Pondering the state of America nowadays feels like an attack from a face-hugging news alien, so when someone as smart and talented as John R. Miller comes along to sing about it with empathy and intelligence, the desolation goes down a little more easily, with dashes of humor and hope. And, in the case of The Great Unknowing, the new album from the Nashville-based songwriter, an energizing dose of rock and roll.
This big 18-song collection is Miller’s most ambitious and panoramic album so far, one that sees the country from behind the wheel and on the road, where he’s spent the bulk of the past 20 years. It’s grown darker out there, Miller says in Episode 361 of The String.
“You can see it in people's faces all over the country, you know,” he says. “There's a sort of, I don't know, lostness that seems to betray people's general politeness or lack thereof, you know? It's just something that kind of crept in.”
I ask if the album’s title, drawn from a song of turnpike dystopia called “Tollbooth,” is at least partly about the nation’s degraded civic discourse, and he says absolutely. “That's stuff that I think about a whole, whole lot, like the will to ignorance as sort of a stance,” he says, “It did seem thematically appropriate to me, the attack on written history and perspective and language and awakened individuals, for maybe lack of a better way to explain it in short terms. You know, critical thinking.”
There’s even more to ponder on Miller’s third album from Rounder Records, which was released on physical LP and CD formats on June 5 with streaming planned for July 17. Including: uncertainty, loneliness, addiction and recovery. Yet somehow the side-eye tone and the spirited music - played with an ace crew of studio cats from Tulsa at the renovated Church studio that Leon Russell built - keep this intense material highly listenable.
It’s a trick Miller’s learned to pull off by way of his youth basking in a mix of punk and old-time music. He was born in DC and grew up in the panhandle of West Virginia, immersed in DIY culture. He toured with string bands called The Fox Hunt and Prison Book Club before inhabiting the role of singer-songwriter.
“I first started writing songs when I was a teenager trying to start bands and stuff, since I learned the first power chord on the guitar,” Miller says. “When a particular feel or style or melody line or something in music really moves me, it always gives me a little more juice, you know? It's like, oh, right, that's how music works. I like this, I can do that!”
We talk about John Prine as a major catalyst and benchmark in his life as an artist. He says a particular DVD of Prine playing live opened up new worlds to him and changed how he thought about what music could do. “If you were to really boil it down, the main theme of his entire artistic output is empathy,” he says. “I gleaned so much from him, in like different ways of thinking about other people than maybe just jumping to conclusions based on, you know, your prior biases or things like that. There were things in those songs that completely changed the way that I felt about people. It made me less cynical.”
This explains why I open this episode with a discourse on Prine himself and his alchemist’s ability to turn flaws and struggles into wisdom and humor. Miller reminds me of Prine and his work holds up well by comparison. He aspires to write songs that make people just do better, for themselves and others. But he’s clear that Prine’s work sets the bar: “It's a crash course in how to think like a human and be kind.”
Watch John R. Miller perform "Don't Bet On Me" in the studio where he recorded it for his new album The Great Unknowing.
