Artist's music gets back to basics

Buddy Miller's audience wants more traditional American music.
By JOHN PATRICK GATTA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Immediately after Buddy Miller greeted me on the other end of the phone line with "Hello," he said, "I'm really bad at this. I warn you now."
More than a half-hour later, it's obvious that his modest statement is more a reflection of his egoless and giving nature to please than actual fact. Such an attitude coupled with his musical abilities have made him a respected guitarist, singer-songwriter and performer.
Miller gained a stellar reputation as lead guitarist in bands for Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and Linda Ronstadt, played on rock albums by Frank Black and Midnight Oil, put out several critically-acclaimed solo albums and earned a Grammy nomination when he teamed up with his wife, Julie, for another release.
On this day, he is filling up some time before he heads to Wolftrap Filene Center in Vienna, Va., and makes his contribution to the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue.
Inspiration for it
Its inspiration came about when Harris and the Millers joined Patty Griffin during a performance at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The chemistry that evening led to talk of playing dates together. When Julie opted out of playing outdoor amphitheaters, likeminded peers Gillian Welch and David Rawlings fill out the bill.
Miller admitted that the tour's name is a nod to Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. Taking place in 1975, it brought together a number of his contemporaries such as Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell and Ramblin' Jack Elliot in a ragtag variety show format. Like that tour, the musicians of Sweet Harmony perform in various combinations.
Besides friendship and talent, the inability to be easily categorized unites these players. Together, their creative endeavors have been placed within the Americana or No Depression movement, which incorporates the roots, folk, bluegrass, gospel, country and alt-country genres.
"I guess I'm drawing from a few different wells. I think we all grew up listening to a lot of different kind of music. I thought with my first record I was making a real straight-ahead country record. It turned out I wasn't, just because people told me it wasn't."
Upcoming release
He continues to follow his muse on his upcoming release, "Universal United House of Prayer," due Sept. 21 on New West Records. It's an unintentional sequel of sorts to his post-9/11 musings on 2002's "Midnight and Lonesome." While that album dealt with the shock of that fateful day, "House of Prayer" finds renewed strength through his relationship with God.
"I just wanted to make an album that was a little more spiritual, a lot more personal and reflected the world a little bit, the mess. So that's what this is. The album also reflects his loyalty to country's past.
"It's just the state of the world. We've had a lot of stuff in our personal lives going on the last year and it just felt like the record to make. I just didn't want to make, while there is nothing wrong with that, another record of disconnected songs. I wanted to have a theme. When I was growing up, so many records did that, not just the rock records, but all country records. Then I thought, all these country artists, like every fifth record was a gospel record."
The defiance by Miller and the others taking part in the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue not to play by the rules established by the business of country music may not leave their bank accounts overflowing, but the joy and satisfaction of playing together and spreading the traditional sounds to others fills any possible void.
Audiences clamoring for this tour are a by-product of those who desire the more traditional American sounds that were once supplied by country music.
Although he lives in Music City, Miller finds little in common with the commercial trends that run through his hometown. "I'm so in another world. I live in Nashville, just blocks from where they make all those terrible country records. I know nothing about that world. It's as foreign to me as the medical industry, which is just as big in Nashville."