Tag: scott miller

3×3: Scott Miller on Cattle, Concerts, and Keeping It Clean

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Scott Miller
Hometown: Swoope, VA (Pronounced like “nope” — You pronounce it wrong and that’s how we know you ain’t from around here.)
Latest Album: Ladies Auxiliary
Personal Nicknames: Mule, Pigpen, the Man from Nantucket.

Tonight’s dressing room, per contract. #winning

A post shared by commonwealther (@commonwealther) on

What’s the best concert you’ve ever attended?

I hate music. But back when I didn’t, I saw Doc Watson at a rainy bluegrass festival down in Virginia Beach. A hurricane was pounding the east coast, and I stood at the foot of the stage mesmerized.

How many unread emails or texts currently fill your inbox?

Zip. Zero. Keep it clean, I say. My office, my farm truck, my van: all total wrecks, but my inbox is pristine!

How many pillows do you sleep with?

We didn’t have pillows growing up, we used a rock. But now I use two. I’ve gotten soft in my old age.

How many pairs of shoes do you own?

I am the Imelda Marcos of Americana … you wouldn’t know it. They’re all boots.

If you were going to buy a famous musician’s pair of dirty socks off of eBay, whose would you buy?

Suzi Quatro’s. But I wouldn’t buy them. I’d just sneak into her house and get them. Not because I’m creepy. But because I’m cheap.

What’s your favorite vegetable?

I don’t eat vegetables. I raise beef cattle.

#NewIdea

A post shared by commonwealther (@commonwealther) on

Fate or free will?

Fate. And we are all doomed.

Sweet or sour?

Sweeeeeeeeet

Sunrise or sunset?

Sunset. If I see a sunrise, it’s only because I stayed up all night.

Scott Miller, ‘Someday/Sometime’

Posted on by Editor

In the age of endless arguments over musical authenticity, it’s always the people with the textbook “credibility” that seem to care the least about the nature of their backgrounds. Scott Miller, an actual cattle rancher, certainly doesn’t: Though tending to 200 acres of farmland and a bunch of resident cows is one of his day jobs, he doesn’t make it his main selling point in the peanut gallery of ideas (otherwise known as the Internet). Notably, he doesn’t parade around with a lasso and chaps, to prove his right to sing songs with folksy, country roots; nor does he walk around in Western getups, eager to put his provenance on display. That’s because he doesn’t need to — his authenticity just spills from the songs on Ladies Auxiliary, his newest LP. Recorded exclusively with women as his creative partners and instrumentalists, it explores love and loss with a gentle, mindful, and sometimes humorous hand.

“Someday/Sometime” is no exception. Expertly simple in construction but stirringly complex in the cadre of emotions it rouses, Miller has admitted that the song was written imagining the life of the father of a friend who committed suicide and left two children behind. Indeed, there’s a solemnity to the message, but it doesn’t spell out the tragic events. Instead, it examines what’s at stake in the day-to-day toils of existence. “Sometimes the worst thing is the truth, sometimes your best will still not do,” he sings. That sentiment could apply to someone gone too soon; it could apply to someone still barreling through the ups and the downs. And it’s as authentically human as can be.