culture June/July/Aug 2014

Tower of Song

“So what is the prophet Cohen telling us? And why do we listen so intently?” Liel Leibovitz asks at the outset of A Broken Hallelujah, his moving portrait of the songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen. The author pursues the answers to these questions with the diligence and reverence of a religious scholar. Thank God. But Leibovitz recognizes that Cohen deserves more than mere rock biography, and so he structures A Broken Hallelujah around the premise that his subject is, indeed, a modern-day prophet.

Leibovitz’s account abounds with proof of this assertion, even as it charts the many other personae

culture Sept/Oct/Nov 2013

Can’t Make a Sound

I was lucky enough to know Elliott Smith a little. We both lived in LA for a while and spent many nights at the oldLargo nightclub in Hollywood. At the very end of the ’90s, Largo’s owner, Mark Flanagan, asked me to participate in a charity song swap to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I was to sit on a stage with Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, and Elliott. In the greenroom before the gig, Elliott, whom I had just met, was nervously mumbling about how lousy he was, that he didn’t belong on a stage with such great performers, that people were going to hate him. Incredulous, I told him,

culture July 01, 2011

Tangled Up in America

Dear Bob Dylan,

I hope this finds you well. You don't know me. My name is Rhett Miller. I make albums as a solo artist and as the front man for a band called Old 97's. I am like you, at least in that I've dedicated my postadolescent life to writing songs and singing them for folks. I write you now to pay my respects (much as you did to one of your heroes all those years ago in "Song to Woody"), to thank you for giving so much of yourself, and to ask you: What are we to do now?

Dear Bob Dylan,

I hope this finds you well. You don't know me. My name is Rhett Miller. I make albums as a solo artist and as the front man for a band called Old 97's. I am like you, at least in that I've dedicated my postadolescent life to writing songs and singing them for folks. I write you now to pay my respects (much as you did to one of your heroes all those years ago in "Song to Woody"), to thank you for giving so much of yourself, and to ask you: What are we to do now? Here, at this late date, at the tip-top of the Tower of Babel, with all these voices shouting and so few listening,

culture Sept/Oct/Nov 2010

Tangled Up in America

Dear Bob Dylan,

I hope this finds you well. You don’t know me. My name is Rhett Miller. I make albums as a solo artist and as the front man for a band called Old 97’s. I am like you, at least in that I’ve dedicated my postadolescent life to writing songs and singing them for folks. I write you now to pay my respects (much as you did to one of your heroes all those years ago in “Song to Woody”), to thank you for giving so much of yourself, and to ask you: What are we to do now? Here, at this late date, at the tip-top of the Tower of Babel, with all these voices shouting and so few listening,