Old 97's The Grand Theatre Vol. 2

Given The Grand Theatre Vol. One's suffix, it shouldn't have been too difficult to figure out that the Old 97's would eventually be following that record up with a sequel of some kind, but no one expected them to do it so bloody quickly. Vol. One found the band setting up on the stage of the Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas to run through a big batch of new tunes and discover which ones worked best, then moving to a studio and hammering out the winners mostly live. Apparently there were plenty of songs that made the cut but didn't fit onto the album, because less than a month after its release, the arrival of the follow-up was already being announced, with its arrival scheduled just a few months into the future.

Abstract by Jim Allen