From Amazon.com
More Great Scott Miller
Album Rating: (4 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: I found out by accident that Scott Miller and the Commonwealth had a new CD out. I immediately ordered it and have been enjoying it ever since. If this were the 1960s, Scott Miller would be a superstar. But it is not, so we can enjoy him in intimate venues and enjoy the fact that he has enough of an audience that he can record on a regular basis. And we can enjoy the fact that his talent seems to be endless. "For Crying Out Loud" holds up the high standards that Miller and the Commonwealth have established. It is better than the somewhat disappointing "Citation" (disappointing by Miller standards) and ranks with "Thus Always to Tyrants" and "Upside Downside." My basic test for the excellence of an album is how many songs would I burn on a specialized CD. From the thirteen songs on "For Cyring Out Loud," eight are definite keepers and another two would have a high likelihood of making the final cut. There is not a bad song on the CD. "Heart in Harm's Way" is, I think, the best cut on the CD and is one of those Miller songs that stays with you long after you have heard it. "Cheap Ain't Cheap," "I'm Right Here My Love," "Iron Gate," and "She's Still Mine" all rank with Miller's finest work. On "Claire Marie" he does an effective job of channeling Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. There is also a nice cover of Tom T. Hall's "I Can't Dance." I prefer Miller's version to the original Hall version and the Gram Parsons cover. If you like Scott Miller, you are going to love this CD. If you think you might like Scott Miller, this would be a great place to start.
Scott Miller: Knoxville's Viceroy
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: "For Crying Out Loud" is Scott's best record to date. Don't forget that every album he has created is filled with classic songs that stick in your head or cause you to hum long after the needle has left the record, but this latest effort is solid all the way through. "Cheap Ain't Cheap" is a great way to start off the album- honest, blunt, to the point, a great thesis statement on the current economy, not to mention the music biz. "Sin in Indiana" is another well-written song with an assorted mix of motley characters that anyone could find truth in. "I'm Right Here, My Love" -wow, just listen and you'll know what i mean. The closing set of songs "Feel So Fair to Midland" and "Double Indemnity" is such a kick-a** way to wrap it all up. Buy this album and then check out the rest of Scott Miller's work.
Virginia native culls label rocks on his own
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: By Jim Clark
Publisher, Lee County Courier, Tupelo, MS
Scott Miller is an ordinary guy who has done extraordinarily well.
I met Scott at Hal & Mal's in Jackson in early 2004. It was a chance meeting, kind of a mystical happening.
I had recently reviewed his second CD Upside / Downside. It's become one of my favorite traveling albums. Anyway, I was at the Mississippi Press Association and someone suggested we eat at Hal & Mal's.
Scott was playing there and we met. We were both into music and history so a friendship was born. Many of his songs are influenced by his upbringing in Appalachia and his love of the past. He was in Jackson as part of his Amtrack Crescent tour. He and his band, The Commonwealth, made 15 stops over a three week period wherever the Amtrack paused including Union Station in Washington D.C.
It turns out Scott and I think alike, probably not a good thing.
When we started The Courier, my wife Linda and I had stable jobs, paid vacations, etc. I was salary plus commission and doing well ... oh well, step into the unknown.
Scott recently did the same. He had been signed with Sugar Hill, primarily a bluegrass label with clients like New Grass Revival, Ricky Skaggs and Sam Bush. Scott had it made too. He quit. Scott started his own label F.A.Y. Recordings and released For Crying Out Loud this month.
"My wife thought I was crazy," Scott said. "I had this nutty idea of demoing a fresh batch of songs on my Marantz hard-disc recorder, then I pressed 1,000 CDs and did a handmade cover for each.
"Hey, I didn't have anything better to do," Scott said and laughed. "then I made them available off my website for $20 each. I sold every one of them."
So with $20,000 in his pocket he paid for the recording of For Crying Out Loud. The result is a continuation of the Virginian's crazy life set to song with some of those history tidbits thrown in like "Appalachian Refugee" and "Sin in Indiana."
The CD has that same rowdy, swaggering edge to it that accompanies most of Scott's work so it came to me a surprise when Scott shared where most of it was conceived.
"My wife's father was dying here in a Knoxville hospital while I wrote a lot of this," he said. "I would get up around five or six and take my mother-in-law into the hospital to sit by him, go to the commissary and get her a waffle, then drive to my writing room and write for a couple of hours before going back to relieve whoever was there with him, sometimes all night. Anyone who's been through long-term and/or terminal illness knows your sleep patterns get weird; hospitals are lit all the time, so your days get confused."
One song that I'm sure was spawned by that emotional setting was his duet with Patty Griffin, "I'm Right Here My Love." It's a beautiful touching song.
But for the most part -- Scott Miller & The Commonwealth are a full-tilt garage rock band, Appalachian style. The opener is the tongue `n cheek power-chorder "Cheap Ain't Cheap," a hand clapper about being newly unemployed.
"It's a blackly humorous song about the economic meltdown," Scott said. "which I had predicted years ago but wasn't smart enough to do anything about -- like buy stock in cardboard boxes that people use to put their desk junk in when they lose their jobs."
I've got to sit down and visit with Scott on a couple of occasions since and have always enjoyed the comradeship. I also always delight in the notes he sends my way, always typed on his Underwood #5 manual typewriter. It's something he collects - manual typewriters. He also has a fondness for mules, but doesn't collect them ... as far as I know.
Pop, rock, country and blues from former V-Roy
Album Rating: (4 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: From the top: this is not Scott Miller of Game Theory (or the Loud Family), nor is it the Scott Miller who's self-released five blues albums throughout the last decade, nor the Scott Miller who played drums for Agent Orange. It is, in fact, the Scott Miller who sang, played guitar and wrote songs for the late `90s power-twang band, the V-Roys. Since the group's demise, Miller's been recording solo albums and performing with a revolving aggregation called the Commonwealth. After three studio releases and a live set on Sugar Hill, this self-released album features a similar blend of country and rock influences, though with acoustic power chords mostly replacing electric.
The album opens with the ranting anthem, "Cheap Ain't Cheap (For Crying Out Loud)," expressing a sideways anticipation of the New Depression. The album's up-tempo numbers include driving acoustics, New Orleans-tinged country-rock, and the Blasters' styled roots of "Claire Marie." These are interwoven with singer-songwriter tunes that include the Celtic harmony duet "I'm Right Here, My Love," sung with Patty Griffin, and the solo closer, "Appalachian Refugee." The acoustic works turns darker on the expose "Sin in Indiana," and the low twanging "Double Indemnity" harbors noirish secrets in its blue notes.
Miller can seem like a glass-half-empty romanticist; blowing blue harmonica as he declares his faults on "Let You Down" and shying away from opportunity on "Heart in Harm's Way." But the sentiments are coy in their hope that honest declaration and cautious refusal will ward off imagined disasters; think Nick Lowe, Ben Vaughn and Tom T. Hall (whose "I Can't Dance" is covered here). Miller transitions smoothly between pop, rock, country and blues, and though at time you'll wish he'd alight on one for more than a song at a time, the next tune always sweeps you away. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]
Purchases
1 Cheap Ain't Cheap (For Crying Out Loud)
Purchases made through Amazon.com help support FolkAlley.com.
