“As far as Americana goes, it feels like it’s just kind of a catch-all shorthand for song-based music these days.”
That’s how Nashville-based singer-songwriter John R. Miller, who has largely been connected to the genre, described it during a recent interview with SWT. However, he has shown time and time again that he’s a dynamic artist, excellent songwriter, and his ambitious fourth album, The Great Unknowing, reiterates that. Following its physical debut on vinyl and CD on June 5, the record officially hits digital streaming platforms today (you can read our full album review here and stream/purchase the album here).
To break out of his usual creative routines, Miller completely shifted his geography. He traveled from his familiar stomping grounds to Tulsa, Oklahoma, setting up camp at Leon Russell’s historic Church Studio. Alongside longtime co-producer and collaborator Adam Meisterhans, Miller tracked the album live with a stellar lineup of local musicians, including Grammy-nominee John Fullbright on keyboards and Muskrat Jones on pedal steel. The result is a sprawling, 16-song journey that trades simple acoustic arrangements for fuzzy, driving atmospheres and rock-and-roll textures, featuring lyrics focused on a changing, over-modernized America.
After a year of recording demos at home and testing them on the road, Miller realized the songs demanded a canvas that didn’t strictly adhere to the acoustic Americana labels of his past.
“I’ve never restricted myself to any particular genre on purpose, and I grew up playing in rock bands even while I was in an old-time band,” says Miller, referring to his time with bands like Prison Book Club (featuring Meisterhans and another SWT favorite, Tucker Riggleman). “But the arc of this thing has been such that it gradually went from more acoustic, folk rock/country blues kind of stuff to the more textured approaches I’m trying now. Songs are still the core, but it’s fun to try new things with them.”
The sessions blended live performances with layered multi-tracking and were heavily influenced by the studio’s fully restored 1977 Neve 8068 console, which was once owned by Daniel Lanois and used on landmark recordings, including Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind.
Miller is in the midst of a tour to promote the release. You can find dates here.
Below is our full conversation with John R. Miller on the spirit of Tulsa, pushing his sonic boundaries, and navigating The Great Unknowing. We’re so happy that we got to pick his brain and talk music with him.
What are a few songs you’ve been into lately? Why do they resonate so much with you?
Big Thief’s “Change” is one I come back to a lot, a pure meditation on grief, accepting loss, and the inevitability of death. Wednesday’s “Elderberry Wine” is a gorgeous departure for the delightfully acidic rock band and some of their best writing to date, I think. Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band put out one of my favorite records of the decade so far last year, and the title track “New Threats From the Soul” feels anthemic but is just chock-full of pathos and existential dread and hooks, and I love it. I gotta also mention my friend Charlie Overman here, who is an incredibly gifted writer and put out a phenomenal record last year. His song “Capps” is an absolute knockout of lowlife poetry.
You’re releasing the album first via physical format. Why did you feel that was important? What convinced you to release it like in that manner?
Well, there are a lot of reasons. As a music fan, I rarely stream unless I am checking out something new, then if I like it, I typically try to find a way to buy it so that I can get a digital copy, whether that’s vinyl with a download or a CD, which I rip myself. I think it’s pretty common knowledge now that the practices of some of the major DSPs are careless at best, potential war crimes at worst… But music is most valued in independent spaces anyway, and so I wanted to make sure that I had a clear way to encourage direct, preferably local, purchase options for folks who want to listen. But having lossless digital access to download an album is key to that, too. I don’t really trust DSPs to give me, as a listener, the best long-term experience; I like knowing that my own music collection is there, backed up, in my own little library I’ve been adding to for over 20 years now. That exchange imbues the relationship between the music and the listener with more meaning.
What are one or two prized records you feel sound best in that format?
Off the top of my head, Bobby Charles’s self-titled album sounds so at home on a hi-fi turntable. One of the all-timers.
Sleep’s Dopesmoker and OM’s God is Good are masterpieces, and on a good-sounding system, are just incredible to experience, especially with some mushrooms.
Anything by Mississippi John Hurt, the more crackly the better (don’t fuck up your needle though).
And since I have a pretty complete collection of them, I should say that every one of Michael Hurley’s 20+ albums sound definitively better on that medium, just so rich with character you can get lost in ‘em. I saw the space baby at the center of the universe once while listening to his record Ancestral Swamp.
You recorded at Leon Russell’s legendary Church Studio. What was your prior knowledge of the studio and city? What drew you to recording there?
I’m a pretty devoted fan of the city’s musical history, from Bob Wills to JJ Cale to John Moreland, but I had only been there passing through on tours before. I had been struggling to think of a way to do the record, so the songs didn’t get trapped in old patterns. I knew I wanted to travel away from home to do it, and my buddy Ian Thornton (who is also my manager) tipped me off that they’d recently renovated The Church and that it might be possible to book some time there. It was a really exciting idea, so we started pulling threads together. Having the opportunity to tap some of Tulsa’s amazing musicians to play with us was an experience I will continue to treasure.
How was the studio’s environment conducive to pushing your sound? Were there specific gear and/or instruments that aided you to be more eclectic?
The main room is huge and modular, so the resonance can be configured to taste, which gave the record a lot of natural space. The keyboard, piano, and organ setup there is beautiful… Mellotron and Wurlitzer are always fun to have. The centerpiece, though, is the restored Neve 8068, a beautiful console that was once owned by Daniel Lanois and used on some pretty iconic records, including Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, the cover of which has Dylan sitting in front of the console. The warmth and clarity of those channel strips made the whole thing feel huge.
One thing that remains constant is your great ability to tell stories in your songs. How do you think you pushed yourself further as a storyteller compared to past releases? What’s key to creating an immersive lyrical world?
I guess they’re more like vignettes than stories, really, but I kinda just like to hunt for metaphors that tap into the things that are on my mind as I am trying to find a way to express something, to make it tangible. I’ve never been too good at ballads, like real story songs where there are characters and a narrative. I think the key to any of this is just reading good books and listening to music; I originally just wanted to participate because of how these things move me, so I figure the key to longevity is receptivity to being moved by new things. I feel bad for musicians or artists who aren’t huge music fans, because when times get lean, there’s nothing keeping you going in it, except perhaps egoic delusion.
“Tollbooth” is a great example of putting the listener right in the story. Why did tollbooths feel like the best method to convey the changes you’ve noticed while on tour? Why do tollbooths feel intriguing and mysterious to you?
I think I chose that as the name of the song because it felt like an obtusely relevant detail to a song about viewing a changing landscape through a windshield over time. These days, they just read your license plate and send you a bill. There aren’t even that many run by humans anymore. Like some microcosm of tech-influenced economic displacement. The “glossy hundred-dollar bill” is the kind of religious propaganda you see in public restrooms, and I thought it was poetic that they were promoting a religion, traditionally used by capitalists or otherwise wealthy and powerful people to control the minds of the “lower” class, with fake money.
Why were you drawn to the album’s title, The Great Unknowing? Why was it fitting for this collection of songs? Did it feel urgent in today’s digital-minded society?
When I am titling a finished record, I usually look through lyrics for lines or phrases that seem to be bigger than their context within the song. ‘The Great Unknowing’ is from “Tollbooth” and felt very fitting for a collection of songs like this one.
Lately, I think a lot about technology and how it can effectively be used to aid individual agency, but is also often used to undermine it… whether for the sake of someone’s version of order, or for wealth extraction, or whatever. Humanity’s collective technological achievements are nearly as miraculous as any of us being here in the first place, but what does that progress mean if those achievements only benefit the monopolistic few? What happens to our collective consciousness if our reality and perspective is dictated to us through devices owned and maintained by corporations fiscally beholden to their shareholders? Maybe more importantly, what gets left out? That’s where I am always looking now.
What songs helped shape the lyrical direction of the album the most?
It’s almost never intentionally a cohesive thing… The first one I wrote was “Steering Wheel Drums”, though I rewrote the lyrics a time or two. If a record does feel lyrically cohesive, it probably means I wrote the songs quickly enough that I was in a similar frame of mind. But I try to avoid repeating myself unintentionally, so once I finish a song, I’ll usually want to go in a different direction for the next one.
What were the most surprising and challenging songs to write and arrange?
“A World Away” has an alternate version from the session, very sparse with a lot of ambient guitar sounds, and I loved that version too… But I felt like it was too close to the space of Darrin Hacquard’s original recording of it. We had to decide which one to go with and went with the dense, fucked up version, which had been my original intent. I used to be able to sing “Golden Light” when Adam and I played it with our old rock band Prison Book Club; my range has lowered a bit, so that was a tough one to try to sing well… But I was glad we did it, because Adam got to play some of my favorite lead guitar lines on the record.
The album features a few covers/songs from other writers, including “Walk Of Life.” What drew you to covering that song? How do you think you were able to put your stamp on it?
I love Dire Straits and have been a Mark Knopfler fan for many years. Back in 2010 or so, I used to sing that song with a stringband, but for this one, I wanted to turn the exuberant energy of the song into something more relaxed and abiding. We might have accidentally Cale-ified it, but it seemed appropriate… Knopfler is a known JJ Cale devotee, and we had been working about 100 feet from Magnolia Meadow, where Cale lived.
You worked with producer Adam Meisterhans and a very talented backing band of Tulsa musicians. How did they help you push the songs to exciting new territory? What were a few of your favorite moments of collaboration?
Those guys were all so intuitive and knew how to approach what I was trying to do from the jump. It helped that they all know each other well, and that Adam and I know each other well, so it was exciting to find out where our mutual musical instincts and working histories fit together. I barely had to do anything except tell them what feel I was looking for, the key and tempo, and we were off and running. This gave us so much time and space to have fun playing the songs, and so in that way, I think we were able to achieve a lot of interesting moments of spontaneity.
The album was recorded both live and multi-tracking. Why was it important to have that kind of balance? What about having that flexibility to jump between methods do you enjoy most?
It’s a pretty common approach, I think. The live tracking can lend to spontaneous musical communications, happy accidents, etc., and can be very time-efficient. So, we tracked all the songs live with the band, my vocals included, and then we just added some additional parts in overdubs. Not much, things like an additional set of keys or percussion. I don’t like spending too much time on a song. You can buff the spirit out of anything, trying to perfect it. The feel is the most important thing.
You’ll be going out on tour this summer. What are you most excited about?
I’m really excited to get to go to Edmonton Folk Fest in Alberta, Newport Folk, and Tonder in Denmark. Never been to any of those!
What’s your favorite Replacements song or memory?
I got to see them in DC when they did that doomed reunion tour a while back. It was phenomenal, with Josh Freese on drums! They were a huge influence on my early rock bands, and Paul Westerberg’s writing still resonates with me today. My old bands covered “Waitress in the Sky” and “Can’t Hardly Wait” (PTMM version, which feels apropos to mention). Favorite songs, too many to list, but it would be hard to deny that songs like “Androgynous”, “Left of the Dial”, and “Unsatisfied” are songwriting masterpieces that get even better with time.
We cannot agree more. What’s your favorite memory involving a water tower?
Callback opportunity! One of my favorite Michael Hurley records is called Watertower, and he did a painting of a water tower for the cover. It is good.
You can connect with and listen to John R. Miller at the links below:
- Website: Jrmillermusic.com
- Facebook: Facebook.com/johnrmillerwv
- Instagram: Instagram.com/jrmillerwv
- TikTok: Tiktok.com/@johnrmillermusic
- YouTube: Youtube.com@johnrmillermusic
- Bandcamp: Johnrmiller.bandcamp.com
- Spotify: John R. Miller on Spotify
- Apple Music: John R. Miller on Apple Music
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
