San Francisco Examiner

This is country country, honey

By William Friar
Special To The Examiner

Buddy and Julie Miller won't appeal to alt-country day-trippers. You can't convince yourself this is just rootsy rock with a little bit of fiddle and accordion. The music this couple makes is unreconstructed, deep holler, pre-hat-act, no foolin' backwoods country. If you're going to listen to it, you've got to learn to stop worrying and love the twang.

Which is not to say they mind slipping a bit of backbeat beneath their sweet yearning harmonies. For instance, both "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast" and "Dirty Water," off the Millers' new album, have a slightly sinister rock stomp that wouldn't be out of place on, say, a Smithereens album.

But those old-timey harmonies are the heart of their music. Their voices -- froggy-throated, tough-little-girl Julie and tender, high, lonesome Buddy -- sound so right together it's hard to imagine one without the other.

That's why it's odd to think that "Buddy & Julie Miller," released Sept. 18 on Oakland's HighTone Records, is their first true album together. They've guested on each other's past records (three for him, two for her) and often perform together, but they've never done a full-on duets album before.

Most of the songs were written by Julie. Of these, the most poignant and bittersweet is "Rachel," about a student killed in the Columbine tragedy. What makes it especially moving is it's not a dirge but rather a sunny, fast-tempo celebration. It's the best kind of requiem for a too-brief life.

top

Washington Post

By Buzz McClain

The First Couple of Americana have turned in their long-awaited, much delayed debut disc as a pair. It's called, fittingly and simply, "Buddy and Julie Miller" (HighTone), and it was worth the wait for these two in-demand artists to merge their busy schedules to record together.

The Millers remain unknown outside the cloistered, radio-free underground of alt-country music -- if Buddy Miller ever had a cut from his masterly 1999 "Cruel Moon" CD played on country radio, it was an accident -- and it's doubtful that this effort will break them into the mainstream. But it's not because the effort isn't stellar; it's because the market is uninformed.

Buddy Miller, who credits exposure first to Elvis Presley and then Ralph Stanley as musical turning points, is Emmylou Harris's guitarist in the trio known as Spyboy, which accompanies her in concert and in the studio. He's played guitar, sung with or written songs for discs by Victoria Williams, Trisha Yearwood, Heather Myles and Australia's Midnight Oil; in 1999, he won the Nashville Music Award Guitar Player of the Year trophy, which is saying something in a town full of professional pickers. But don't look for excessively flashy solos; the work here is tasteful and mature, with an emphasis on mood rather than thrills. Julie Miller has lent her vocal skills or songwriting to works by Harris, John Hiatt, Jim Lauderdale, Hank Williams III and even the Frank Sinatra "Trilogy" album, on which she sang harmonies. Her own acclaimed albums, "Blue Pony" (1997) and "Broken Things" (1999), proved she could do it on her own for herself.

The Millers would seem suitably poised to cash in on any residual clamor for the sort of updated old-timey music made fashionable by the soundtracks to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Songcatcher." Like those collections, the Millers' CD boasts songs that seemed to have manifested from another, simpler time -- perhaps the 1930s -- carrying echoes from Appalachian hollows and sprinkled with Depression-era Oklahoma dust.

But there's also a contemporary feel stemming from the pristine production values and masterful instrumentation.

The record opens with Richard Thompson's "Keep Your Distance," stripped of all its English cynicism and brightened with Buddy Miller's rootsy strumming and Phil Madeira's soulful Hammond B3 organ. Maderia also adds a resonant, soothing layer of sound to Bruce "Utah" Phillips's "Rock Salt and Nails" that serves as a welcome undertow to the melody played on Buddy's acoustic guitar.

Julie Miller wrote seven of the 11 songs, most of them questioning the solidity of relationships. "Forever Has Come to an End" is a prime example, as it describes the impact of a withering love. It's a duet of her husband and guest vocalist Harris, and it's achingly beautiful.

There's only one Miller-Miller songwriting credit, the haunting, swampy "Dirty Water," which Julie sings as if exhausted and defeated until Buddy joins the verse to bolster things.

As in her solo work, Julie's voice alters in attitude to suit the material: She can arouse the baser senses -- check out the sultry vamping on "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast" -- as well as nourish the soul -- the singularly beautiful "That's Just How She Cries."

Bob Dylan's "Wallflower," given a sparse, acoustic treatment reminiscent of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, fits in nicely with the rest of the record and shows the directions the Millers have come from, and are aiming toward.

top

Rolling Stone

By Richard Skanse
September 17, 2001

Over the course of the last decade, singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer Buddy Miller has established himself as what one might call the Miracle Whip of modern-day cosmic American music. Genre giants Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle have called on his high harmony vocals and smart guitar leads on numerous occasions, while his compositions have landed on multi-platinum efforts by the likes of the Dixie Chicks and LeeAnn Womack. His wife Julie Miller has enjoyed a similar degree of behind-the-scenes success, while both have also turned out a handful of critically acclaimed solo albums. This is their first official joint effort, though the co-billing is less an event than a matter of calling a spade a spade, given how ubiquitous they've been on each others' solo albums in the past. The songs, mostly Julie's, are of uniformly high quality, covering solid but well-traveled ground, the sonic landmarks familiar to any fan of Harris, Earle and Lucinda Williams. What the Millers bring new to the table is an uncanny gift for harmony. Buddy and Julie don't "duet"; they morph into one voice -- a high, keening cry that brings to mind a banshee with a bluegrass soul. Shot through the opening cover of Richard Thompson's somber "Keep Your Distance," that voice is almost too much, like trying to bottle lightning in a baby food jar. But when they ease it into Julie's beautiful lament "Forever Has Come to an End," break it apart and reassemble it for dramatic impact on the charging "Dirty Water," or lift it into the heavens with "Rachel" (a stirring anthem inspired by a poem and drawing by the first student killed at Columbine High) -- they achieve genuine grandeur.

top

SonicNet.com

Miller Time

By Geoffrey Himes

"The River's Gonna Run" (RealAudio excerpt), the second song on Buddy & Julie Miller, begins with Buddy's twangy Texas drawl resounding like the first warning drops of rain on a tin roof. Backed by drummer Brady Blade and NRBQ bassist Joey Spampinato, Buddy's guitar riff clouds up darker and burlier "like there's a storm comin' in." By the time he reaches the chorus, Julie's high siren soprano flashes overhead like lightning, warning, "the rain is gonna come/ And the river's gonna run." She swears she's going to ride out the storm, even if it kills her, and the confidence in her voice is every bit as convincing as the danger in her husband's guitar.

It's an astonishing performance, but it's typical of an album so strange and powerful that it seems cut "loose from time," as the above song puts it. The small-combo arrangements are spare (sometimes Larry Campbell's fiddle or Phil Madeira's B3 organ joins the rhythm section), but the repeating riffs and vocal harmonies make it sound big. Here is a country-rock fashioned not from particular guitar styles but from the fundamental attitudes of ancient, fatalistic country music and anything-is-possible rock and roll. Buddy's hillbilly guitar may summon up a storm that's as implacable as it is biblical, but Julie's folk-rock wail refuses to run scared. It's an album that could have come from 1925, 1965 or 2005.

While they've always worked on each other's recordings (Julie's four Christian-pop titles, her two secular discs and Buddy's three roots albums), this is the first album credited to the Millers as a duo, and it's the best of the bunch. The songs — seven by Julie and one apiece by the duo, Richard Thompson, Utah Phillips and Bob Dylan — are versatile enough to work as hand-me-down folk tales, as spiritual allegories and as psychological templates. The vocal melodies and guitar riffs grab you right off, but it's the ferocity of the performances that won't let go.

You can hear that ferocity in Buddy's desperate howl on "Rock Salt and Nails" (RealAudio excerpt), Phillips' tale of a mountain man crazed by romantic betrayal. You can hear it in the spitting anger of Julie's vocal on "Dirty Water" ("You can try to lock up the truth, but the door won't shut/ 'Cause the truth keeps coming out like blood from a cut"), the duo's blues-drenched number about another lying lover. You can hear it in the quiet, heartbreaking harmonies on "That's Just How She Cries" (RealAudio excerpt), Julie's song about a woman so sad she cannot weep ("Without words she speaks, so listen to her eyes, 'cause that's how she cries"). All told, this is as good an album as we're likely to get this year.

top

Billboard

In an alternative universe, Buddy and Julie Miller are the reigning king and queen of contemporary country music. On their first full album together, they shine like diamonds, with 11 songs that are as real as dirt. In many ways, this is a Julie Miller show: She wrote seven of the songs (all superbly crafted), and her little-girl-lost vocal is infinitely more interesting than most of what mainstream country offers. She's Tom Petty's feminine side on the blistering "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast" and a wounded sparrow on the sultry-spooky "Dirty Water." For his part, Buddy Miller offers granite to his wife's morning dew, a blending that slays on such excellent duets as the gently thrumming "Keep Your Distance" and the mountain blues "Little Darlin'." Bob Dylan's "Wallflower" is hillbilly honk in the Millers' hands, and "Rachel," a touching, brilliant tribute to a prescient Columbine victim, addresses that tragedy better than a thousand "experts" ever could. This is one fine, fine piece of work.

top

Puremusic Interview

by Frank Goodman

[While we waited for Julie to appear, Buddy and I were shooting the breeze technically, about a recording software called ProTools. At one point I just started the recorder for the heck of it.]

Buddy Miller: I have a friend in NY who says that they get the rhythm section to play all day, and then use four bars of it -- loop it, dupe it, and quantize it. I don't use it like that. You can just use it as a real nice tape recorder. That's what I do. And the plug-ins are great, it's great technology. I've got a real big system, I beta tested for them for seven years. I had a two inch machine here, too. But it was really big, and every time I pressed the stop button on the remote, the button would fly across the room. It would rattle like a washing machine on rewind, and the hiss was louder than I liked to talk over. And, for what we do, I don't need it. I switched to digital, and was amazed. There are things about tape that I miss, the actual smell of tape is the thing I miss the most. And you can get the sound a little silkier, you know, things like that. In the end product, nobody can really hear the difference.

Puremusic: Right, since you're going to end up in the digital domain anyhow [a CD], and largely listened to in someone's car.

BM: It is all cumulative, digital makes you work a little bit harder.

PM: Do you master to an analog machine?

BM: Generally what I do is, I'll mix to an ATR Ampex half inch machine, it's the finest half inch mastering machine. Then I'll dump that back into ProTools and do the mastering. I didn't do the mastering on this last record, we didn't have time. I've been out on tour most of this last whole year, and it wasn't easy getting this record done.

PM: I never realized until I read some bios that you spent some time in Jersey and PA. What part of your life was spent there?

BM: High school, in the Princeton area. You say you're from Bucks County [PA], then you know there's a lot of good bluegrass going on around there.

PM: You remember a fantastic band called Bottle Hill from Jersey? What happened to them, they were amazing.

BM: I don't know, man, I don't know what happened to a lot of people... I used to play bluegrass there with the guy that just wrote the biography on Bill Monroe, Richard Smith [Can't You Hear Me Callin', Da Capo Press, www.dacapopress.com]. Then I lived near the northern PA border towards Woodstock after high school, and beat it outta there as soon as I could.

PM: Joined a band and went out West?

BM: Within a year or so, right. We thought we had a deal, with ABC Paramount or A&M, but ended up playing on the streets. Whoever it was, they'd just signed the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and didn't need two bands in what seemed a similar vein. We had two frailing banjo players, a fiddle player, and bass and drums. I played electric guitar and pedal steel. We went out there in our school bus with eight guys and their girlfriends, and twice as many dogs. So we had no money. We had to play on the streets in Berkeley and San Francisco. We'd live off discarded food in trash bins of restaurants and crash on friends' floors.

PM: This is what, early 70s?

BM: '72.

PM: I was in Berkeley in '72 as well.

BM: Probably saw me playing on the street. We'd set up right there by campus, whatever that was.

PM: Right, Telegraph Ave. and Bancroft Way.

BM: So, we'd play and try and get some money. Finally somebody heard us who was friends of that fiddle player from Sea Train.

PM: Richard Greene.

BM: Right. Well, this guy appreciated what we were doing. We were pretty acoustic on the street at this point. He owned the Russian River Inn. [In beautiful Sonoma County, about 60-70 miles North of Berkeley.]

PM: Nice joint.

BM: You know it?

PM: Sure, we used to play the Highland Dell in Monte Rio and some other clubs up there.

BM: So, at this time, the Russian River Inn was closed. He said, "Well, I own this place, and I see that half of you are sleeping in this bus. If you guys want to stay here, you can, nobody's renting it or using it as a bar at the moment." So we had our sleeping bags on top of the bar, you know, found a couple of cots. The kitchen was great, set up for business. We lived there for about six months. We'd play all the joints around there, like the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati. We opened our share of good dates for bigger acts.

PM: What was that band called?

BM: St. Elmo's Fire. And as tough as it was, it was still fun. We finally got enough money to drive East, and we stopped here in Nashville along the way. I talked them into going to the Opry. It was Christmas time, and everybody was home, it was a great show. Marty Robbins was playing, and Dolly Parton came out solo and sang a song she'd just written, "Jolene."

PM: Oh my.

BM: It was amazing. We were up in the balcony, eating fried chicken. Anyhow, we continued on, looking for the right situation. We ended up in Massachusetts, in the Stockbridge area.

PM: Where "Alice's Restaurant" is.

BM: Exactly. There was a studio there called Shaggy Dog Studios, and the guy who owned it took a liking to us, and gave us whatever time we wanted. So we figured, "This is a good opportunity, let's move here." So we did, and we had a beautiful house. The previous owner or tenant was Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary. At this time, things were getting a little depraved, we liked to drink. We were playing a lot, and bought a Greyhound Bus, a great GMC 4103 with the round windows, but one of our banjo players totaled it, too much drinking. After I left the band, he totaled a second bus while reaching for a beer. Instead of making a turn, he slammed into the house of an elderly couple, knocked it right off the foundation.

[At this moment, a gentleman showed up bearing one of those Music City plaques with the gold or platinum records, couldn't tell which. He introduced himself as John Lomax. He was presenting it to Buddy for working with an Australian artist named Kasey Chambers. He also had a book that he'd written about her family's epic saga, and was showing it around, the Millers were impressed. He'd also come to pick up their latest record. Julie had appeared at this moment, and offered me something to drink, an Odwalla. Buddy asked for water.]

PM: You're just back, you say. Has Julie been out on the road with you?

BM: She only came out for the last two Emmy Lou dates, she's been staying home. We just did a family thing together. I've been doing double duty, because I opened about 20 of those dates.

PM: Do you open solo, or with a band?

BM: I have Brady [Blade] play a cocktail drum, and the front of house guy [the person who mixes the show out front], Dean Norman, he plays the bass. So, it's a different look, and a different sound with the cocktail drum. [a tall drum with heads on the top and bottom. There's a snare on the top head, played with brushes or sticks, and a traditional foot pedal to get a bass drum sound out of the bottom head.]

PM: Yeah, you got to change the look, and change your shirt between sets.

BM: Yeah, I only do just because I sweat, you know. It doesn't matter too much what we look like, everybody's looking at Emmy Lou anyway.

PM: On top of being great, she's still so striking. Who's playing in the Emmy Lou band these days?

BM: It's me, Brady Blade, and Tony Hall on bass. It's just been three pieces and her for seven years. Daniel Lanois played guitar the tour after Wrecking Ball, and I've been on guitar since then. We changed bass players a year ago, Daryl Johnson had played previously.

PM: So, you get to play your ass off every night.

BM: Oh yeah. There's a lot of freedom.

[Julie reappears with the beverages, Buddy's checking out the gold record.]

PM: Do you have a tune on that record?

BM: No, sang on it, but we have had some cuts, with the Dixie Chicks and Lee Anne Womack...

PM: I've been reading about all the great cuts of late, quite a windfall of them the last couple of years.

BM: It's been mindblowing.

PM: It may not be the end of financial insecurity, but it puts things on a pretty even keel.

BM: Certainly keeps you in cat litter, yeah. And we just like the work. We're going over to sing with Lee Ann Womack in an hour on a song of ours that she did and is redoing. She cut another one of Julie's recently, we don't know if it's gonna make the record, not yet.

PM: Which other Julie song did Lee Ann cut?

BM: "I Need You." It's a rockin thing. We really don't know if it will make the record at all.

PM: Really? That's interesting, might be good for her image. It's kind of, how shall I say, on the dirty side, you know?

Julie Miller: [laughs] Yeah, that's what we thought.

PM: But I mean it in a good way, of course, it's a great song. But all the cut action is really great, one can easily tour all year and not make that kind of money.

BM: It was pretty unexpected.

PM: You know what I'd like to hear? Little Jimmy Scott's cut of "All My Tears."

BM: Oh, you've never heard that? Before you go, I have to play that for you.

PM: He's such an otherworldly singer.

JM: Oh wow. That's for sure.

BM: It was a ways into the song before Julie recognized it.

PM: So, let's see, I did bring some questions. This first one woke me up at 4:30 this morning.

BM: [to Julie] That's a good question for you. [laughter]

JM: Absolutely, if it arrived at 4 AM.

PM: Speaking musically, one of the things that makes your partnership so rich is that Julie is bringing the folk and rock elements to the table, and Buddy the country, soul, and the R&B factor. With that in mind, and speaking personally, what are the elements that each of you bring to the table that make your friendship and your marriage work?

BM: That's a good question. [stands up and walks to a ringing phone]

JM: No, turn it off, Buddy! [laughter]

[After a humorous rapid fire family conference, Buddy agrees to take it off the hook, after the caller's message is complete.]

JM: That's something, Buddy taking it off the hook -- that doesn't happen.

PM: Really? As a recording freak, I woulda thought he'd want it turned off a lot.

JM: [whispering] Oh no, he's a telephone freak.

BM: [from the next room] I'm not a telephone freak.

PM: [whispering, to Julie] He likes to talk on the telephone?

BM: [from the next room, louder] No, I hate it!

PM: You just like to know who's on the telephone.

JM: He needs to know. [laughing]

BM: I just like to know who's calling.

JM: He's an information kind of a guy. Anything that's involved with information. The mail, the Fed Ex man, the phone...

BM: I think I'm a normal guy. She's not. I can't get her on the phone when I'm calling from the road! And half the time she probably hears me on the machine, saying, "Julie, it's me, pick up the phone..."

JM: Thing is, I just don't even hear the phone... I don't want to be responsible for knowing.

BM: She doesn't have it turned on sometimes. We had an elaborate system hooked up one time...

JM: You might not want to reveal.

BM: Oh, okay, yeah. [Julie's laughing]

PM: Oh, were we getting into family secrets?

BM: Well, no, I just mean with the...okay, maybe we shouldn't.

JM: Well, he's information guy. I'm Rapunzel, with cats.

PM: Ain't nothin wrong with that.

BM: You ever see nine cats together? [Julie's laughing] You might change your mind. It's like a little herd.

JM: They didn't have a mommy or a daddy, and I couldn't find them one.

PM: One at a time, or a litter?

JM: Well, we did find a couple of litters. We gave away part of two litters, and have the rest. And the mama of the second litter, too. We didn't want to claim her, so we didn't give her a name, she was just mama. Now she thinks that's her name. The other night I thought she was lost, and I was walking the neighborhood at 2 AM calling "Mama..."

BM: Okay, back to the question, then.

PM: Okay. What are you each bringing to the table personally that makes the relationship work?

BM: I bring a certain uptightness, [laughter] I think, that's needed at times.

JM: The necessary uptightness, it's essential.

BM: I can't think of anything else I bring. I get the mail, I tell her who called. [laughter]

PM: Let's try it from another angle. Why don't you each answer the question for the other person, say what it is that they bring to the table.

BM: She helps me to keep my...I can't say focus, because I don't really focus on anything...to keep my God awareness present, instead of getting caught up in all this stupid stuff. That's one of the big things. And she's just a real inspiration to be around, all the time.

PM: That angle works a lot better. So, what does Buddy bring, Julie?

JM: I think I just turned into a little pile of dust... If it weren't for Buddy, nothing would happen. There would be no music. He's the most incredible musician you can meet, he's the inspiration. Most great musicians just want to do things the way they want to do it. He's that rare gifted musician that enjoys facilitating someone else's vision, if they ask him to. We ping pong back and forth with stuff. Julie wants to rock a little bit, and don't play quite as good on Julie's songs. Just use one finger. [laughing]

PM: It's beautiful that both people are saying that the other one is their inspiration. It sounds like there's not a control freak in the crowd. Are either of you inclined that way?

JM: I'm the control freak. I start out saying, "Just do whatever you want to do." But once I'm even slightly involved, I sort of get carried away.

PM: That's interesting, when it's you that, how can I say this without being offensive... [Julie's laughing] is the more otherworldly of the two? Not the guy with his feet on the ground and his hands on the controls.

BM: I'm open to whatever way things are going. Sometimes I have an idea...

JM: He always has tons of ideas. But, as talented as he is, he'll always let someone else say "Well, will you play it this way for me?" at any time.

BM: I just like to get something done.

JM: I have no goal. I don't want to finish an album. I'd rather play, and work on a song endlessly.

BM: But she wrote almost all of this record. When we first talked about it, we discussed doing a record of country duets. We had a couple of songs. But in the end Julie always wants to rock. [she's laughing]

PM: Yeah, that's the thing that surprises me about her. She has that real folk aspect, but then she wants to play the dirty rockers.

JM: [laughing hard] With the voice of a four year old.

PM: Right, she doesn't just want to rock, she wants to go there.

BM: It's all fun, and when we're live, we swing toward the rock side.

PM: This new record is very good, there's some great songs on it. I never knew the incredible story of that Columbine child. Lord... [Rachel Scott, the first student killed in the massacre. Her remarkable story and journal excerpts are revealed in the book that Julie gave me at the end of our conversation, Rachel's Tears, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville. Julie wrote a very moving song about it, "Rachel."]

JM: That book that her parents wrote, with the friends and family that participated in the storytelling, changed my life so much. That's the hardest song I ever had to write. I just cried from beginning to end. At first, I didn't feel like I had the right to even say or do anything about it. But I was talking to a friend of mine, an incredible singer named Kelly Willis, and she said that Rachel's aunt was a close friend of hers, that Rachel's brother had been around the house last year. So I met Rachel's aunt through Kelly, and she said, "Please write this song, it would mean a lot to her family." Then I felt like I had permission, and even the responsibility.

PM: Buddy, I liked what you said in the liner notes about wanting the music to sound like the room it was made in, kinda big and kinda messy, and I think it does. A friend was over listening to the new record, and compared how much easier it was to pick out the lyrics on your records. And I told her that this is how they sound live, but at home. It's a beautiful thing, you just got to let go of that clean idea. [Julie's laughing]

In a day to day sense, what kind of people would you describe yourselves to be?

BM: Well, we've been married a long time [17 years] and have spent very little time apart. So we've developed our own ways of communicating with each other. Aside from that, we're just, you know, checking the mail and going to work.

JM: You're funny. [laughing]

BM: And then, you know, I'm on the phone and stuff. We never got a manager or anything.

PM: You have no personal manager? [Julie's laughing]

BM: I guess we could...

JM: I don't want one. I don't know why...

BM: You don't want one 'cause you're afraid they'll make you do something.

PM: They'd try, at least.

BM: When a new record comes out, I'm on the phone way too much, because I'm doing all that. Coordinating the tours with the booking agent, and all the other stuff I do, there's a lot of working with other people.

PM: You can't like doing all that stuff. I never met a musician in my life that likes to do all that stuff.

BM: No, I don't like it, what's there to like.

JM: He's really good at it, though.

PM: Maybe there's something short of a personal manager that would take a load off, a day to day manager.

BM: I think we're going to bring my sister into that loop. She lives locally, and is real good at that kind of stuff. She works for Gibson, and runs all their big events.

PM: That's beautiful, I love keeping it in the family. Because when you're dead, no one's gonna say, "He was hell on the phone."

BM: "That cat could really book some flights."

PM: What do you like to do when you're not working?

BM: Get the house cleaned up a little, sit down and play some music.

PM: That's nice to hear. So many road musicians sit their guitar in a corner when they finally get home.

BM: I'm slowing down, too. I'm not going to take as many outside things, so we can work more on our songs, our music.

PM: Less touring, or less record production?

BM: Less production, and fewer sessions. I'll never quit doing Emmy Lou tours, unless they fire me.

JM: It's almost comical, what a really nice person she is. She never shows up at the house without food, or flowers, or something. She's very considerate, very thoughtful. When it's time to get on the bus, she gets in the very back. She has no star trip going on whatsoever.

PM: That's a nice thing about the crowd you're running with. You guys don't seem to have an ego between you, and the people you play with are all very nice, mature people. It's rare enough to know musicians in the public eye who don't have a distorted view of themselves.

PM: Could we talk a little about your faith? I know you're both said to be committed Christians, but there are so many kinds. How does Christianity show up in your life, and how does it play out?

JM: For me, I'm not a very religious person, as far as playing it by anybody's book goes. I'm more like this desperate soul that found the ultimate friend. Mother, father, sister, brother, lover.

PM: In Jesus, specifically, right?

JM: In Jesus. I'm from Texas. I felt Jesus touch my heart as a little child, but along the way I got the impression that Christianity was a club for people in the south that enabled them to feel good about themselves. So I split from all that, and for a while, I just ran. I was just as wild as wild can be, a leaf in the wind. It's amazing I'm alive. I was so self-destructive. But then I would spend hours and hours in bookstores, just looking for books with the answers I was after. I'd go to gypsies, self-help programs, psychiatrists. Until one day I'd gotten myself involuntarily locked up in this mental hospital. I was trying to get out. "Thank you very much, I feel better now," kind of thing. But it wasn't that simple, I had to talk with the head guy of the place, Bergen Pines.

PM: Bergen Pines, in Jersey?

JM: Right. So the head guy asked me, "If you had three wishes, what would they be?"

PM: "Is this a trick question?"

JM: Right. [laughing] I think he wanted me to say "I want out of here," just so he would know that I really wanted to go. 'Cause people say that they want to leave at those places but don't always mean it. But something came over me. I looked down at myself, where I'd cut myself with a broken beer bottle, and where blood had poured out, and asked myself, "What am I doing?" And the spirit of truth was tugging on me to wake up, and I looked at him and said, "I just want to know what the truth is. There's something that just IS, that's beyond something that's just true for you or true for me." And it rolled out of my mouth something just like that. This also coincided with the time that Bob Dylan was having his conversion experience and putting out Gospel records like Slow Train Coming, which a friend sent me. Many things of this nature took place in my life in this particular period. It was also the time when Emmy Lou's Roses in the Snow came out. Buddy brought it home, and there's this precious voice singing:

Those who have strayed were sought by the Master
He who once gave His life for the sheep
out on the mountain, still He is searching
bringing them in, forever to keep

I just wept, and wept. Something had been pulled away from my spirit, my soul, like a veil was lifted. I was receiving something from God, though I didn't know what it was. I felt crazy, in a new way. God started coming at me from all directions, wherever I looked. Outside this bar in upstate NY one night, spirit spoke to me. "I never wanted your life to be this way," and I saw how sad my life had been, and become. "I always wanted us to be together." That was my moment. The next day, and the next few days, I knew that "I want Jesus, where is He? What am I supposed to do now?" It's a long story, but that's the gist of it. And for me, it's become like a heart rending friendship.

PM: I guess once you've had a real conversion experience, there's no turning back. That's amazing.

JM: I called up Buddy. "Buddy, you won't believe this, but I just gave my life to Jesus, and I can't go back."

PM: What were you two to each other at this time, were you already together?

JM: Yeah, we were living together in Union City.

BM: Yep, we'd come up from Austin.

PM: "I've given my life to Jesus," that had to be pretty shocking.

BM: Yeah, it was shocking. But at the time, we had police out looking for her. We were playing at this club, and she hadn't shown up. She was kind of on the edge, you know. But the more we talked about it, the more I could tell that a real change had come over her.

PM: That something had happened.

[At this point in the interview, Buddy was speaking so reverently that his voice is barely audible on tape. Although his actual words are not captured, repeated listenings with the equalizer jacked around reveal that he was talking about having a new point of reference in their lives, a new reason to live right, and to gauge what really mattered.]

PM: I very much like the way that your Jesus awareness shows up in the tunes. It's a really good way. Even people that are not attuned that way can hear what you're saying. Without proselytizing or preaching, you're definitely testifying.

JM: Well, it thrills my soul to hear that, it's my deepest heart's desire. Give it to those who want it, and don't push it on anybody that's not ready. God's the one who speaks to people. He sure waited until I was ready.

PM: When you run across stories of conversion, you often see that people get good and out there before they're ready.

JM: Yeah, go try it all out before you're ready to do it My way.

PM: Do you guys have or make time to read? What are you reading, and what are you listening to?

JM: I see Buddy do a lot of reading when we get on a plane. He opens up those emergency instructions and reads them cover to cover. [Buddy's laughing]

BM: I collect them.

JM: No you don't.

BM: I can show you my collection.

JM: He means if only stealing wasn't wrong, he'd collect them.

BM: Oh well, I guess I won't show you my collection. I don't really read much these days.

PM: Manuals.

BM: Yeah, manuals, stuff like that. Or a magazine or book about music, sometimes. I used to read... [wistfully] I want to read again, I just can't seem to get there. I read for a reason now, to fall asleep.

JM: I buy books now. [laughs] I'm not reading the kind of intellectual books that people read when they say they read a lot. I read a lot of books that are written by Christians.

PM: What does that mean?

JM: There's this author, Brennan Manning, that I like a lot. [When we were done, Julie gave me a copy of Abba's Child, by Manning. NAVPRESS, P.O. Box 35001, Colorado Springs, CO 80935] I don't read much fiction, it sort of bothers me. I mean, you can make up anything. Life is short, I want to read something that's true, that really happened.

PM: Will you write songs that are fictional, or are they all in the "real" domain?

JM: They don't necessarily happen to me, or aren't necessarily happening right now, but they come from a place of experience. Without that, I don't get that sense of fulfillment, somehow.

BM: You don't seem to be going in the "story song" direction.

JM: I want to be able to write story songs...

PM: I hear this more and more from songwriter friends, though, that they don't have time for fiction. It's curious. Many of us are getting all the fiction we need from movies, perhaps.

JM: I think that's right.

PM: Buddy, what are those main axes that one sees you on stage with?

BM: I think the company was called Wandre. They've gotten released under a couple of different names, they're Italian, from the 60s. Wandre Pioli was the fella's name, I think. I believe he was into motorcycles and Picasso.

PM: So, a northern [German] Italian, I guess, if the "w" is pronounced like a "v"?

BM: Yeah, that sounds right. I don't even know that much about the guitars. I've learned a little more in the last 5 years than when I got them. I bought them in '76 for $50 each.

PM: Where?

BM: In a pawn shop in Boulder. I was in this band with Julie, and we were playing in Boulder. Her boyfriend took me into town, and we walked by this pawn shop that used to be a music store. The one I play all the time, the white one, was in the window for $85. I thought it would look pretty good on my wall, it had sparkles, so I offered the guy $50, he said "Sure." When I took it to the gig for a joke and plugged it in, it sounded real good. When I got back to Austin, I ordered the yellow pages for Boulder and went through the pawn shops till I found the place again. They had four more, so I bought them all. They used to import them. It says Noble on the top of it, but that's just the name of the accordion importer in Chicago who brought the Wandres into the country. I had to sell one when we were getting married, to Larry Campbell [multi-instrumentalist who plays with Bob Dylan], but he doesn't play it much. They're real good guitars. I've got the most conservative ones. A few of the really weird ones have become expensive, and are valued as works of art.

PM: I remember them having a unique, kind of glassy sound.

BM: They have a real good sound. They have floating pickups, they're not mounted to anything. They're attached to the pickguard, which runs the length of the body. It's very interesting.

PM: And they make your sound unique.

BM: They're all I used for a long time. Since I've had the Emmy Lou gig, I collected a lot of guitars, but they're still my favorite guitars to play. They're mostly all I use on the road. I have to dump some super glue into them after every tour. There's a lot of plastic in them, so it breaks and cracks, you know.

PM: Crazy.

BM: Yeah, crazy glue. Now that I've got a good gig, I bring them to Joe Glaser to work on. When I come in with my plastic guitars, he says "Oh, more boat work." [Julie brings out a solid body version.] Oh, this is a little like the hollow body ones I play. I only used this one live with Steve Earle, because it wouldn't feed back.

PM: Is Steve pretty loud on stage?

BM: I've never played that loud in my life.

PM: Do you have any favorite players, people whose playing moves you?

BM: David Rawlings, Gurf Morlix.

PM: David Rawlings, that guy's getting spookier every day. [Buddy laughs] I just caught the show they did here at the Belcourt Theater, front row center. That new album [Gillian Welch, Time the Revelator, Acony Records] is really amazing.

JM: "My First Lover"...

PM: Oh yeah, I love a frailing banjo. She's become a good banjo player.

BM: We did a version of "All My Tears" for Songcatcher [Vanguard Records] and we had Gillian in to play the banjo on it.

PM: Oh, she had a session on the banjo, I'll bet she dug that.

JM: She did. She said, "This is my second session on the banjo." They're as good as it gets.

PM: Yeah. I thought they were the best duo I'd ever seen, but this new record took a quantum leap, if you ask me. It's not just about lyrics that would fit on a Ralph Stanley record anymore.

BM: And his guitar playing is so right there.

PM: What's that crazy parlor guitar he plays?

BM: It's an Epiphone, I believe, from the 30s or 40s.

PM: I like the way he'll play himself in and out of corners all night. Comes screaming around the curve, and barely keeps it on the road.

JM: That's just what it is. Before him, we'd only ever seen Richard Thompson do that.

PM: And now he'll lean on the bluest, tensest note, first. First of all, let me play the note next to the one you're singing, and drive that home. And Gillian never bats an eye. The further out he gets, the better she seems to like it.

JM: They're so cool together. When they sing, they seem like two halves of the same person.

PM: I'm not blowing smoke, but when I consider you two and those two, I won't listen to any guff about how screwed up Nashville is. "Excuse me, but do you have two couples like this in your town? No, I didn't think so." [Julie laughs] And it's significant that both couples, by sticking to their guns, have become successful. "We do this." It's good for other musicians to see that, to just be themselves. Don't try and write like Jim Lauderdale if you want a George Strait cut, that's stupid. Just write a good song.

Some of your influences are obvious or well known. What are some that people might not be aware of? For instance, in an Australian article on your website, the writer noted that you were influenced by 60s San Francisco rock, which I thought was very humorous.

BM: Oh yeah, I was way into that San Francisco scene.

PM: Jorma Kaukonen, or...?

BM: Jorma, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver.

PM: Oh, you're a Garcia guy.

BM: Oh yeah. And I think the Dead brought a lot of kids to Country music through the back door.

PM: Sure, they were doing Merle Haggard and Buck Owens songs.

BM: An old friend of mine, Steve Gonnier, was a soundman at the Fillmore. He used to let me make soundboard tapes of certain shows.

PM: Buddy Miller a Deadhead, who woulda thunk it.

BM: I thought the Dead were great. Even if you didn't like the sound of their vocals, once you got past that, musically they were really doing something. And Moby Grape, too, I liked them.

PM: Moby Grape! Who was that amazing guitar player, Jerry...

BM: Jerry Miller. They had three great guitar players and Skip Spence.

PM: Any other unpredictable influences?

JM: You might not be able to tell by my, uh, vocal stylings, but I was an Etta James worshipper. How sad is that? [laughs]

PM: So, I didn't know Donald Lindley. Could we have a few words about him?

BM: Donald was a great drummer. I met him in CA, when he was playing drums with Jim Lauderdale. He became a real good friend, and played on all our records.

JM: Played with Lucinda, too.

BM: Right, he played with Lucinda on her first records, through Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. He died recently of cancer, and he's truly missed.

JM: Inside my last record, there's a picture of a drummer with wings, that's Donald. He was the sweetest person, and my favorite drummer.

BM: He was so into the music. Weeks after a session went by, he'd be listening to the tapes and call me up to talk about a part that he really liked, or that maybe should be changed, or something that could be added. Most people are just on to the next session, you know.

PM: Your new drummer, Bryan Owings, he's great, and a really nice person. All your band members are good folks. Rick Plant on bass, Phil Madeira on organ, great bunch of guys.

JM: It blows our mind. You couldn't ask for better people to work with.

BM: It's been fun. Now we're going out a bunch, starting next week. Soon we'll start a New York tour with New Year's Eve at The Bottom Line. We're excited about that.

PM: You meet so few musicians who have stayed together and played together as long as you two have, for 17 years. How have you possibly managed that?

[Julie points a finger upward.]

top

USA Today

By Brian Mansfield

Buddy & Julie Miller () The duet album that alternative-country fans have fantasized about for years doesn't disappoint, as the Millers mix eight originals (mostly just Julie's) with covers of Richard Thompson, Bob Dylan and Utah Phillips. The Millers have always been a team, but never more so than here: Buddy plays Delta-country guitar and Julie adds Appalachian-lonesome harmonies on songs about marriage so hard-won that when they sing "Baby, our love was meant to be" on Holding Up the Sky, you know they've earned it. —
Brian Mansfield

top

The Tennessean

By Peter Cooper

Detour on the way to Hicksville

"It's like a joke, you know? He's so incredible, it's a joke."

Julie Miller looks at her husband, her duet partner, her guitarist, her producer. All the same guy, Buddy Miller, and he's beginning to squirm.

"Because he can do so many things, all by himself, quite magnificently," she adds, before Buddy cuts her off.

"My only goal in anything I do is to make something where I don't cringe if I have to hear it again later," he says, a statement that in others might sound like false modesty but here seems like a heartfelt admission. "I just don't want to cringe."

"Yes," Julie affirms. "That's Buddy's great ambition."

Apparently, Buddy Miller's cringe meter is abnormally sensitive, for his work both with and without Julie has been met with acclaim, not only from critics but also from luminaries such as Emmylou Harris, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Jim Lauderdale and Steve Earle.

Harris, whose 1970s duets with Gram Parsons sparked Julie to investigate the pleasures of country harmony, notes that when the Millers sing together, the combination of voices becomes something altogether different; they achieve, she says, "that wonderful third voice."

That voice is apparent on the Millers' new album, titled Buddy & Julie Miller and touted by Hightone Records as the couple's first true duet record. In fact, much of what has been released as "solo" Buddy or Julie material featured extensive contributions from the other.

It's hard to imagine Julie's Take Me Back or Out in the Rain without Buddy's harmony handiwork, and Buddy's three albums have featured no fewer than 22 songs that Julie either wrote or co-wrote. As a general rule, Julie's efforts have veered toward pop, where Buddy's sounds were rooted in country and Southern soul, but the styles often meshed. And Buddy had a hand in penning only one of the new album's 11 compositions. So, what's the difference between a Julie solo album with plenty of Buddy's assistance and this new "duet" release?

"This one says Buddy & Julie," she laughs.

The new release was in fact conceived to be something of a departure.

"I think this one went from being all Buddy's way to me getting my way more than I thought I would," Julie says. "I thought at first that we were doing just hokey, old country duets."

"I didn't exactly picture it that way," Buddy says. "I thought it was going to be nice country duets."

"Well, I thought it was going to be like 'Last Train to Hicksville,' Julie says.

"This isn't what I thought it would be," Buddy concludes. "But I like it. It's a good alternative to having my way, which would have been a country duets record. But maybe we'll do that next time."

Four of the album's songs, Utah Phillips' Rock Salt and Nails, Bob Dylan's Wallflower and Julie's pair of Holding Up the Sky and Forever Has Come to an End, actually reside in Hicksville, with Little Darlin' situated just outside the town limits (East Bucolic?). And while she jokes about Buddy's love for scratchy old records and hillbilly harmonies, it's clear that Julie has a gift for and an interest in well-rooted country music. As a Texas teen-ager, she hitchhiked to Lone Star honky-tonks in search of the sounds akin to what she heard on the Gram and Emmylou records and on Austin disc jockey Joe Gracey's radio show.

Her part in the Millers' performance of Rock Salt and Nails not only displays lessons learned, it adds something memorable to the genre. On the second verse, as Buddy continues an anguished lead vocal and the progression moves to a minor chord, she pulls and bends harmonies that evoke abject sorrow, as deep and dismal and gnarled as a Stanley Brothers' lament.

"I can't describe technically what they're doing," said Lauderdale, who first met the Millers 20 years ago in New York. "I can hear traces of other influences, but I haven't heard anyone else that sounds like they do. They're really soulmates, and the sound they make together is powerful."

An entire album of Rock Salt and Nails' marrow-deep torment would be notable on the one hand and perhaps unlistenably sad on the other. So it's likely a good thing that Buddy & Julie Miller dwells more often in more pleasant realms. The opening track, Keep Your Distance, by Richard Thompson, finds the couple's harmonies riding above Buddy's chiming guitar, Phil Maderia's Hammond organ, Rick Plant's bass and the late Donald Lindley's propulsive drum track.

Even Rachel, Julie's song about Columbine High School victim Rachel Joy Scott, is more about hope than horror, as the pair harmonizes, "There is a life no one can take."

That song is one of several on the album in which Julie explores overtly spiritual themes. Before her Hightone contract, she recorded as a contemporary Christian artist. That experience was revelatory in some ways, limiting in others.

"It was a precious thing, going around the world and meeting believers," she says.

"I'd sing for 45 minutes and then stay and talk to people for three hours. In that way, it was a really good thing. But, you know, God came to me in a honky-tonk. So it always seemed kind of silly to me to sing all these songs in churches. You're really singing to the choir. And while every other music is categorized by the music part, Christian music is categorized by the lyric. A time or two, that was constricting."

At present, she's free to follow The River's Gonna Run's treatise on heaven ("I wanna live when I die/ And shake my soul loose from time") with You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast's study in lust ("Come on baby, take me to school").

"I finally realized, 'Don't try to think up a song. Go to the feeling place,"' she says, then suggests that many of her songs seem to come to her while vacuuming.

"Want to know how many vacuums we have?" Buddy asks, grinning. "Four. That's where the songs come from. Aspiring songwriters, get a good vacuum cleaner."

Buddy expects to have to do more picking up after himself in the near future. For the past few years, he's spent much of his time on the road, mostly performing with Emmylou Harris or Steve Earle. When in Nashville, he's earned a reputation as a tireless worker, recording his and Julie's albums in addition to producing works by Greg Trooper, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and others. That's an ambitious schedule, especially for someone who claims so little ambition.

"I love what I'm doing, but I think it's to the point now where we're going to take a little time and just work on our music," he says. "Just do that and not take on anything else."

When pressed on whether he truly intends to gear down, Buddy shrugs and sighs, "I don't know." Then Julie suggests that Buddy's planned down time may meet the same fate as his projected aural train ticket to Hicksville.

"That's the plan," she says. "So that's what won't happen."

top

Nashville Scene

By Bill Friskics-Warren

Soul Deep
Buddy & Julie Miller share a uniquely inspired musical and marital partnership

Kitty Wells and Johnnie Wright, June Carter and Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw: The history of country music abounds with couples whose love and lives have, to varying degrees, played out on the public stage. Some have enjoyed long, stable relationships. Others have transcended challenge after challenge and endured. Others crashed and burned only to leave music of untold beauty in their wake, while still others occasion speculation about just how long they'll stick things out.

Alt-country sweethearts Buddy and Julie Miller are hardly household names like the celebrity couples invoked above--underground heroes is more like it, given the Millers' retiring, even reclusive, bent. In fact, if Brooks & Dunn, the Dixie Chicks, and Lee Ann Womack hadn't cut their songs, the two would doubtless have little, if any, truck with Music Row. And were it not for Buddy's ringing, Don Rich-inspired guitar runs and the pair's shimmering, hand-in-glove harmonies, many probably wouldn't even consider the Millers' blues-, rock-, and gospel-dappled twang country to begin with.

Yet as even a cursory listen to their luminous catalog reveals, few couples, country or otherwise, have known the depth of intimacy the Millers convey through their music. Since moving to Nashville from Los Angeles eight years ago, the pair have quietly written and recorded a body of work that, a decade from now, will likely stand with, and very well surpass, that of their forebears Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.

Each of the Millers' albums for the HighTone label--two under Julie's name, three under Buddy's, and a new duo record, all of them fiercely collaborative--is a monument to passion and empathy. More than just music, these records are burnt offerings--not just to the God the Millers love and serve, but to the spark of the divine within all people, to the utter indestructibility of the human spirit. When, on the new Buddy & Julie Miller, the couple testify that their love could hold up the sky when hard rains fall, it's neither narcissistic nor sappy, but prophetic. It's a conviction born of their faith that the love that radiates from each of us has the power to heal and transform the world.

Their voices--hers gauzy, his reedy--modulate in much the same way as partners who anticipate each other's moves on the dance floor, or in bed.

Though acutely spiritual, the Millers are a pop--or at least semi-popular--act, as opposed to a gospel or a contemporary Christian one. The couple's music and message don't just transcend piety and dogma; their records suggest possibilities for human communion that have the potential to speak to people of any faith or worldview.

Take "Rachel," a song from their new album. "There is a life no one can take / There is a chain of love no one can break," the Millers affirm, their braided voices buoyed by the swelling strains of Buddy's harmonium and Phil Madeira's Hammond B-3. These lines, which resonate so much more after this month's terrorist attacks, weren't arrived at lightly. Julie wrote them after reading Rachel's Tears, a book based on the journal of Rachel Scott, a preternaturally kindhearted 17-year-old who was the first of the 13 students shot and killed at Columbine High School in 1999.

"When I read Rachel's story, I just cried from beginning to end," Julie says, sitting next to her witty but ever-laconic husband in the living room of their Victorian Hillsboro-Belmont home. "She was just so kind to the kids who were rejected at her school, so full of compassion. She also knew that something terrible was going to happen, because in her journal she referred to her school as 'these halls of tragedy.' I can't believe I could miss someone so much that I'd never even met."

Julie's link to Rachel Scott is the natural outgrowth of an openness that shapes her response to all the suffering she encounters. "100 Million Little Bombs," a song she wrote with Buddy, rues the fields of uncleared landmines the world over that claim 500 victims each week, many of them children. And she dedicates "Broken Things," the title track of her latest solo album, to the 29 people who were killed and the hundreds who were injured when a bomb went off in the Northern Ireland village of Omagh in 1998.

But it isn't just mass catastrophes that move Julie to such depths of empathy. Her solo albums also include laments for, among others, a sexually abused child ("Dancing Girl"), a mentally ill homeless woman ("All the Pieces of Mary"), and a war orphan ("Maggie"). In other words, Julie's heart goes out to all who are broken or, to invoke the title of another of her songs, come "by way of sorrow." This is to say nothing of her affinity with animals, including her nine cats, all of them strays--and, in her eyes, all God creatures. For a while, she even sheltered a possum.

Undergirding Julie's emotional identification with the hardship of others is the agony she herself has known: everything from an abusive father, to years of shattered self-esteem, to living with fibromyalgia, a condition that afflicts sufferers with chronic, debilitating pain. It's as if, to invoke theologian John Mogabgab, her own wounds have "become portals of vulnerability through which the pain of others can enter [her life], awakening [her] to a more generous sense of our common humanity and discovering in turn refuge, consolation, and healing."

"When I look at the world I see a painful planet, a place full of people who are orphaned in their hearts and souls," she explains. "Which is just how I felt, orphaned, before I came to know God, [who] put this deep concern for people in my heart. I've wanted to bring comfort to hurting people ever since."

Yet Julie is hardly all doom and gloom, as her rather cockeyed rapport with critters, her penchant for kooky hats, and her otherwise often pixilated demeanor attest. Nor does the empathy that suffuses the Millers' records begin and end with her lyrics. It's nearly as evident in the way Buddy cradles and echoes that compassion with his at times brooding, at times wailing guitar lines. Or in the way he'll reel off flurries of notes that lunge forward as if reaching out to someone who's falling or has fallen. Buddy betrays much the same heart when his vocal cries anticipate and embrace Julie's, or when, in a burst of call-and-response, his shouts and moans bounce off hers, giving voice to emotions that words can't possibly convey.

"Buddy's very tenderhearted," Julie says. "He's very tuned in. You wouldn't necessarily know it by looking at him, but when he sings and plays music he's expressing his deepest feelings. If you really want to know Buddy, you have to hear his music."

"That's Just How She Cries," a soulful ballad from the duo's new album, certainly suggests as much. Julie wrote the song, presumably for a friend who was going through her own dark night of the soul, but Buddy sings the lead, transforming it into a study in empathy, an ode to the way Julie harbors the hurt of the world in her heart. "She is talking / But she speaks in code / Like a broken heart replies / Because that's just how she cries," Buddy sighs, caressing each word like a latter-day James Carr. The turnabout could hardly be more breathtaking, particularly with Julie lending her tear-stained harmonies throughout.

The Millers enjoy an unspoken communion typically heard only among kin, or among those who have lived together for years. In their case, that's been since the mid-'70s, when Buddy joined a little-known, Austin-based "hippie band" in which Julie (née Griffin) was singing. Married in 1981, the couple spent much of the '80s in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Julie pursued an all-too-constricting career as a contemporary Christian singer and Buddy worked in the bands of pal Jim Lauderdale and others.

Buddy attributes the uncommon bond he and Julie share to the fact that they grew up together musically. "We know each other so well that we have a kind of telepathy going on," he says. "Whenever we do something together, it becomes something else. It's kind of like a third thing."

The Millers' friends and collaborators--a group that includes the likes of Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Gurf Morlix, and Mark Olson and Victoria Williams--certainly hear this ineffable "third thing" in the couple's music. Harris is most aware of it in their harmonies, which she claims are utterly unique. "They do tricky little things that sound so completely natural," she says. "I'm not sure if they work them out in advance or whether it's something about the way their phrasing comes together."

Indeed, when the Millers sing together, they do much more than make the notes work. Their voices--hers gauzy, his reedy--modulate in much the same way as partners who anticipate each other's moves on the dance floor, or in bed.

Oddly enough--and despite the intensely collaborative nature of their solo projects--it wasn't until this past summer that the Millers, now both in their 40s, found time to make an album that explicitly manifested that elusive "third thing" of which Buddy speaks. For starters, one or the other always seemed to have a solo album to finish. And, as a sideman, Buddy is never without a rash of studio and road gigs lined up. Besides playing guitar in Harris' Spyboy, he's toured with Steve Earle's band, played on sessions for Lucinda Williams and Allison Moorer, and produced records by the likes of Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Vigilantes of Love. The last of these were done at Dogtown, the studio Buddy built in his and Julie's home. Until recently, there just wasn't time to record the duo album the couple had been talking about making for the last few years.

As it turned out, Buddy and Julie Miller wasn't what either of them imagined it would be. "We both meant to make a real country record; I mean a real country record," Buddy admits. "And it started out that way. We were doing almost nothing but waltzes. In fact, we said, 'Maybe we should just call it Buddy and Julie Sing Waltzes.' But then we kind of veered left. I'd been gone most of the year touring with Emmy, and Julie had all these great song pieces started."

"The one who writes the songs gets to have their way," she cuts in, erupting in peals of laughter. "We had a couple songs that we'd been doing live that were good duets," she adds, referring to Bob Dylan's "Wallflower" and Utah Phillips' "Rock Salt and Nails," the latter best known from Steve Young's riveting 1969 recording.

"We really would have liked to have had the time to go, 'OK, let's write all these country duets and do this more country thing,' " she continues. "But we were kind of pressed for time, and I already had this overflow of stuff, so we just said, 'Maybe this is what it is.' "

What that is is a record very reminiscent of the couple's intimate and incendiary live shows (minus Julie's rabbit-chasing between-song banter). There's the lovelorn "Forever Has Come to an End," a breathtaking, Carter Family-inspired ballad sung as a trio with Harris. And there's "Dirty Water," a dyspeptic swamp blues in which Julie's eerie moaning conjures the ghost of Skip James while Buddy hacks off fat, dirty guitar figures ˆ la Pop Staples, someone he often used to go hear at the Fillmore as a teenager while growing up in New York.

The album also includes a cover of Richard Thompson's "Keep Your Distance," just the sort of surging--and wrenching--anthem that lends itself to the pair's aching harmonies and Buddy's flair for channeling U2's The Edge on guitar. And there are studio versions of the aforementioned "Wallflower" and "Rock Salt and Nails." Both border on definitive, notably the former, in which the Millers transform Dylan's woozy plaint into a plea of existential urgency--that of two lost souls starved for sexual and spiritual liberation.

This commingling of carnal and godly impulses is evident elsewhere on the album. "It's like a kiss of a lover," Buddy sings on "The River's Gonna Run," professing his desire to "live when I die and shake my soul loose from time"--that is, to know the joys of salvation. Yet that's tame compared to "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast," on which Julie could pass for a descendant of Teresa of Avila, the sainted 16th-century mystic who rankled her Carmelite sisters with graphic details of her "love affair" with God.

"You make me think I could miss you / You make me think I should kiss you / You make me want your affection / We need to make a connection," Julie burns, her yearning to be closer to God sounding positively like a come-on. The music only underscores this eroticism, especially Buddy's bluesy guitar barbs, spurts salacious enough to make Ike Turner blush.

Of course, from St. Teresa to Prince, there's a longstanding tradition of using sexual imagery--that which conveys some of the most intimate communion two people can share--to express the heart's longing for God. Nevertheless, it was hardly the kind of thing Julie envisioned herself going on about while growing up Baptist in rural Texas.

"When I first heard about [Teresa of Avila] years ago, I thought, 'Now, that's weird,' " she admits. "Back then I couldn't even imagine thinking something like that. But more and more it made sense to me. The Bible says that God wants desperately to be with us. Why shouldn't we hunger for God much as we do for our lovers--even more?"

Other songs on the Millers' new album concern themselves with more earthly relationships, many of them stormy, even tragic. It's likely to strike some as ironic that two people who seem to be so happy together sing as convincingly about bad love ("Rock Salt and Nails"), sad love ("Forever"), even mad love ("Little Darlin' ") as the Millers do.

"We've lived long enough to have gone through some of those things we're singing about," Julie explains, alluding to, among other things, the couple's struggles before they were married. "We may not have been going through them at the time we recorded these songs, but [those experiences] are still in our hearts.

"I also think, a lot of times, singing those kinds of songs can be cathartic," she continues. "When I was growing up, my mother used to play Hank Williams and Ray Charles singing the most incredibly heartrending songs. Then later I got into Ralph Stanley, Muddy Waters, and people like that. There's a depth of emotion in their music, much of it sad, some of it angry, that speaks to a place deep inside us all."

Depth of emotion. When talking about the music--and lives--of Buddy and Julie Miller, the conversation invariably circles back around to deep emotion, and perhaps nothing in the couple's incandescent catalog evinces more feeling than "My Love Will Follow You." A beacon of seemingly boundless steadfastness and desire, the song, yet another they wrote together, stands as the high point of Buddy's first solo album, Your Love and Other Lies.

"If you should go so far / That you cannot get back / You may not remember / But my heart will not lose track," he vows as heaving piano and steel guitar transport him from the record's penultimate chorus to the bridge. Musically and emotionally, the passage is so expansive, you'd swear it could span the chasm that separates not just the two lovers in the song, but the one between heaven and earth as well. Indeed, it could be giving voice to the heart of a God who suffers with and is very much present in the world, even amid unspeakable loss.

It's precisely this multivalence, these layers of meaning so rich in passion and humanity, that sets the Millers' music apart from that of so many of their peers--and that gives their performances such relevance and power. Many of the couple's songs witness to much more than just a bond between two individuals, but to a larger force that binds all people together, a force that makes empathy and healing possible in the first place. Rather than merely turning in upon itself, the love the Millers sing about so ardently extends outward and upward and ultimately might be able, as they claim, to hold up the sky.

"It doesn't necessarily make the pain go away, but it means we're not alone, and that, in itself, can bring about some healing," Julie maintains. "It's like God says, 'When you go through the fire and you go through the water, I will be with you.'

"I just can't imagine how anybody could stand going through the fire and the water by themselves."

top