do we want him to?
I mean, of course we want him to. We love Rhett Miller. We want him rewarded with the joy his albums brought to us. But I also write this now because I know that when The Instigator comes out, I am going to have to share Rhett Miller with the rest of the world. With "Seventeen" and "People Magazine." They will namedrop Wreck Your Life and mispell the name of Old 97's bassist and co-lyricist Murry Hammond. They will talk about Dallas like Rhett's still living there. Or worse: They won't even mention Dallas. I'll try to be excited, to enjoy the big photo spread in Interview Magazine, but it's hard to escape the feeling that I'm about to lose my secret hiding place.
I also bring this up because my friend Ada got an advanced copy of Rhett's new album from the magazine she works for. I'm listening to it right now. Ada (an Old 97's fan) doesn't like it. It's grown on me. Actually, more than that. I think it's a wonder. I've been walking around this sometimes cold city singing to people when I make eye contact. I don't actually mean to be singing; I just am. It's there in my head. It's there on my lips. "There is a world inside the world that you see. And it's okay to count the minutes, cause how many could there be?" That is from a tender little ballad called "The World Within the World" (Rhett sings of the song's cryptic title, "I read it in DeLillo / Like they'd written it to me.") Another good subway song is the album's opener, swift and catchy: "Our love so fast / Our love's all wrong / Our love goes on and on." The Instigator is about being in love, more like Satellite Rides than the dried-up drunken heartache of Too Far to Care (the album most fans still consider the band's masterpiece). Songs about love, fear of too much love, fear of not enough love, the wrong kind of love, the right kind of love with the wrong kind of person.
Am I ruining it? I don't want to ruin it. I wrote most of this under the (incorrect) assumption that the album was being released next week. But August 27th? How did we get an advance so soon? I can only imagine they're trying to create buzz. Rhett Miller isn't exactly guaranteed success, after all. Maybe the album will disappear, and commercial success will allude Rhett Miller once more, and we'll all shake our heads and privately savor the fact that we only have to pay 10 bucks to see him at Largo and Stubb's. But I don't want that to happen. So in case you don't know Rhett Miller, let this be your first introduction. This is my secret hiding place. I'm willing to share.

written in Brooklyn, New York