JOHN R MiLLER - DEPRECiATED

ROUTES & BRANCHES

featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music

July 10, 2021

Scott Foley, purveyor of dust

I was puzzling over the stats for our humble blog and noticed that we're just passing 700 posts. R&B has evolved significantly since our inaugural post (something called Sunday Drive: traipsing thru the internets). Back then, in August of 2008, I was a radio announcer and music director, as well as manager for a bookstore. Now, I'm not. While other similar blogs have come and gone, we've remained alarmingly consistent. True, the years have found our attention wandering a bit, incorporating more adventurous sounds, but we continue to make room for genuine roots music artists like John R Miller. The Nashville-area resident, emigrated from his longtime West Virginia home, releases his major label debut, Depreciated via Rounder Records on July 16. 

A dedicated road animal, Miller cut his teeth with acts like Fox Hunt and Prison Book Club, serving in bands alongside Hackensaw Boys, Sierra Ferrell and JP Harris. Tyler Childers has heralded Miller's arrival from stage, recording one of his songs on his Red Barn Radio records. Like wearing in a stiff pair of shoes, this wide-ranging service added road dust to Miller's voice and real-lived experience to his songs. These qualities have been exhibited on 2014's acoustic Service Engine and 2018's superb Trouble You Follow, credited to Miller and his touring band, the Engine Lights. 

More fleshed out than Service Engine and more settled than Trouble, Depreciated presents an artist who is appealingly laid-back, but simultaneously confident and focused. Those perfect notes are struck with a band featuring producers Adam Meisterhans and Justin Francis, as well as fiddler/vocalist Chloe Edmonstone and Robbie Crowell on keys. The outfit is at its best on "Borrowed Time", a timeless slice of 70s country that could earn its place on a playlist alongside JJ Cale classics. With reverb guitar and an unhurried pace, the song acknowledges the ticking clock that provides the rhythm for all we do: Depreciating like a double-wide trailer on top of a a salt mine. 

Since Depreciated marks Miller's official debut as a solo artist, the collection includes a couple songs from past projects, rerecorded with the current band. The waltz timed "Back and Forth" recalls John Prine's sardonic slice-of-life perspective, set to a warm fiddle and John Looney's mandolin. "Motor's Fried" highlights Miller's own acoustic picking and a kind of homegrown advice that permeates the session: When you can only think in words, the beauty falls apart. Like his Texas music heroes Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, John R Miller never strays too far afield for lyrical inspiration, even as he can demand a listener's attention by dropping rewarding turns of phrase and poetic perspective. With soaring and diving electric guitar, "Shenandoah Shakedown" adds a touch of psychedelia to the tale of attachment and the suspicion it's time to move on: There's a crack in the altar / Pale light through the break / Like crooked teeth. 

This handcrafted spirit lends an air of humility to Miller's work, a sort of been-there-done-that nonchalance that might speak to a more experienced, more traveled songwriter. But songs like "Looking Over My Shoulder" or "Old Dance Floor" aren't lazy. The former adds an electric twist to a bluesy guitar shuffle, while the latter pairs Edmonstone's fiddle and John Clay's full drums for a Louisiana rock vibe. I paid my tab in someone else's tears / Lord I broke the bank this time. Because it's roots music, Miller doesn't trade in sounds we haven't heard before. But like the most capable of vets in our kind of music, Depreciated convinces us that he knows how to assemble all those familiar pieces just right. You'd be a fool not to want to take Miller up on his offer to sell his "Half Ton Van", even as he adds Most of the cylinders are firing, and you don't really need the ones that can't. 

After 700 posts here at R&B HQ, our short musical attention span means we're always listening for something new, keeping our ears tuned to hybrids, perspectives and identities that we have yet to hear. To their great credit, artists like JP Harris and John R Miller remind us what brought us to this place to begin with. One of 2021's strongest singles, "Faustina" appeals to the Patron Saint of Mercy to calm the writer's restless soul. Atop a bed of Russ Pahl's pedal steel, the rambling guitar cut temporarily soothes our own musical wanderlust. A good song,  perfectly delivered: It was cigarettes outside an empty bar / On a dark December morning / Months of bad food and a pauper's guitar. It's a time-tested recipe for thirty minutes of musical satisfaction. 

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Nevertheless, we persist in adding novelty to A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster, our expectantly updated roots music release calendar. Austin's Mike & the Moonpies return August 10 with One To Grow On (Prairie Rose). August 20 marks the debut of Angel Olsen's next project. Aisles is a five-song EP of 80's coversongs featuring stuff originally by Laura Branigan, Billy Idol, OMD and more (Jagjaguwar). The Busiest Man In Country Music, Charley Crockett is back with his first full-length since February. Music City USA arrives September 17 courtesy of Son of Davy.  Tim Showalter and Strand of Oaks are set for an October 1 release for their follow-up to 2019's terrific Eraserland. Backed by members of My Morning Jacket, In Heaven lands wherever music matters on October 1 (Galacticana). Finally, TK & the Holy Know-Nothings are ready with their sophomore full-length. Following on the heels of their excellent debut, Incredible Heat Machine is expected on October 15 from the Mama Bird label. Find more by clicking on the link.