Scott Miller

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Miller looks to plow his next musical chapter on his own.

Anyone who knows Scott Miller knows why he chose the mule as his spiritual mascot. Miller is stubborn and tenacious. He's also as independent a creature as has walked on the earth. As Miller sees it, these are good times for a guy with his qualities.

His new album "For Crying Out Loud" is his first studio album on his own label F.A.Y. Recordings.

"I left a deal. I left a good label," says Miller, sitting at the Chapman Highway Pizza Hut just before performing a CD release show at the Disc Exchange. "I think this is the future. This is made for people like me and Mic."

"Mic" is Mic Harrison, Miller's former band mate in the V-Roys, who is also releasing his own albums.

Miller paid for the recording of "For Crying Out Loud" by selling 2,000 copies of the demos for the album months before recording the final album.

"I sold them all in a month and the only reason it took that long was I handmade the covers," says Miller.

A native of Swoope, Va., just down the road from the Statler Brothers' stomping grounds, Miller moved to Knoxville in 1990 after graduating from William & Mary College. Many Knoxvillians became familiar with Miller through his long stint at Hawkeye's, the now-defunct Fort Sanders restaurant and bar. Miller wrote scores of acerbic songs and gained a solid following. However, he came into his own as a songwriter as a member of the V-Roys (originally called the Viceroys). The group became one of the city's most beloved and acclaimed acts and built an international following before disbanding on New Year's Eve 1999. Miller went on to record four albums as Scott Miller and the Commonwealth for Sugar Hill Records.

During those years, Miller and the Commonwealth acted as the house band for the "Blue Collar TV" comedy show and, far more important to Miller, conducted a tour by Amtrak that garnered national press. He'll repeat the train tour in May.

For part of the new album, Miller worked with producer Doug Lancio.

"He told me to write three pages a day, no matter what it was, so that's what I did," says Miller. "I found out the subconscious is a pretty powerful thing."

The writing came at an emotional time in the Miller household. His father-in-law, Charlie Lane, was dying of cancer, and each morning after Miller took his mother-in-law to the hospital to be with her husband, Miller would retreat for three hours to write.

"It didn't seem like labor," says Miller. "It seemed like an escape."

"For Crying Out Loud" closes with "Appalachian Refugee," a tribute to his father-in-law.

"He had four daughters spread out over the country and I was thinking about them driving to East Tennessee when I wrote it."

Initially, he hadn't planned on including the song on the disc and a pre-release special edition of the album sold to 1,000 fans did not include it.

"I felt like I didn't want to make money off that song," says Miller.

However, the 1,000 fans, most of whom knew the song from the demo album, insisted that it was essential. In response, Miller put the track up as a free download on his Web site and then included it on the final edition of the disc. The song is still available for free, and Miller plans to make the demo-album available on his Web site soon.

Miller says he sees himself moving back to West Virginia in the next few years to help his aging parents run the family farm.

"If I can make this work, I should be able to make it work anywhere," he says. "Everybody knows how much I love East Tennessee, but I got to take care of my folks."

Miller says his next album may be a surprise to fans.

"The plan for the next record is to do something totally different than I've ever done. I'm ready to shake myself up a bit."

A few minutes after sitting at Pizza Hut, he's on stage at the Disc Exchange in front of an enthusiastic crowd.

"Just tell me what you want to hear," says Miller. "Most of you bought the record already, didn't you?"

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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