Julie contributed backing vocals on Victoria’s 1990 album Swing The Statue; she’d hoped to recruit both Victoria and Mark Olson for Blue Pony, but “we just ran out of time to get together,” Julie said. Recording projects for the Millers lately have been a rather hectic matter of squeezing in sessions at their home studio between Buddy’s busy schedule as the guitarist in Emmylou Harris’ band.
In yet another example of the intertwined nature of the Millers’ careers, Emmylou actually had collaborated with Julie a couple years before she hired Buddy to tour with her. She sang a duet with Julie on “All My Tears (Be Washed Away)” from Julie’s 1993 album Orphans And Angels, then recorded her own version of the song on her 1995 disc Wrecking Ball. (And a close listen to “Don’t Listen To The Wind” from Buddy’s Your Love And Other Lies album reveals the track to be essentially a rewritten lyric to the same basic melody.)
The most intriguing version of the song to date, however, is on Jimmy Scott’s most recent Warner Bros. album Heaven, which came out last fall. The jazz singer’s smooth, high-pitched voice, wrapped around a piano-based arrangement, recasts the song completely — so much so that Julie didn’t even recognize it for a couple of minutes the first time she heard it.
In fact, if not for the intercession of an acquaintance, she might not even have known Scott had recorded the song. “Buddy was at a gig playing with Emmylou, and somebody came and told us about it,” Julie says.
“Yeah, it was Emmylou, me and Lanois, we were playing at something in L.A.,” Buddy continued, “and this guy Troy came up to me and said, ‘Did Jimmy Scott record one of Julie’s songs?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ve got the new Jimmy Scott record, and there’s a song on there, I can’t remember the name, by Julie Miller.’ And I said, ‘No, it’s not her, it must be a different Julie Miller.’ But he just went on and on about it, and then he went out that night and bought it at Tower and brought it to me.”
“And Buddy came home and he said, I want you to hear something,” Julie continues the story. “And he put it on, and I was listening, and I thought, ‘There’s something familiar about this,’ but I didn’t recognize it at all. I didn’t even recognize it was my lyrics for quite a ways on into the song. I mean, it’s incredible! It’s totally great, but it’s hilarious.”
Having a singer as special as Scott cut one of her songs is likely a particularly special treasure for Julie, given her comments about the reason she chose to record the Lowell George/John Sebastian tune “Face Of Appalachia” on Blue Pony. “The reason I did it was because I love the singer who sang it,” Julie explained. “There’s something about when you hear a singer that you really love singing a song. It was Valerie Carter — she sang it on her first record. And she does these things, these lifts and stuff — I just feel like I’m a little kid when I think about it.”
Later that night, that little kid’s spirit shines through in front of a packed house at the Speakeasy during the HighTone showcase at SXSW. Backed by Gurf Morlix on bass, Donald Lindley on drums and Tammy Rogers on fiddle, Buddy and Julie run through an electrified 40-minute set, sharing their songs and their voices back and forth as codependently as they collaborated with conversation earlier in the day. Buddy’s songs reverberate with the kind of hard-country twang that make him one of the most refreshingly down-home performers in Nashville today. Julie’s more pop-oriented material takes the music down decidedly different avenues, yet without sacrificing the compatibility that defines their partnership. The whole, in this case, is infinitely greater than the sum of the parts.
All of which makes it abundantly clear that Julie Miller is more than just the girl in the band.
