Boston Globe
Gospel according to Buddy Miller
When your songs are as good as his, there's no need to put a label on them
By Jonathan Perry, Globe Correspondent | February 18, 2005
Nashville singer-songwriter Buddy Miller isn't one for making a big fuss over his music, no matter how good it is.
Take, for instance, his latest Grammy-nominated album, "Universal United House of Prayer," which offers further proof of why Miller is one of the most respected musicians working in a town where there are more song stylists per square mile than anywhere else on the planet.
Despite the presence of songs such as the Louvin Brothers' country-spiritual standard "There's a Higher Power" and Bob Dylan's Cold War-era protest anthem "With God on Our Side" -- not to mention the disc's title -- Miller doesn't consider his new disc a gospel record, or a political statement.
Big, bold-lettered categories like those are simply not the modest man's style -- too cut and dried, too presumptuous, too egocentric. Miller prefers to think of the work as merely the creative outcome of what he says has been "a real tough last couple of years" for him and for his wife and collaborator, singer-songwriter Julie Miller.
"My wife's brother passed away in a rather sudden way -- he was struck by lightning in the same spot where he had a crippling dirt-bike accident on their property in Texas when he was a teenager," Miller said over the phone from his Nashville home.
"Some 20 years later, the day before his birthday on Sept. 11, two years ago. In the same spot." Miller slowly repeated the words, mulling the circumstances as though he still could not believe them.
As if this personal tragedy weren't enough for the Millers, events on the world stage left the 51-year-old guitarist feeling frustrated, helpless, and, in his own quiet way, angry. "With the [Iraqi] war going on and the feeling of God [becoming] the property of some political party, I was starting to get a feeling that really bothered me," Miller said. "I guess those things running side by side influenced the record."
He conceded that "House of Prayer" is a reaction and response to what he believes is the Bush administration's invocation of religious tenets and symbols for its own ends. "I'm a person of faith, and I think there are a lot of people who are [religious] also who don't subscribe to what's going on."
Miller's spellbinding "Is That You?" (co-written with Julie) takes a far more humble tack, seeking knowledge and truth from a mysterious, all-knowing deity that he knows is under no obligation to answer him back. What's more, Miller sounds like a man who doesn't really expect an answer. That tune dovetails into "Returning," a bluesy shuffle soaked in Phil Madeira's pulsing Hammond B3 organ and saturated with Miller's typically trenchant electric guitar and a whole lot of soul.
But surely the disc's showcase is Dylan's nine-minute-plus epic "With God on Our Side" -- a song written in 1963 that sounds as relevant and topical today as it did four decades ago. Ironic, then, that the track almost didn't make it onto the album.
"Since the war started, I was doing that song every night onstage and couldn't get it out of my head," said Miller, whose own song catalog has been covered by the Dixie Chicks, Lee Ann Womack, and Brooks & Dunn.
"I felt like I needed to record it, but I almost left it off the record," Miller said. "I thought, 'Is this hitting people over the head too much?' But then I felt that it had to be on there -- nothing says it like that song."
A core strength of the album lies in the powerful vocal accompaniment of gospel singers Regina and Ann McCrary, daughters of the Rev. Sam McCrary, who founded the legendary Fairfield Four gospel group. The McCrary sisters' soulful tones not only lend dignity and depth to the disc's themes but smudge boundaries among country, folk, blues, and gospel.
Singer-guitarist Michael Tarbox, who leads the Boston folk-blues outfit the Tarbox Ramblers, says what makes Miller special is his musical sincerity and his stylistic reach.
"The thing about Buddy is that the guy has such integrity and is so earnest," says Tarbox, whose band has opened for Miller on some tour dates. "The guy just knows what makes a song tick, how to put it across, and how to keep it real. And his wife, Julie, is the same way."
Although Miller's creative partnership with his wife (Julie also records solo albums) has been a fruitful one -- the pair received a 2001 Grammy nomination for best contemporary folk album for their "Buddy and Julie Miller" disc -- he confesses that living with his songwriting partner can make for "a tension convention around here. . . . But I think she's an incredible writer."
Woven into the fabric of Miller's music is a lifetime of experiences forged from the years he's spent alongside icons such as Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle.
"I still play with Emmylou, and it's such an amazing thing for me every night," he says. "I'm such a fan, and she's such a friend. She's so hungry to hear music, and it's good to be around someone who's always open and looking. Besides, just to get that voice in my monitor . . . You learn how to create a frame and how to play sparsely so the song and that voice can come through."
Miller's less-is-more musicianship and his smart, sturdy songs have made him a hot commodity in Nashville. "Getting the songs recorded by other artists has been a wonderful thing in helping us to live, but we don't make records with that in mind," he says. "We just make our little records in our house, and if something happens with them, that's great. There's a lot of great music here, but I don't know most of the stuff on the radio. I just don't listen to it. We stay in our own little world, and things are working out."
Buddy Miller and his band play the Paradise on Sunday. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Ollabelle opens. Tickets $15. Call 617-931-2000 or visit www.teapartyconcerts.com.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Village Voice
by Robert Christgau
It Takes a Worried Man
The political becomes the personal for Christian alt-country guitar hero Buddy Miller
September 21st, 2004 12:55 PM
His new album is more a personal thing.
Country guitar hero Buddy Miller said a funny thing when I asked him about Universal United House of Prayer. Solo or with his wife Julie, Miller is known for songs of conjugal love steeped in the kind of bittersweet obsessiveness that modern Nashville has stuck in the same museum as honky-tonk. But about his new album he's reflected, "I like the way those Marvin Gaye and Staples Singers records were sort of gospel records and sort of about the state of the world." The contrast is pretty clear—human emotion versus big ideas. Yet explaining the same album to me, he mused, "It's a more personal thing."
One motivation was personal by any reckoning: the death a year ago of his brother-in-law, Jeff Griffin, who was—how can this be comprehended?—struck by lightning in the very spot where he'd had a crippling motorcycle accident as a teenager. But that's not the only reason Miller finally felt compelled to make music out of the Christianity Julie induced her Jewish boyfriend to embrace in the early '80s. The other was "the way Jesus has been hijacked by the Bush administration." I wondered whether he identified with any of four descriptives Christians favor: devout, evangelical, born again, saved. "I wouldn't have a problem with them," he responded, "except in the way they're taken by the rest of the world."
Beyond African Americans, who fall outside the parameters of this discussion, many believing Christians produce quality pop of discernible religious dimension. U2 are Christians (or were—they hide it under a bushel these days); so too are not just P.O.D. and Chevelle but, Lord have mercy, Creed, and also, let us be thankful, two likable enough recent big-rock breakthroughs, Evanescence and Switchfoot. In Nashville, Christianity is a given, though less so than many country fans wish or believe (cf. Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove in Washington). Note, however, that nonpareil vocalist Randy Travis now emphasizes sacred music. In fact, although alt-country is apostate by definition, it's surprising it hasn't generated more progressive Christians. But beyond sainted kook Victoria Williams, righteous egomaniac Michelle Shocked, and maybe new-folk madonna Mindy Smith, the Millers seem to be it.
Although Julie cut straight Christian albums for Myrrh in the '90s, Buddy doesn't truck with the conventions of "CCM," as contemporary Christian music is fondly called. Believe him when he claims he has no idea who Universal United House of Prayer is for. His own fans, sure, and although the longtime Emmylou Harris sideman earns his keep as a guitarist-producer-songwriter, there are enough of those—in his world, he's an icon. But this album won't get him invited to the Cornerstone Festival, one of several gatherings of the CCM faithful that ordinary rock fans have never heard of. In this he is unlike the guy who wrote the opener—the late Mark Heard, hit with the first of two 1992 heart attacks onstage at Cornerstone. Miller was close to Heard. On a 1994 tribute album, he and Julie did their friend's anti-capitalist "Orphans of God."
"I don't want to say he was rejected by that whole CCM scene, but he wasn't saying the things they wanted to hear," Miller told me. Case in point: that opener, the most powerful track on a record overshadowed by a funereal, nine-minute remake of Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side." Heard's "Worry Too Much" is set up with a guitar riff, a splash of tambourine, a martial drumbeat, and the mournful wail of Regina or Ann McCrary, daughters of Fairfield Four founder Sam McCrary, present throughout to remind us that not all Christian music is white. In a drawl so forthright it could cut a block of ice, Miller begins: "It's the demolition derby/It's the sport of the hunt/Proud tribe in full war dance"—now here's the killer—"It's the slow smile that the bully gives the runt." Sound like anyone you see smirking on television? Inspired by Iraq I, it applies equally to Iraq II, and anyone who's studied W.'s tax policies will be chilled by how it ends: "It's the children of my children/It's the lambs born in innocence/It's wondering if the good I know/Will last to be seen by the eyes of the little ones."
Note that this song is no less doctrinal than track two, the Louvin Brothers' comparatively cheerful "There's a Higher Power," which assures believers they "need not fear the works of men." The Millers aren't always so discreet. Their love songs get pretty profane, as on the sexy "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast," which leads their canny HighTone best-of Love Snuck Up: "You're so angelic, I'm psychedelic/With emotion and I can't come down." And between "Did Judas Iscariot have God on his side?" and "If God's on our side, he'll stop the next war," Miller's big number risks blasphemy. That's the idea—to voice a wide range of Christian responses to crises personal and/or political. Even the Victoria Williams-co-written "This Old World," a loose-limbed shuffle whose refrain insists "You can't worship money and God," preaches reconciliation rather than struggle: "Pray, pray/Time to love every man, woman, and child/Pray, pray/Just forgive and let live for a little while."
But surrounding "This Old World" are six songs about the lightning factor—songs of dread rectified by faith. Some of these could console anyone, like the redemptive "Returning," or "Wide River to Cross" with its Emmylou-tempered "I'm only halfway home"; others are harsher, warning sinners "Don't Wait," or "Fall on the Rock" ("Before the rock falls on you"). Either way, however, their limits are manifest. It's bigotry to believe all Christians are the same, myopia to deny that faith in something bigger underlies all humane politics. But there's a difference between Christians and secular humanists—secular humanists live convinced that halfway home is halfway to oblivion. Miller is grounded enough to know that Christians are supposed to earn God's eternity by doing good here, and worldly enough to understand that voting for justice should be what voting your values means. But the Louvin Brothers, for instance, weren't. Me, I fear the works of some men plenty. The most dangerous is a born-again Christian, believe it. And I'll never forgive him.
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Chicago Sun Times
Categorizing Buddy Miller's music has always been a daunting task. The singer-songwriter melds country, soul, blues, folk and rock into an Americana gumbo, and his latest album is his most difficult to pigeonhole. Perhaps the term "underground gospel" will suffice.
Miller's sixth release is filled with direct, unmistakable, Christian-themed lyrics such as "You can't worship money and God."
Due to its organic production, however, this album does not sound like contemporary Christian discs. Although soulful singers Regina and Ann McCrary appear on almost all the tracks, this gem rocks harder than most gospel discs.
The songwriter and his wife, Julie Miller (who has recorded her own Christian albums), co-wrote four tracks here. The best of these is a prayer set to music titled "Is That You," which shows the influence of the Staple Singers and of traditional numbers such as "John the Revelator."
On the raucous "Don't Wait," Miller's lead vocal is augmented by a nearly indecipherable reading from Psalm 27 by drummer Brady Blade.
With a harrowing and exemplary nine-minute cover of Bob Dylan's anti-war anthem "With God on Our Side," Miller reminds his audience that social protests and gospel messages are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Bobby Reed
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SF Gate
Buddy Miller's new album, Universal United House of Prayer, was a child of that same general context, but it's indelibly stamped with Miller's musical persona as a creative guitarist and producer (mostly notably working with Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle) and someone whose faith has been severely challenged of late.
"Things started spiraling downward in the world and got me thinking about that," Miller said in a recent phone call from the Nashville home he shares with his wife and musical partner, Julie. "Then, a year ago, Julie's brother died, struck by lightning in the exact same spot where, 20-some years earlier, he was in a dirtbike accident that left him in a coma for a couple months and permanently messed him up with a really bad limp and without the use of one of his arms. It's been a tough year. I knew that there were some dots to connect, and it made me think about the kind of record I wanted to make."
Joined on most tracks by gospel singers Regina and Ann McCrary (daughters of Sam McCrary, a founder of the renowned gospel quartet the Fairfield Four), Miller has made a deeply spiritual album that has little to do with organized religion and everything to do with saving one's own soul in this lifetime -- "Now everything you longed to see, you hold in your own hands" ("Fire and Water").
"I think the things going on in the world are weighing on everybody," Miller said. "So, I didn't mind taking a break from the dark country songs for a record that could go a little someplace else." Co-writing songs with Julie Miller, Jim Lauderdale and Victoria Williams, Miller also covers Mark Heard's "Worry Too Much," the Louvin Brothers' "There's a Higher Power" and Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side," an indictment of politicians and governments that co-opt the Almighty to justify their wars. "I've been doing the Dylan song live since the war started," said Miller. "I just couldn't get it out of my head."
Miller has performed at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass every year since financier Warren Hellman decided to bankroll the exemplary free event in Golden Gate Park, but always with Emmylou Harris. This will be the first time headlining (the Arrow Stage on Saturday) with his wife as Buddy and Julie Miller. It feels like home to a musician who thought he'd never move to Nashville, because he "associated it with a lot of bad music, which it still is. But we just have our own little world" -- one that doesn't have room for dogma of any sort.
"I'm not that into most bluegrass music, or most music in general," Miller confessed. "A lot of it is just playing that goes nowhere for me. I don't like flashy guitar players; it just bores me to death. But when I hear a voice with some soul -- that's what Ralph Stanley or Hazel Dickens have -- that's what grabs me. It's the song and the singing."
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Memphis Flyer
Music Inspired
Country guitarist Buddy Miller adds his voice to the protest
Andria Lisle | 10/8/2004
During the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, we had entertainers such as Bob Dylan, the Staple Singers, and Marvin Gaye to give voice to the Democratic opposition. These days, we have the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., and Eddie Vedder singing out against President Bush and the war in Iraq.
Now, here comes country guitarist Buddy Miller to add his voice to the protest.
The soft-spoken Miller typically sings about broken hearts and busted romances, which makes his recent outburst -- captured on his new album, Universal United House of Prayer -- all the more surprising. His CD is the most graceful, faith-driven anti-war statement of 2004.
"There are things going on in the world -- and around my little world -- that just started the wheels churning," Miller says. "With everything that's going on, it's become harder to make another depressing, dark album. I thought, Let's take a left turn for a minute. Let's make something different."
Miller recruited gospel singers Regina and Ann McCrary, the daughters of Rev. Sam McCrary, the founder of the Fairfield Four, to sing back-up. He dusted off the Louvin Brothers' "There's a Higher Power" and photographed a little Nashville chapel, called the Universal United House of Prayer. After his contract with the Hightone label expired, he signed a new deal with New West Records and began work on the album.
The seed of this project came from a nine-minute cover of Dylan's "With God on Our Side," which Miller began playing in concert a few years ago. "When the war broke out, I couldn't get that song out of my head," he explains. "The melody is so incredible, and the words don't seem 40 years old. I'd been playing it live for a while, and I wanted to write a couple more [songs] like it."
Songwriter friends Jim Lauderdale and Victoria Williams co-wrote a few tunes, while wife Julie helped pen several others. Buddy plugged in his Wandre electric guitar (his favorite instrument, an Italian obscurity that's nearly as old as he is), turned up the amp, and cut the album -- his sixth -- in his home studio. His model included seminal tracks such as Gaye's "What's Goin' On" and the Staple Singers' "Freedom Highway," faith-based message songs that have since become American classics. For Universal United House of Prayer, he's also tapped into Pops Staples' style of guitar playing, employing a distinctively haunting reverb technique called tremolo.
"The tremolo on my rig never goes off. It's been that way for years," Miller says, laughing at the comparison to Staples. "When you're doing songs like these, it just fits in." But, he hastens to add, "I certainly don't sing like Pops Staples. I'm just such a fan. I put fiddle on all these songs so it didn't seem like I was trying to jump into that picture. And, with the McCrary sisters, the record took on its own direction.
"I wanted to keep it moving between genres," he continues. "When I was growing up, there was always that cross-pollination going on with the radio. You'd hear a country song, followed by the Beatles, followed by Percy Sledge.
"I listened to everything," Miller says. "I was very curious. I'd go to record stores and see who wrote the songs. I'd always be tracing things back," he says of his musical education, which began when he was a youth in Ohio.
"Even when I was a kid, I knew that I'd eventually be doing this," he adds, referring to his illustrious career as a Nashville musician and songwriter. "I just didn't know I'd be doing it at this point in my life and with the people I'd be doing it with, like Emmylou and Trisha Yearwood."
Miller's been playing with Emmylou Harris for the better part of the last decade, and it's her voice you'll hear on the plaintive "Wide River To Cross," the fifth track on Universal United House of Prayer. "I cannot look back now/I've come too far to turn around/And there's still a race ahead I must run," Miller sings on the song's intro, before Harris joins in for the timeless lyrics that form the chorus. "I'm only halfway home/I've got to journey on/To where I'll find the things I have lost," the duo croon, their voices perfectly matched. "I've come a long, long road/Still I got miles to go/I've got a wide, wide river to cross."
"Wide River To Cross," "Shelter Me," and "Is That You," all co-written with wife Julie, are courageous, sparingly-made statements that tap into Miller's personal beliefs without ever sounding heavy-handed or sanctimonious. With the November elections looming, these songs resonate like a breath of fresh air in a clammy Republican National Convention. They speak of growth and change and hope for a decent future. They express optimism for a humanity we should all believe in.
"I think this is my best record," Miller says. "I don't think this is just a gospel record or just a political record," he says. "It concerns themes that seem to follow us everywhere we go."
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CMT
NASHVILLE SKYLINE: The Spirituality of Buddy Miller
Steve Earle Calls Him "The Greatest Country Singer Alive"
By: Chet Flippo
Buddy Miller has occupied a special place in the country music world for several years. As the heir to such stellar pickers as Gram Parsons, Rodney Crowell, Ricky Skaggs, Herb Pedersen and Jon Randall, he's been Emmylou Harris' right hand man and lead guitarist for several tours and albums.
With his wife Julie and on his own, he's written a number of staggeringly good songs and recorded a handful of influential and lasting CDs -- cut for the most part in his living room. And he's an acclaimed producer, engineer and record masterer -- not to mention being one of the best guitar players anywhere. He's also emerged as a quiet spiritual force and influence in the Nashville community and within the music community at large. And Steve Earle recently told CMT.com, "I think Buddy's the greatest country singer alive. I really do believe that." Not too shabby a compliment, that.
Now Miller has recorded a not-so-quiet little gem of a country gospel album, Universal United House of Prayer (New West). Miller's previous recorded work touches frequently on matters of spirituality, especially in such moving songs as "Sometimes I Cry" on Cruel Moon, "100 Million Little Bombs" from Poison Love and "That's Just How She Cries" on Buddy & Julie Miller.
Miller is working his own corner of country music, an Americana-tinged country, with healthy dustings of blues, rock, both black and white gospel music and a vivid sense of musical history.
This is his first full-blown gospel foray. All but three of the 11 songs are Buddy-Julie Miller compositions, singly and jointly or with Jim Lauderdale and Victoria Williams. With backing vocals throughout the album from Fairfield Four founder Sam McCrary's daughters Regina and Ann McCrary, and occasionally by Harris, Lauderdale and Julie, Miller fully plumbs the depths of faith and loss, of war and peace, of good and evil. The album opens full-bore with Miller raging through "Worry Too Much" by Mark Heard, a singer-songwriter who died in 1992. It begins with what seems to be an observation on current events: It's the demolition derby/It's the sport of the hunt/Proud tribe in full war dance/It's the slow smile the bully gives the runt. It goes on to lament the legacy of war: It's the quick-step march of history/The vanity of nations/It's the way there'll be no muffled drums/To mark the passage of my generation.
Ira and Charlie Louvin's "There's a Higher Power" also address man's folly and God's redemption: Go tell them people lost in sin/There's a higher power/They need not fear the works of men/There's a higher power.
Of the original Miller compositions here, "Shelter Me" is most moving: The earth can shake, the sky come down/The mountains all fall to the ground/But I will fear none of these things/Shelter me Lord underneath your wings.
But the raging volcano on the album is a nine-minute-plus version of Bob Dylan's "With God on Our Side." Miller sings it with a weariness born out of sorrow, but the song escalates in tempo and volume until his guitar is raging mad and driving his vocals, and the words fairly leap out of the speakers and grab you by the throat. Dylan wrote it in 1963 when the Vietnamese war was escalating into the quagmire it became, but it pretty much applies to any wars in progress. So now as I'm leavin' I'm weary as hell/The confusion I'm feelin' ain't no tongue can tell/The words fill my head and fall to the floor/If God's on our side he'll stop the next war. The words alone cannot conjure up the majesty and the fury in Miller's delivery.
If you don't know the song, it's a short history of America's wars, told by a populist Everyman, and the central notion is the concept that America has always had God on its side -- no matter what the conflict. The Puritans believed that if America followed God, the nation would be, in John Winthrop's words, a "shining city set upon a hill for all the world to see." Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, set the agenda in his 1630 sermon for the "City on a Hill" allegory that America adopted as a nation blessed by God and divinely ordained to succeed and grow. But Winthrop also warned, "The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world: We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us, till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going."
Miller himself returns to war in "This Old World" (composed with his wife): Shake my head and wonder how much more/The bells are tolling on the streets of the world/What time is it, help me understand/Why is war in the heart of man. The album concludes with a hidden track, a short a cappella version by Julie Miller of "The Royal Telephone," the old gospel song: Telephone to glory, O what joy divine/I can feel the current moving on the line/Built by God the Father for His blessed own/When you get in trouble call Jesus on the royal telephone.
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USA Today
Buddy Miller, Universal United House of Prayer ( * * * 1/2)
Singing overtly religious music, roots-country auteur Miller sounds even more like Pops Staples than usual, with Regina and Ann McCrary (daughters of the late Rev. Sam McCrary of the Fairfield Four) assuming the roles of Mavis and Cleo Staples. Whether singing originals or covering the Louvin Brothers, Mark Heard or Bob Dylan (with a perfectly timed, epic cover of With God on Our Side), Miller keeps heaven on his mind without ever losing sight of the state of the world around him. - Mansfield
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Entertainment Weekly
If anyone else covered "With God on Our Side" for an album of spirituals, you'd figure he missed the memo delineating Dylan's gospel and protest periods. But Miller means to strike a cautionary note about misguided wartime zeal before resuming a mostly original set that otherwise does run closer to Slow Train¹s best tracks (and not just because Dylan¹s ³Christian years² vocalist Regina McCrary is featured here). However in love with Jesus these songs are, this alt-country hero¹s nervous, pit-of-the-stomach blues guitar solos unmistakably root them in dangerous times. A-
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Style Weekly
This project gets off to a ho-hum start, but by its finish, Nashville independent Buddy Miller shows once again what an important force he is in today¹s left-of-corporate musical scene. True to the title, the 11 songs he picked for this project reflect a spiritual search, and they speak to the sadness, vanity and misdirection so prevalent in today's political world.
Miller, a well-known singer, songwriter and producer, had a hand in writing seven of the 11 tunes. He tosses a Louvin Brothers song and a Bob Dylan classic into the mix to keep things interesting, and it's with Dylan's "With God On Our Side" that this recording's intent becomes crystal clear. The tune takes to task bland notions of right versus wrong that are now so misunderstood.
Miller teams with Emmylou Harris for the sweet and simple "Wide River to Cross," and later kicks into rockabilly mode for the stirring pleas of "Don't Wait." Except for the occasional choral background, he refuses to use a big sound, and the guitars and vocals are taut and understated. Yet this is a rough but convincing package of tunes that convey real urgency and passion ‹ a much-needed plea for rationality that¹s perfect in a time of utter chaos. **** Ames Arnold
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