John R Miller

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.”