John R Miller is a true hyphenate artist: singer-songwriter-picker. Every song
on his thrilling upcoming debut solo album, Depreciated, is lush with intricate
wordplay and haunting imagery, as well as being backed by a band that is on
fire. 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 shadowy
honkytonk and get existential all in the same line with his tightly written
compositions. Miller’s own guitar-playing is on fine display here along with
vocals that evoke the white-waters of the Potomac River rumbling below the
high ridges of his native Shenandoah Valley.
Miller grew up in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia near the Potomac
River. “There are three or four little towns I know well that make up the
region,” he says, name-checking places like Martinsburg, Shepherdstown,
Hedgesville, and Keyes Gap. “It’s a haunted place. In some ways it’s frozen
in time. So much old stuff has lingered there, and its history is still very
present.” As much as Miller loves where he’s from, he’s always had a
complicated relationship with home and never could figure out what to do with
himself there. “I just wanted to make music, and there’s no real infrastructure
for that there. We had to travel to play regularly and as teenagers, most of
our gigs were spent playing in old church halls or Ruritan Clubs.” He was
raised “kinda sorta Catholic” and although he gave up on that as a teenager,
he says “it follows me everywhere, still.”
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