MCD PRESENTS- JOHN R MILLER + JP HARRIS

MCD PRESENTS- JOHN R MILLER + JP HARRIS 

March 5th, 2023 

Tickets and all info www.thegrandsocial.ie 

John R Miller is a true hyphenate artist: singer-songwriter-picker. Every songon his thrilling upcoming debut solo album,Depreciated, is lush with intricatewordplay and haunting imagery, as well as being backed by a band that is onfire.One of his biggest long-time fans is roots music favorite Tyler Childers,who says he’s “a well-travelled wordsmith mapping out the world he’s seen,three chords at a time.” Miller is somehow able to transport us to a shadowyhonkytonk and get existential all in the same line with his tightly writtencompositions. Miller’s own guitar-playing is on fine display here along withvocals that evoke the white-waters of the Potomac River rumbling below thehigh ridges of his native Shenandoah Valley.Miller grew up in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia near the PotomacRiver.“There are three or four little towns I know well that make up theregion,” hesays, name-checking places like Martinsburg, Shepherdstown,Hedgesville, and Keyes Gap.“It’s a haunted place.In some ways it’s frozenin time. So much old stuff has lingered there, and its history is still verypresent.” As much as Miller loves wherehe’s from, he’s always had acomplicated relationship with home and never could figure out what to do withhimself there. “I just wanted to make music, and there’s no real infrastructurefor that there.We had to travel to play regularly and as teenagers,most ofour gigs were spent playing in old church halls or Ruritan Clubs.”He wasraised “kinda sorta Catholic” and although he gave up on that as a teenager,he says “it follows me everywhere, still.”His family was not musical—his father worked odd jobs and was a paramedicbefore Miller was born, while his mother was a nurse—but he was drawn tomusic at an early age, which was essential to him since he says school was“an exercise in patience” for him. “Music was the first thing to turn my brainon. I’d sit by the stereo for hours with a blank audio cassette waiting to recordsongs I liked,” he says. “I was into a lot of whatever was on the radio until Iwas in middle school and started finding out about punk music, which is what Igravitated toward andtried to play through high school.” Not long after a shortand aimless attempt at college, I was introduced to old time and traditionalfiddle music, particularly around West Virginia, and my whole musical worldstarted to open up.” Around the same time he discovered John Prine and saysthe music of Steve Earle sent him “down a rabbit hole”. From there he foundthe 1970s Texas gods like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker,Billy Joe Shaver, and Blaze Foley, the swamp pop of Bobby Charles, and theTulsa Sound of J.J. Cale, who is probably his biggest influence.As much as the music buoyed him, it also took its toll. “I always prioritizedbeing a touring musician above everything, and my attempts at relationships

1. suffered for it,” he says.Millerwas also often fighting depression andwatching many of his friends “go off the rails on occasion.”He says that for along period he did a lot of self-medicating. “I used to go about it by drinkingvodka from morning to night for months on end,” he says.“I shouldn’t havemade it this far. I’m lucky, I think.”Ultimately, the music won outandDepreciatedis the hard-won result of years of self-education provided bylife experiences that included arrests, a drunken knife-throwing incident,relationshipsboth lost and long-term, and learning from the best of the singer-songwriters by listening.