Where I see that work ethic in myself is where I put my head down and work twice as hard as a smarter person who might stop. I don’t say no to gigs too fast.
ND: You have a Virginian mom and Pennsylvania Dutch dad — and Mason-Dixon line song themes. There must be some relation!
SM: We’d all get together for meals, even third cousins. With one side, you’d be done with dinner in 15 minutes — no talkin’, and one purpose, to nourish your body — amen! But on my Mom’s side they wouldn’t clear the table for two hours; they’d just sit around and yak, argue about politics or anything.
ND: The song “Amtrak Crescent” on the new CD mentions how the region is getting less distinguishable. Can there continue to be any genuine sort of roots music that’s more than nostalgia if that’s the trend?
SM: The whole country is becoming less distinguishable. I can go home to our farm and see cow palaces springing up everywhere and farms going down — more homogenization. The kids will grow up in the most fertile land in this nation — and what are they going to know about it? They’ll be driving down to the Taco Bell and the duplex movie.
But there’s still lots of “We’re a stompin’ Southern band; we grew up in the suburbs of X, y’know!” out there. Maybe that’s interesting, or not, but either way it would be better if they had good songs!
ND: It sometimes seems, in your songs, that where you came from was a place to escape. You left the “simple holler’ to go study Russian literature and language.
SM: It’s kind of why I started playing, too — so I could sit up in my room and escape. I just turned that energy inward in my early 20s — and about exploded.
My senior year in college, I went into the guidance counselor’s office and asked if there were applications for the Post Office. I found out that getting into the postal system is probably harder than getting into Harvard. There are waiting lists! So I roofed and dug ditches — anything to keep my mind on songs.
My brain tends to turn at a million miles an hour — and usually gets me into trouble. The hardest part is to get your brain to calm down enough to get in touch with the basic emotions in life, the basic things, and write from there.
ND: Somewhere between the rebellious young guy whose head was exploding and the one singing “I’ve got a plan to be the man she’d see was worth having” on the new CD, there was some change. Are you coming from a more settled place now?
SM: I’m going adult contemporary! Well, there’s a lot of difference between these songs and something like “Cry” from the V-Roys. In the bad years of my twenties, I wasn’t growing. What to do about that — I’ve had no idea.
ND: Come on — you’re a guy with a pretty good career, music that’s well-received, and you’re married with a lot of things going pretty well.
SM: Yeah. And it could all fall apart.
ND: The new record ends with that very hopeful, positive song, “For Jack Tymon”.
SM: He’s the son of my best buddy, Shane, a guy I listen to records with every Monday. I was like, “Goddammit! The world does not need more babies!” Shane was missing Monday nights! He’s a huge guy, and he said “Miller, you have to get behind this baby thing — right now!” So I went home and wrote that.
ND: Today, what’s the best part of writing and performing for you?
SM: When you’re not thinking. When that brain finally chills out and you’re just there, like sitting at the beach and feeling the life force. Playing does that sometimes — and when you write a good song and you know it. It’s better than any drug you could ever take.
That “Jack Tymon” song came that quick. And with the V-Roys, the song “Goodnight Loser” came that way. I’d come home from hearing the Pachelbel Canon at somebody’s wedding and decided to write myself a lullaby — with “Goodnight Mom and Daddy; you conquered the dreaded Nazis” or something, as the first words. The next day — well, it only took one rewrite.
IV: EVEN IF THERE ARE ONLY THREE CHORDS
ND: Is basic guitar-led rock ‘n’ roll, party-time, punk or otherwise, an ongoing thing with new places to go — or has it become a very traditional music, locked in its ways?
SM: Oh, there’s still got to be another combination or permutation to put them together in, to make something different. I think it’s always going to be around; whether it’s gonna be on the radio and have directions to go, I don’t know.
But there are still songs to be written out there for it, even if there are only three chords! I wish people would concentrate more on that. What I try to do is write the song good enough so it can be played with a band or played solo.
ND: And for a guy who writes narratives, you come up with a lot of song hooks, while you’re at it.
SM: I swear this is more about my limitations. I’m no musician, and I’ve never pretended to be or tried to be. Maybe I have the hooks in songs because when I finally stumble on something on a guitar, I’ll use it many times like that just to get through the friggin’ song!
ND: I notice that whenever I point to one of your strengths, you describe it as a limitation. If that’s what they are, making the most of them is its own talent — and a pretty useful one in roots music.
SM: Well then — God, I’m pretty lucky.
