Scott Miller and The Commonwealth
Upside Downside
Sugar Hill Records
By William Michael Smith
 Down
in the basement where I spend my time
Cheating solitaire and stealing rhymes
-- Scott Miller, "Angels Dwell"
After a few pleasant enough listens to Upside Downside,
I emailed Scott Miller and asked why he'd gone with the more
stripped down sound than his Sugar Hill debut, the R.S. Field
produced Thus Always To Tyrants that found its way onto
many 2001 Top Ten lists, including those of Billboard magazine's
staff and New York Times critic Neill Strauss. Don't ask
Mr. Miller no questions and he won't tell you no lies.
"Was it a cost-cutting measure, getting rid of Field's
bells-and-whistles production flourishes and not using big name
hired guitar guns like David Grissom?"
With his typical directness, Miller replied, "Give that
thing some listens before you judge. It should be the kind of
record that grows on you and you hear different stuff as it does.
It better."
As for the cost-cutting angle I'd mentioned, more Miller directness:
"It sounds like I wanted it to sound, wasn't no money about
it."
I called Miller later, after I'd listened more. Where most
artists faithfully mouth the label party line with comments like
"this is the finest work I've ever done" or "I
feel like I've finally come into my own" or (god help us)
"these songs come straight from my heart," Miller acts
like a wild horse who sees the loop on the ground and knows it's
a trap because he's had his foot in it before. After twenty minutes
of my reporter-angling-for-a-lead speculation and questioning,
I could tell Miller was tired of all the theorizing and music
magazine gab.
"Look," he said, "it's just a record. I'm not
trying to break any musical ground there, just got some songs
together and we recorded them."
At an in-store cd release for another band I told one of the
Sugar Hill people what Miller had said about "it's just
a record." He laughed and said, "You know, around the
office we talk about that kind of stuff and we always wonder
was he just brought up so decently that he won't ever say he
thinks he's special or does he really not realize what a talent
he has."
This is about as close as you'll ever get Miller to play the
"rock-star-speak" game.
"My current band is so good and we really work well together.
Since I was planning to do this like a vinyl album with two sides,
I was going to record half of it with The Commonwealth, then
record the other half with Superdrag. But we got in the studio
and things were going so well I just never got to the Superdrag
part."
Produced by Miller and keyboardist Eric Fritsch, Upside
Downside is the result of a year of ritualistic listening
to music in vinyl album form by Miller and a Knoxville motorcycle
buddy. Every Monday night they'd meet and drink beer and listen
to albums both classic and obscure. Fans of two of Neil Young's
most obscure records, American Stars and Bars and On
The Beach, will note plenty of familiar sounds and a certain
Neil Young feel to much of Upside Downside. Miller has
"separated" the two sides with a funky-groove instrumental
homage to Booker T. Jones and his MGs, "Chill, Relax, Now,"
which was recorded on Jones' birthday. That day just happens
to also be Neil Young's birthday, too.
As has always been his style even going back to the earliest
V-Roys' records, Miller mixes roots rock with folksy Appalachian
hoedowns on the album. He opens with a sly Chuck Berry-ish three-chord
blaster called "It Didn't Take Too Long." Miller says
Berry's lyrical brilliance and his fluid use of hipster jargon
has always been terribly under-rated. Miller's first-date song
makes a wonderful match for Berry songs like "No Particular
Place To Go."
It didn't take too long before I knew how long it would
take
Because she's pantin' and screamin' and the windows are steamin'
And the things I hear her sayin' I think she's really meanin'
It didn't take too long before I knew how long it would take
"Raised By the Graves" is one of the most interesting
songs on the album lyrically. Miller has always written songs
about Virginia and about his kin. While the track is a straight
ahead roots rocker, it at first seems like the kind of song that
would lend itself to the quiet acoustic Miller presentation of
his earlier solo album Are You With Me?
"I think I remember the verses coming to me in a slower
format, but not acoustic per se. I guess I'm glad I can still
be an angry little piss ant, because that's how I heard it in
my head. That's what I personally like about this record, that
everything is done how I heard it. And I do hear them."
I told Miller I didn't hear "Graves" as a pissed
off song, that with its lines like "time to get back to
the farm, to where the names are familiar" and its common
folks rememberances it seems more like another "where I
come from, who I come from" song from Tyrants.
"Well, maybe not pissed off then, but the line 'and I
married a woman a lot like my mom and I act a lot like my daddy'
is not exactly positive... but not pissed either. Hey, they're
just songs, it's up to the listener. I won't be putting any lyrics
with this record for the first time. Let it hang."
When he's not rocking with his jaw thrust out, Miller makes
some of the slickest Americana around. "Amtrak Crescent"
was on Are You With Me? in solo form, but here with Rob
McNelly on electric guitar and Tim O'Brien on mandolin, it is
given an energetic country treatment that perfectly matches Miller's
angst-laden vocal and his frame of mind. It also includes those
incredibly gifted gritty insights torn from blue-collar lives
that are Miller's songwriting trademark: "There ain't no
ham like a Birmingham to make a fella wanna stay in Alabam'"
or "it used to be pretty on the eastern shore, now it's
more New York up to Baltimore."
"The Way" recalls the great V-Roys slow dance "Good
Night Loser," but here Miller, who has always been introspective
and deeply personal lyrically, finds the way to redemption and
peace and self-knowledge through errors and dubious choices and
the knowledge they spin off, the maturation process coming to
each of us in its own way and time.
The back porch where we first kissed is where I said so
long
Headed out to find what it is that makes a man want to come back
home
Miller engages Tim O'Brien in an honest to god hoedown on
"Ciderville Saturday Night," where the picking is hot
and Miller's lyric is filled with that special knowledge that
comes to the traveling troubadour whose life is words, rhythms,
and good times. The tale of a small town Saturday night dance,
Miller gives it a modern touch.
Sneak out to the car and smoke a little wood
Makes the band sound better and the girls look good
Just two sips from a Ft. Marx jar
Keeps the bass sound round and the banjo sharp
Ciderville Ciderville Saturday night
While most of Miller's songs here have stellar hooks and reel-you-in
rhythms, the songs that stick after all the wash is hung on the
line are the quieter, less noticeable ones like the confessional
"I've Got a Plan," with its ton of angst and regret
that dissolves into resolution and a sense of emotional rigor.
Miller's wistful take on the "previous woman" or the
"woman who got away" or the "ex-wife" (who
knows, although I'll bet he didn't just make this up out of thin
air or by getting inspiration from a short story) is brutal and
too-true when he sings "I've got a plan to be such a man
/ that she will see that I was worth having / By living well,
it'll put her through hell / knowing that once she had totally
had me." Poison daggers and rabbit punches to the groin
don't hurt like this.
Now she's with him like we might have been
House and a garden in East Massachusetts
The cod and the beans, bitter and mean
What else can you grow when the soil is useless?
Miller seems to always find something on the History Channel
to pull a killer song from, and this time it's the dark but memorable
"Red Ball Express." Anyone who has seen the program
about the mostly African-American brigade that drove the trucks
that kept the U.S. armies supplied as they raced through Europe
toward Germany in WWII will immediately make connection with
all of the references in this Miller tale that is the equal of
his Civil War nightmare, "The Rain." Miller charges
the song with all the respect and sorrow that this little publicized
historical fact deserves.
Ain't no secret how the generals felt
"Fuck the men, they can eat their belts,
But the tanks they must have gas"
All we do is keep rollin' on
Tradin' bodies for petroleum
Heatin' rations on the manifold
Never sleep enough to dream about home
As he usually does on his albums, Miller ends with a prayerful,
wholesome, uplifting solo acoustic wish for a better time with
"For Jack Tymon." As corny and anti-alt-country hip
as such a song seems, Miller puts his lyric across with a forceful,
sincere conviction that should make even the most cynical realize
that he means what he says, that this is his true wish. It's
hard to find fault in a wish like Miller's.
If you have the joy of passing something on
Like the laugh of your father or the courage of your mom
But if that never happens and you end up alone
May your heart be so pure, it's one that God wants to know
No, Upside Downside doesn't leap out of the speakers
and down your aural throat like Thus Always To Tyrants
did. But give it and Miller a chance, because he really knew
what he was talking about when he said this one grows on you.
Don't waste time like I did trying to compare it with Thus
Always To Tyrants. They are two different animals, each with
its place in the upper echelons of modern Americana.
www.sugarhillrecords.com
or www.thescottmiller.com
|
