Exclusive Album Premiere: Rhett Miller's 'The Interpreter: Live at Largo'

Rhett Miller, 'The Interpreter: Live at Largo'

Sunshine Records

Click to listen to Rhett Miller's album 'The Interpreter: Live at Largo'

Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller keeps his solo career rolling with the upcoming release of The Interpreter: Live at Largo, a dozen live acoustic covers of some of his favorite songs by David Bowie, the Pixies, the Kinks, Elliott Smith and more. The release, the first for Miller's new label, Maximum Sunshine, was recorded over two nights in April, 2008 at the original location of Largo, the intimate, much-loved L.A. venue. 

The album features several tracks with Jon Brion on piano and two bonus studio cuts, including a second version of the Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation" (which Miller considers "the greatest song ever written by an American") with Joey Santiago of the Pixies on guitar. To celebrate the release, Miller will appear with special guests at the current location of Largo, at the Coronet Theatre in L.A., on November 28th. The Interpreter comes out on Tuesday, but you can preview the album in its entirety here.   

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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