The Old 97’s revisit their 1997 album Too Farm To Care at a sold-out 9:30 Club show. Check out their classic track “Timebomb.”

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 –…

The Old 97s made their triumphant return to the 9:30 Club last night. Photo by Lisa Johnson. Our Nation’s Capitol has seen a lot more of the emancipated Rhett Miller in recent years than it has of his band, Old 97s. Miller may write most of the songs for the hard-charging country-pop-punkabilly quartet, but somehow he’s only about one–eleventh as interesting when he doesn’t have Murry Hammond singing harmony and Ken Bethea blasting out those…