Back in the second Clinton administration, when No Depression proudly billed itself as “The Alternative Country (whatever that is) bi-monthly magazine,” no band seemed to carry more potential to bring this music into the mainstream with its integrity intact than Old 97’s. Solidifying its four-man lineup in Dallas in 1993, the band — an amalgamation of the Meat Puppets, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, The Replacements, Merle Haggard, and yeah, okay, The Beatles — released a couple of albums on Chicago’s fine “insurgent country” label Bloodshot Records before being called up to the majors. The trio of albums they made for Elektra Records circa 1997-2001 (including Too Far to Care, widely regarded as their pinnacle) mostly delighted critics and fans, but failed to move units in major-label volume.

By the time of 2004’s oft-maligned Drag It Up, the 97s were back on the more specialized New West label, even as their frontman, Rhett Miller, had launched a solo career that threatened to eclipse his work with the band.

While Miller — he of the pretty-boy good looks and the sad-sack, smarty-pants lyrics — gets most of the attention, the 97s’s appeal has always resided in its chemistry, particularly between Miller and bassist/second vocalist Murry Hammond. Hammond is The Edge to Miller’s Bono — the steady, modest, ingratiating talent who makes his higher-profile collaborator’s excesses palatable. Two decades after his collaboration with Miller began, Hammond has finally released a solo album of his own, I Don’t Know Where I’m Going, but I’m on My Way, concurrent with the 97s’ Blame It on Gravity, their strongest effort in a decade. The 97s played a fundraiser at SONAR in Baltimore last week to benefit Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Ohio. DCist sat down with Hammond before the Obama gig to talk about his solo record, the history and origins of the 97s, and the creative necessity of loneliness. Hammond performs at IOTA in Arlington next Monday.

You’ve been singing a song or two on each Old 97s album at least as far back as Too Far Too Care in 1997. What made you decide that the time had come to do a solo record?

I’d been meaning to do a solo record for a long time. I started out with my own band and wrote songs like crazy. In fact, Rhett’s first two gigs were opening up for my band that I had in the 80s.

I thought about it for a long time. It took me a while to feel like I had the right to be a solo person. You really want to have something to say; some particular artistic eye or worldview that matches what’s inside of you. And I wasn’t gonna stick my head up before I really felt like I had a voice. It took me a while to find a voice I really wanted. I have it now. I guess I’ve had it for a while with the 97s, but it’s a whole ‘nother step to say “Okay, I’m gonna stand by myself; have my own CDs, do my own shows, travel around by myself, the whole bit.” That’s a whole commitment.

The Old 97’s share songwriting credit on all their material. What’s your role in the writing of songs for the band? Are the 97’s songs you sing the ones to which you’ve written the lyrics?

We all don’t live in the same city. We haven’t since about three years into the band. Generally, we finish things up to a point where either they enter the band and don’t change much at all before they’re recorded, or the band gets hold of them and they sort of do things, especially in the arrangements. Rhett and I will often take each other’s ideas and finish them into songs. Of course, if I’m singing a song, I’ve probably written the whole thing.

Exceptions to that are, like, “Crash on the Barrelhead”, where Rhett had a song, and I just didn’t think the chorus was right. So I wrote a whole new chorus on it, and I liked singing it so much that I asked him [for it]. I felt like, “I’m the voice on this song. It’s coming from me.” And Rhett said, “Yeah, yeah.” Basically Rhett and I write separately, but we’ll get together on a song or two per record and truly co-write. On [Blame It on Gravity], it was “My Two Feet”.

A lot of times, I’ll have tunes and I’m just not having any luck with the words. And since Rhett’s such a wordsmith, I’ll say “All right, I’ve worked on this for years. I give up. You want to take a crack at it?” And he’ll have something. A good example of that would be “Timebomb.” That was a song I had written in 1991 with, really, not very good lyrics at all. I just didn’t know what it was about. And Rhett made “Timebomb” out of it.