Twenty minutes later, Harrison recalls another lesson. “I had music in the front of my mind, and the words were almost an afterthought. But that’s the other thing I learned from Steve doing this. You gotta have some damn meat, and the music’s just the gravy goin’ over it. If it’s good.”
Earle’s insistence that Miller and Harrison were writers has much to do with the fact that songs are no longer credited to the entire band. That and the fact that he shares credit with Harrison and Miller on the opening “The Window Song”, and with Miller on “Arianne” and “Sorry Sue”.
“I never saw myself as a writer, before,” Miller says. “And he tried to lecture me on this — he did on the first record — ‘Man, you’re a writer. You’re a good writer, you need to write.’ I never saw myself as a writer.”
What did you see yourself as?
“As an entertainer. Sammy Davis Jr.”
“You should see some of his solo stuff,” Harrison cackles. “He was an entertainer, definitely.”
Therein lies the balance of pop music. “I don’t know that we’ve got it figured out either,” Miller says. “We got a little bit closer, but it’s tough. It’s real tough. The guy that did it right was Roger Miller. ‘The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me’ is about as bumpersticker as you want to get, and yet if that song doesn’t touch you, you ain’t got a heart.”
Scott Miller’s heart bleeds through the finest song on All About Town. Though “Fade Away” resonates elegantly as a ode to the evaporation of love (“I feel you fading away/And with your heart goes a part of mine”), its sadder subject is revealed in the album’s dedication to Holly Miller (1958-1996), and in the about-to-break quality of Miller’s vocals.
“I actually wrote that one when we were still doing the first record,” says Miller. “She died before it came out [of cancer]. She was my big sister. She was…everything. I never played it for her. Never would. Because it’s got a finality to it.”
The V-Roys (nee Viceroys, but there was both a Jamaican reggae band and an old Northwest instrumental ensemble using that name) formed in Knoxville five years ago. “That’s when I started drinking,” Miller notes. “I was 25, 24. Yeah. I’m 29. Four or five years ago.”
Virginia-bred, William & Mary-educated, Scott Miller spent his post-college years working as a solo act. “I made a living at it, but it wasn’t pretty,” he laughs. “I had my little circle and I worked it pretty hard, in my little blue van. I went to Texas [where he opened a string of dates for Joe Ely], did South By Southwest, opened for a lot of folks. But I wasn’t writing good songs, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t pretty.
“Before the V-Roys happened, I quit the solo thing. I got a part-time job in this law office, and I thought, ‘Jesus, I gotta figure something out.’ I didn’t know whether I was going to go back to school, if I was going to go back to Virginia, or what. And Jeff [Bills], the drummer, and I, we’d known each other forever, listened to a lot of the same music, got into rockabilly at the same time, got this band together.”
The original lineup included Miller, Bills, Sellers, and John Paul. A talented songwriter in his own right, John Paul left before the band signed to E-Squared and formed the Nevers. “I wanted to do some different stuff,” John Paul explained, “But they wanted to keep it in more of a roots direction.” The Nevers (including the rhythm section from the late Judybats) moved to Nashville and have evolved into a tight, mod-’60s power-pop ensemble; their debut on Sire is tentatively scheduled for release this winter.
When John Paul left, Mike Harrison was running a one-man sawmill in a small town 80 miles outside Memphis in West Tennessee, the same area Jeff Sills came from. “Making sawdust,” he laughs. “And I was settin’ in my room writing, pretending like I had an audience in front of me. But that’s about it.”
The Viceroys had come to the attention of Jack Emerson during his final days with Praxis, the label that was once home to Jason & the Scorchers and Billy Joe Shaver. Steve Earle drove to Knoxville to see the band a few times, concurred with Emerson, and signed them. Simple as that.
The V-Roys and the Nevers continue to show up at each other’s gigs. Indeed, the semi-bonus track at the end of Just Add Ice, “Cold Beer Hello”, was recorded by Nevers drummer Dave Jenkins in his home studio.
“It was a little magical studio moment,” Miller says. “See, these cool things don’t come through. But it was fun when it went down. I knew you were going to ask me about that today, and here’s what I came up with: You know how Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? I mean, you can take songs, and songwriting, as seriously as you want to, but sometimes a song is just a song. It’s just fun.”
And sometimes a cigar is a hot poker.
For all the weight of the business, and the death of Miller’s older sister, All About Town remains the kind of album that can only emerge from the South, can only be the work of songwriters who revere Lynyrd Skynyrd and Roger Miller…well, not quite equally, but revere, nevertheless.
It is also painted with a broader musical palette than the band explored on Just Add Ice, notably Jim Hoke’s baritone saxophone in “Amy 88”. “Virginia Way/Shenandoah Breakdown” takes a riskier leap, segueing from Scott Miller’s song to the McCoury Band’s workout of the Bill Monroe classic. It makes sense on disc, but they’ll never pull it off live.
Put simply, they’re growing up.
“We got up early in the morning in San Francisco,” Miller begins, recalling their last West Coast tour opening for Earle. “Steve and I went to City Lights bookstore, both spent a tremendous amount of money; we’re both voracious readers. And we were talking about radio. He leaned over the table as we were having breakfast, and said, ‘If you want to forget you ever heard Roger Miller and write about teenage angst, well go ahead and do it. If you want to make grown-up music, then let’s do that.’
“And I think that’s what I want to make. I want to write good songs and make good music. You can make a living doing that. I’ve seen Joe Ely do it, I’ve seen Steve Earle do it. It can be done.”
ND co-editor Grant Alden shares Scott Miller’s conviction that the University of Tennessee will never win a national championship with Phil Fulmer as head coach.
