MAKING A BIG WORLD FEEL SMALL
HAVING CONDENSED THE WILD, WEIRD AND WANDERING 70-YEAR LIFE OF SAM HOUSTON INTO A THREE MINUTE SONG, SCOTT MILLER KNOWS A FEW THINGS ABOUT TELLING LARGE-SCALE STORIES EFFICIENTLY IN A VERSE-CHORUS-VERSE FORMAT.
So fans of this songwriter shouldn’t be surprised at his new time-skipping masterpiece, “Lo Siento, Spanishburg, West Virginia,” which stretches the seams of just how much American joy, disappointment, contentment and outrage can be packed into a song.
Miller touches on things that don’t matter, but we pretend they do, like high school football. He moves on to things that matter, but we too often ignore, like a vet coming back from Iraq without his arm. And then he zooms way out to patterns of domestic immigration, as retirees descend upon a community to the point that “people could not afford to live in their town anymore.”
Miller didn’t know anything of Spanishburg, but saw a sign for it while visiting his wife’s hometown.
“There’s no arrow or anything, just a sign that says, ‘The road to Spanishburg,’ ” Miller says. “I thought, ‘What the (expletive), man?’ So I drove over there with one of my brothers-inlaw. It was a pretty little town that just got overrun. It happens in other places, like here in Swoope.”
Swoope is in Virginia, where Miller returned seven years ago to run his family’s farm, making time every few years for an album like “Big Big World” four years ago.
In the new “Ladies Auxiliary,” which could just as easily be called “Small, Small World,” Miller casts his eye on seemingly small cultural connections in these songs, some that stretch and some that snap.
Miller’s original title was to be “Thalia and Melpomene,” named for the smiling and frowning muses/ masks associated with Greek theater. But his manager threatened to quit if he did.
“There was a time I was going to do an album of Greek mythology as folk songs, and another time I tried to put the (expletive) Iliad into a few verses,” he says. “Then I realized that was a dumb idea, and it just sat in a folder. I guess I envisioned myself as the Johnny Horton of Greek mythology.”
But that proposed title does speak to Miller’s body of work, not just this album but throughout his career. Even when he speaks of his path, Miller undercuts disappointments with humor.
“I’ve worked really hard to become so good at losing money,” he says. in Virginia, of the ’90s. By 2000, Miller was on his own, a singer-songwriter guy. He speaks a mile a minute, which only underscores how deft he’s become at snaring those blitzing thoughts and putting them on paper.
“I’ve always written 10-pounds of (expletive) and hoped to get -ounces of lines worth something,” he says. “That’s writing. Steve Earle said everybody’s got one good verse and chorus in them, it’s what you do with the rest that can make a song sound inspired. That’s the hard part. So it’s work. I think even the real writers 5Miller landed in Knoxville, Tenn., where he co-founded a rock band called the V-RoysA. Their songs were smart, even the ones that sought to be dumb. The band’s last-call ballads were as sad as a beer-soaked cardboard coaster, and their rockers sounded like they were shot from a cannon. They’re fta great under-heard bander atending college at William & Mary…like I bet Irving Berlin has an Astrodome worth of (expletive) that he cut loose because it wasn’t good enough.”
That process explains in part why four years have passed between albums. Though Miller also says, “Farming slows you down, man.”
He jokes — I think — multiple times about taking a job parking cars for a funeral home. But there’s a trace of resignation nestled in the jokes.
“Somebody asked me how I take care of two parents, run a farm and keep a music career,” he says. “Well, I don’t. Two of those I can’t turn my back on. So I do this when I can, and we’ll see if there are any fans left.”