Country Music Star, 55, Reveals the Fear That Came With Vocal Surgery

Rhett Miller has spent decades sharing his voice with the world — but for a while, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever sing again.

The 55-year-old singer-songwriter is best known as the frontman of the alternative country band Old 97’s. Since forming the band in 1992, Miller has built a reputation for his witty, heartfelt lyrics and energetic performances. In addition to his work with Old 97’s, he has put out several solo albums.

His tenth solo studio album, A lifetime of riding by night, will be released on Friday. To promote the new project, the frontman of Old 97’s spoke with Rolling Stoneto discuss the making of his new project, touring, his experience as a professor at The New School and his vocal surgery he had last year.

Rhett Miller of Old 97s performs onstage for the 24th Annual Americana Honors & Awards at Ryman Auditorium on September 10, 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Old 97’s toured through 2023 and 2024 to support their most recent album, American Primitive, and celebrate 30 years as a band. The demanding schedule began to take a toll on Miller, and as the shows piled up and the tour stretched on, his voice started to give out.

While on their European leg, Miller decided to see a throat specialist, who told him that he had a cyst on his vocal cord and a polyp on the other one.

“Both of my vocal cords were compromised, and I had lost most of my falsetto register. I had lost a lot of my lower register. I started doing vocal rehab to see if I could get it back or if the cyst might disappear on its own, and make do with my vocal cords in a compromised state,” Miller told Rolling Stone. “It came down to, I could make do for the rest of my life and just give up on these chunks of my voice, or I could get the surgery.”

The “Our Love” singer decided on the latter and scheduled his surgery for December 2024.

“I blocked out the second half of December through the end of April, and it was terrifying,” Miller admitted. “The 90 percent likelihood was that the surgery would be just fine. But there’s a 10 percent chance it wouldn’t — the Julie Andrews end of it all, as they say. The rehabilitation of it was scary, because that’s where the real problems are.”

Andrews, an actress and singer best known for her work in Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, underwent vocal cord surgery in 1997 to remove benign nodules. Unfortunately, the surgery resulted in permanent damage to her vocal cords, leaving her unable to sing in the same way as before.

Philip Peeples, Rhett Miller, Murry Hammond and Ken Bethea of Old 97’s arrive at the 24th annual Americana Music Honors & Awards at Ryman Auditorium on September 10, 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Before his surgery, though, the Dallas-born singer wrote and recorded A lifetime of riding by night, which Murray Hammond, another member of the Old 97’s, produced.

The album features new songs entirely written or co-written by Miller, along with songwriting collaborations from Caitlin Rose, Nicole Atkins and Gin Blossoms’ Jesse Valenzuela. Prior to the album’s release, Miller already put out three songs from the record: “All Over Again,” “All For You” and “Come As You Are (ft Evan Felker).”

Before his procedure, Miller left the entire production in Hammond’s hands. In his Rolling Stone feature, he recalled the first time he listened to the album. The singer was by a swimming pool in the Pacific Northwest, and he said that his first listen was “a beautiful, moving experience.”

“It felt like a love letter between two brothers,” Miller said. “He had really given me a gift while I was going through this terrifying thing.”

A lifetime of riding by night will be out on all streaming platforms on Friday.

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This story was originally reported by Parade on Oct 9, 2025, where it first appeared in the Celebs section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.