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When the Old 97's joined Elektra Records in 1996, they celebrated by writing "The One," a snarky ditty comparing signing a major record label contract to robbing a bank.

"Take the money and run," the unreleased song went. "We're gonna spend it all on ourselves."

Today, the money's all gone and the contract's history, but the Old 97's are still alive and grinning more than 15 years after they formed. It's a classic lesson in how to survive the major-label shark tank.The Dallas quartet has just released Blame It on Gravity, their seventh studio CD and second for the independent New West label. The album's final track is none other than "The One."

"When we wrote 'The One,' it seemed a little crass, but it's funny now," says singer Rhett Miller. "The music industry's dead, for all intents and purposes, and we've ridden the last wave of it."

Johnny Buzzerio

the Old 97's

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Actually, the band was planning its exit strategy from the moment it signed with Elektra.

"The major-label thing isn't the end all," singer-bassist Murry Hammond told The News in 1999. "If we get dropped tomorrow, there's no question we'd stay together."

Sure enough, the band kept going when Elektra cut the band loose after 2001's acclaimed but low-selling Satellite Rides. Not that staying intact was easy.

For starters, geography was becoming an obstacle. Mr. Miller had moved to New York and Mr. Hammond to Southern California, while drummer Philip Peeples and guitarist Ken Bethea remained in Dallas.

Then there was the touchy matter of Mr. Miller's solo career, which put the 97's on hold while he made and promoted The Instigator (2002) and The Believer (2006). By the time the 97's made 2004's Drag It Up, the storm clouds were impossible to ignore.

"Drag it Up had a lot to do with our band figuring out how to stay a band," Mr. Miller says by cellphone while walking around Philadelphia, where he'd just played a solo gig.

"'Can we exist in our second decade? Can we exist post-Elektra? Can we exist in the midst of my solo career?' And everyone realized the answer to the question was a resounding 'Yes,' and this was way too valuable to give it up."

Last year, the band regrouped in Dallas to record Blame It on Gravity with producer Salim Nourallah. Mr. Miller calls the CD "the high water mark in the Old 97's' trajectory."

"It has it all. We rock on this record as hard as we've ever rocked ... and then there's Murry's songs, which have this transcendent psychedelic beauty," he says, referring to the Hammond-sung "Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue" and "This Beautiful Thing."

Stylistically, the CD album ranges from the buzz-saw rumba rock of "Dance With Me" to Sturm und twang songs that make Old 97's the toast of the alt-country set. But lyrically, "pretty much every song has people dying or about to die," Mr. Miller says with a laugh.

It's familiar turf for the 37-year-old songwriter, who attempted suicide at 14. After years of psychiatric tests, his doctor's final evaluation said he was "obsessed with death."

Later, his songs were "more obsessed with sex, and then I had kids and I realized that someday, decades from now, they would die – and that was another crushing blow," he says.

He's the father of two preschool-age children, and the band as a whole has a brood of seven. "It's such a great thing to get together with our wives and kids. We're branching off like this big family tree of the Old 97's," he says.

The tribe returned to its ancestral homeland by recording the CD at Mr. Nourallah's studio near Lower Greenville, where the group formed in '93. Mr. Miller, who now lives in New York's Hudson River Valley, calls the new album "a love letter to Dallas" and says making it in the old neighborhood brought a flashback of shattered relationships and broken rental agreements.

"It was like being surrounded by the ghosts of our youth, but it also felt like a rebirth," he says. "We were able to start from scratch with this well of wisdom to draw from."

Actually, the wisdom was there all along. Most rock bands never last 15 months, let alone 15 years, but the Old 97's were quick to figure out there are more important things than gold records.

"I get to create art for a living and go perform it, and that's an awesome, lucky, lucky thing," he says. "I don't have to work for a plumber anymore or work the door at Terrilli's. Our job is to play, and that's the coolest thing."

Plan your life

Catch a live performance at the official Dallas Stars watching party on Wednesday at AT&T Plaza, outside the south end of American Airlines Center. The party starts at 6 p.m. The band also is scheduled to perform an acoustic set between periods of Game 4 vs. the Detroit Red Wings.

The Old 97's will perform live Wednesday on Good Morning Texas , which airs on WFAA-Ch. 8 at 9 a.m.