City Winery Chicago presents Rhett Miller with Reilly Downes & the Acid Cowboys live on Thursday, October 8, 2026 at 7:30 PM.
Rhett Miller has spent more than thirty years proving that a great song is its own argument. As the frontman and primary songwriter of Old 97's, he helped define the alt-country movement before anyone had agreed on what to call it. The band's 1997 Elektra debut, Too Far to Care, remains a touchstone. Their 13th studio album, American Primitive, arrived on ATO Records in 2024. In 2025, the Old 97's received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americana Awards on the stage of Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.
The solo catalog runs eight albums deep, most recently A Lifetime of Riding by Night in 2025. Miller is also a writer whose essays and criticism have appeared in Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, and Sports Illustrated, a podcaster with more than 200 episodes of Wheels Off: Conversations about Creativity, and a songwriting teacher at The New School whose annual Songwriting Is Magic retreat draws serious practitioners to the Catskills each year.
What it adds up to is a performer who brings genuine literary weight to the concert stage. The songs reward the kind of listening this room is built for.
Doors: 6:00 PM