- Scott Miller and the Commonwealth
- "Thus Always To Tyrants"
Sugar Hill Records SUGCD-1066
- By William Michael Smith
 Left my home
in the valley,
Put the mountains to my back
There's nothing wrong with where I come from
Sometimes it's meant to be just that
On his first record for the Sugar Hill label, Scott Miller
comes from several places. Although he is a longtime resident
of Knoxville, Tennessee, Miller hails from the Shenandoah Valley
in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where the state motto is Thus
Always to Tyrants (Sic Semper Tyrannis). Not only are these
words the state motto, they are also the words Virginian John
Wilkes Boothe spoke immediately after he assassinated President
Lincoln. So, if you were wondering about the title of the album
and why there is no direct reference to it in the music, wonder
no more. Miller is a Virginian and proud of it. End of story.
Secondly, Scott Miller comes from the V-Roys, the first band
signed to Steve Earle and Jack Emerson's E-Squared label about
five years back. When Earle signed them, he called the V-Roys
"an important band." Under their deal, the V-Roys toured
the world with and behind Earle. They recorded with him ("Johnny
Too Bad"), performed with him on network television, and
put out two brilliant but nationally under-appreciated alt-country
roots rock records with Earle and Twangtrust partner Ray Kennedy
at the knobs. But after five years of non-stop touring at what
often amounted to minimum wage, the V-Roys decided to hang it
up, last performing together New Year's Eve, 1999.
Judging from the recent release by The Faults and from Mr.
Miller's Thus Always to Tyrants, these fellows were ready
to rock. In between bands, Miller hooked up with the hottest
roots rock producer on the scene, R.S. Field, and gathered some
of the country's primo studio musicians to record Tyrants.
With musicians like Texas guitar slinger David Grissom, drummer
Greg Morrow, bassist Mike Brignadello and keyboardist Eric Fritsch
comprising the core recording group, the result is an album that
will undoubtedly make many Top Albums of 2001 lists when December
rolls around. It remains to be seen but it may also be an album
that signals a widening of artistic scope for Sugar Hill Records,
long considered a home for folkies and traditionalists.
While Thus Always To Tyrants highlights Miller's abilities
to write for and perform in a rockier mode than during his V-Roys
tenure, the album is not without its outstanding alt-country
tunes ("Daddy Raised A Boy," "Yes, I Won't"
and "Mess of This Town") and some outstanding Miller
originals that could pass for Confederate era antiques (the touching
and accurately detailed soldier's love song, "Dear Sarah,"
and the dark and bitter "Highland County Boy") delivered
in a pre-bluegrass, fiddle-sawing Americana style with the assistance
of bluegrass giant Tim O'Brien on fiddle, Dirk Powell on banjo,
and Dave Roe on bass.
Along the way, we get continuous demonstrations of Miller's
songwriting genius. There are few on the scene today who construct
songs the way Miller does. There are even fewer who have his
gift with language, his laserscopic insight into things both
historical and emotional, or his way with black humor that, judging
from what some of the "critics" have written, sails
sublimely over the heads of many.
 Miller and Field
begin the record with one of the more dramatic presentations
on the record, "Across the Line," driven by David Grissom's
whiplash guitar playing. Listeners will be impressed with this
version versus the stripped down solo acoustic version Miller
previewed on his independently produced live solo project last
year, R U w/ Me? Field has earned every cent of his producer's
pay on this elaborately produced track highlighted by Grissom's
inventive guitar stylings. In sports the old saw is that playing
with good players elevates one's own game, and Miller's guitar
work on this track opposite Grissom indicates that may be true
for musicians as well.
Miller follows with another song that he previewed on last
year's solo project, "Mess of This Town." We all know
this character. He could easily be mistaken for Sonny, the ne'er
do well hero of Robert Earl Keen's "The Road Goes On Forever"
("Sonny was a loner, older than the rest/He was goin' in
the Navy, but couldn't pass the test"). Every little hometown
corner bar has one or two of these characters hanging around,
and Miller has drawn him with the precision and realism of a
Rembrandt portrait.
With a spring in my step and a song on my lips
I came and found out how big this town really is
Confusing lovers and confusing friends
And making the same mistakes again and again
That's why I sit at the bar and I dream of the day
That I get the means to mean what I say
I'm gonna leave this town in a cloud of dust
With a fifty-cent lighter and whiskey buzz
Miller can work the broken-hearted side of the songwriting
equation as well as anyone practicing the art today. On "Loving
That Girl," Miller is all torn up and he's learned some
very hard lessons indeed.
When I wanted to tell her all that I felt
Common sense said keep it under your belt
As coal turned to diamonds inside of my hands
Loving that girl was too hard on a man
Winter will spring and summer will fall
She's as cool as they come and as hot as them all
Leaving me freezing again and again
Loving that girl was too hard on a man
"I Won't Go With You" is a classic cheeky-guy-on-a-stool
bar talk tale filled with selfish, egotistical barroom philosophy
and some very pleasing turns of phrase. Miller has always had
that John Prine gift for turning cliches or familiar phrases
into something entirely new by altering the wording slightly.
The narrator is one of those roguish, rotten-apple jerks that
we'd like to avoid conversation with (I picture Steve Buscemi
in the movie Trees Lounge), but who despite their utter
lack of redeeming qualities usually leave us with some kernel
from their monologues worth repeating, if just for the shock
value.
You see, I'm the kinda guy who likes to drive
And she's got a fast car so you know that I like that
And while never asked to pay for gas
If it should happen, I could fix a flat
That's the times where I come through
It's one rare moment when she don't know what to do
Now I know that don't seem like much
But it's just enough to keep in touch
On "Yes, I Won't," Field and Miller turn David Grissom
loose and he delivers the in depth, masterful rootsy guitar excitement
that has made him the right-hand sideman of the likes of Joe
Ely and John Mellencamp. Morrow, Brigandello and Miller slam
down the rhythm and Grissom soars on an extended jam that winds
down this rocking tune.
Miller and Field chose this point in the otherwise rocking,
up tempo record to interject Miller's Confederate tunes, "Dear
Sara," and their sense of pace and timing is perfect as
the segue from rock to acoustic mode is made without any sense
of loss of momentum. Most of the credit for this goes to the
strength of Miller's singing, which although it will never be
confused with Pavaroti's, is pure, direct, sincere and gives
a sense of being highly interpersonal. It certainly projects
the proper emotional tenor appropriate to a Southern soldier's
love song. Once again, as with his gripping Civil War battle
song, "The Rain," his writing is superbly descriptive
and totally authentic in its sense of the period. Miller based
the song on Civil War letters from his great-great-grandfather
to his great-great-grandmother, Sarah. While newly written, Miller
has created a tune that one can easily imagine troops singing
as they march.
Dear Sarah, I'm stuck on a train bound for Richmond
We marched down from Kernstown, uphill all the way
At the train stop in Staunton we hauled up and climbed on
And then we just sat there for a night and a day
And the nights are long but I write you every day
And I hum a song that you used to sing
The one of Sweet William, his love Barbara Allen
And how she was always a long way away
My insides are all torn from hardtack and parched corn
My hat flew in a windstorm, so the sun has turned me red
The first chance to lie still I pull out your bible
But fall fast asleep before one verse is read
At the conclusion of his own composition, Miller seamlessly
segues over to a verse of the traditional, public domain "Barbara
Allen" to end the song.
On the tragic "Highland Boy," we get Mr. Miller
essentially a capella other than some spare backing by Mr. O'Brien
on a screechy country fiddle and a bit of harmonica from Miller.
'Highland Boy' is narrated by a brother who, due to his own frailty,
has been left behind when his other brothers "all joined
the cause," but who remembers "the day they marched
away they sang down Richmond Road, Ol' Abe Lincoln's bound like
Ol' John Brown for the long end of a rope." But his four
brothers are now either dead or missing, and he is left to remember
and to plow the family land alone.
The spark of plow to rock is now the only fight I've known
And the songs of victory that they sang don't help the seeds
I've sewn
'T'is wickedness and self conceit that is the bane of man
So the farmer and the land compete as God's first reprimand
"Miracle Man," a garage rock song before the term
garage rock had even been invented, was cut before Mr. Miller
was born by The Brogues, a California band which contained some
of the musicians who would later form Quicksilver Messenger Service
during the heyday of San Francisco and hippy power. Miller's
rendition is one of the highlights of Thus Always To Tyrants.
The track finds Grissom and keyboardist Eric Fritsch in an intense
funk duel, as Grissom feeds his wah pedal through a Leslie, giving
the track a two-organ sound that is hypnotic and borderline psychedelic.
Miller's vamping vocal is right on the money as he leans in hard
and lets it hang out on this one.
It is not surprising that two of the hardest rocking and most
sonically interesting cuts on the album find Miller working with
longtime Knoxville friends from Superdrag, John Davis on bass
and Don Coffey, Jr. on drums. "Absolution" finds Miller
in the throes of lost love and self-destructive life wreckage,
while "Goddamn the Sun" is the hardest rocking track
on the record and shows off Miller's edgiest guitar skills and
the impeccable tight harmonies that make Superdrag one of the
most musically sophisticated rock bands on the scene today.
V-Roys fans will rejoice in "Daddy Raised A Boy,"
a twangy track very much in the vein of the V-Roys. One of Miller's
many strengths as a songwriter is in looking deeply, unsentimentally,
and psychoanalytically into the dark, murky, dysfunctional spider
webs of relationships. This track brings to mind a lyric from
"Good Morning Midnight" on Miller's previous acoustic
solo record: "In a world that's gone crazy/and nothing seems
true/ and the kids are all lazy/and their parents are too/I wish
I did not know/half the things that I do." Whether the lyric
of 'Daddy Raised A Boy' is autobiography or fiction matters little
when measuring the depth of Mr. Miller's analysis of the relationship
between a father and a son. The song takes on added depth and
meaningfulness with its photo album look at attitudes common
to many parents and households in the post-World War II years.
Back in Allentown where my dad worked
They drank a cold one before they changed their shirts
And every drunken word was his command
The standing order was to understand
That he don't care about nothing else
Only what he's got to tell himself
Where everybody does the best they can
My daddy raised a boy and not a man
Some critics have described this track as bitter, but in my
opinion it is nothing less than a frank analysis of how the faults
of one generation are often traceable to the faults of the previous.
Mr. Miller is saying it's no accident how we turn out, that shallowness
breeds shallowness, that an inability to form nurturing, fully
realized relationships can contribute to that same inability
in one's child. (I suppose I should ask our readers, as Mr. Miller
asked his audience after performing the song on his live acoustic
solo record, "Is that too heavy for you?")
Miller closes the album with a soulfully sung hymn, backed
only by a church piano played by Peg Hambright (former member
of Knoxville's Judybats and currently playing with Geisha). Miller
demonstrates a pleasing choirboy voice and shows more of the
breadth of his musical vocabulary and the depth of his thought
processes with some incisive lyrics. Miller dwells in the world
of doubt and wonder rather than the world of praise and certainty.
The irony of the track is how far removed it is from the hokey,
saccharine, tranquilizer music presented as "Christian rock"
or "Christian pop" by the Amy Grants of the world.
If this world in which we live is exactly what it is
Is there room on the cross for me?
If the only chosen few are chosen all by you
Is there room on the cross for me?
Thus Always To Tyrants is likeable at first listen,
but once the listener gains a sense of familiarity with the lyrics
and the beneath-the-surface depth of the songs sinks in after
repeated playing, the sensation goes far beyond likeable. Miller
has given us a record that, like a good pair of bullhide boots
once broken in and scuffed a bit, will wear well for a long time
to come. Like Scott Miller's earlier work with the V-Roys, which
remains as fresh and vital today as ever, Thus Always To Tyrants
is here for the long term.
www.thescottmiller.com
Contact William Michael Smith at wms-at-rockzilla.net
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