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UID:fd75f6fe-9e37-4711-87b7-cbed9a295362@360exp.net
SEQUENCE:29843128
DTSTAMP:20260928T163747Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260928T092823Z
DTSTART:20261113T000000Z
DTEND:20261113T040000Z
SUMMARY:John R. Miller
LOCATION:AyurPrana Listening Room
DESCRIPTION:APLR Presents: **John R. Miller**\n\nThursday\, November 12th\,
  2026\n\nAyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd\, Asheville\, NC 28806
 \n\nDoors 6PM || Event 7PM\n\n**John R. Miller**\n\nAs John R. Miller star
 ted making plans to record his fifth album\, his thoughts turned to challe
 nging himself not just musically\, but geographically.\n\n“I wanted to g
 et out of my comfort zone\, go somewhere less familiar to me and try a new
  approach\,” he says.\n\nBorn in the Washington\, DC area and raised in 
 West Virginia\, Miller is a studious and acclaimed representative of the s
 ound usually categorized as alt-country or Americana\, but his work is roo
 ted in sources from the punk he grew up around to more unconventional path
 s in rock history. So when the idea of heading to Tulsa and working at Leo
 n Russell’s legendary\, recently reopened Church Studio came up\, Miller
  took notice.\n\n“Immediately the gears started turning\,” he says. 
 “Tulsa is one of the great legacy-bearing cities of American music—J.J
 . Cale is one of my all-time favorites\, and Shelter Records was based the
 re. So much of what I love in music history happened right around that blo
 ck.”\n\nThe result is The Great Unknowing—an ambitious\, sprawling pro
 ject that extends the sound and scope of Miller’s previous releases\, 20
 21’s Depreciated and the 2023 follow-up Heat Comes Down. Those albums ea
 rned him praise from outlets including Spin and American Songwriter\; Tyle
 r Childers called him “a well-traveled wordsmith mapping out the world h
 e’s seen\, three chords at a time.”\n\nBut the singer-songwriter wasn
 ’t content to just keep his direction and his momentum\, chugging along 
 in the same lane. In addition to changing location\, he wanted his new mus
 ic to explore new sounds and approaches\, even if that meant rolling the d
 ice on different players and processes.\n\n“My goal was to get into a ro
 om with a bunch of people that I didn't already have a rapport with and tr
 ack the record live\,” he says. “I wanted to go into a new situation a
 nd hopefully strike up some new creative ideas as we were doing it.”\n\n
 With his longtime friend and collaborator Adam Meisterhans as co-producer 
 and guitarist\, Miller approached Tulsa-based drummer Paddy Ryan to help e
 nlist the band\, a line-up which came to include Grammy-nominated John Ful
 lbright on keyboards.\n\nFeeling both apprehensive and excited\, Miller wa
 s thrilled by how quickly things fell into place. Other Tulsa-based player
 s in the band included Aaron Boehler on bass\, and Muskrat Jones on pedal 
 steel.\n\nThe album was engineered by both Gary Laney (Don Williams\, Merl
 e Haggard\, The Marshall Tucker Band) and Mike Prado (Ziggy Marley\, Sara 
 Bareilles\, Matt Kearney). A longtime Nashville engineer\, Laney brought d
 ecades of experience into the room along with a deep and varied resume tha
 t quietly underscored the caliber of the team Miller had assembled.\n\n“
 Once we got in there\, we realized that these were all guys that were cut 
 from the same cloth\,” he says. “As soon as we started playing through
  the songs\, it sounded like a band. These guys are so adept and intuitive
 \, and we found a lot of common ground to mine\, connecting not just on Tu
 lsa music\, but psych\, heavy metal and all sorts of stuff. Having Adam th
 ere was key\, too. He has a deeper knowledge of music and guitar than I do
 \, and was a major part of the session’s connective tissue\, both interp
 ersonally and musically.”\n\nThere’s a buzzing\, fuzzy ambience that p
 ermeates songs like the opening “Far from the Station” and “Don’t 
 Bet on Me\,” creating a distinctive sense of space and mystery. Miller a
 sserts that the easy lope of “Cornbread and Pinto Beans” helped define
  the feel of The Great Unknowing\, and he even pulled off something he’s
  attempted before\, writing “Static and White Noise” the day before se
 ssions started and actually seeing it through to the finished album.\n\n
 “I never feel like I am bringing in enough songs\, but I had the idea to
  write that one on the way to the studio\,” he says. “Which usually do
 esn't work. I was also worried about adding too much gravitas to that song
 \, because I never want to over-dramatize something with production. I was
  pleasantly surprised at how understated it turned out\, but also very lus
 h.”\n\nMiller notes that his history in West Virginia—where he grew up
  in the Shenandoah Valley playing in high school garage bands before disco
 vering traditional fiddle music and touring as a member of an old-time str
 ing band\, working his way up to performing alongside some of Americana mu
 sic’s heavy hitters—remains present in “Cornbread” and “Steering
  Wheel Drums\,” with lyrics that offer sketches of some old friends.\n\n
 “Those songs are\, if not explicitly\, to me about folks who really taug
 ht me a lot about how to live well\,” he says. “Not being in West Virg
 inia as much these days\, I feel kind of wistful about it\, but sometimes 
 I like to hold on to that instead of seeing things change.”\n\nIndeed\, 
 images of travel and motion recur throughout The Great Unknowing\; maybe s
 ong titles like “Tollbooth” and “Steering Wheel Drums” give that a
 way\, but there’s also the Massachusetts Turnpike setting the scene in 
 “Static and White Noise” or the desperate narrator of “Think I’ll 
 Start Over” who’s “walking around this town” and “looking for a 
 ride.”\n\n“I’ve done more traveling than not since I got my driver's
  license\,” says Miller. “You tend to explore that territory in songs 
 when you're doing it a lot\, but some of them\, like ‘Tollbooth\,’ see
 m to be more about witnessing American decay. It can be hard to notice cha
 nges as they happen when you're living in a place\, but when you revisit t
 he same places over time\, you get a sense for how the landscape is shifti
 ng\, both literally and figuratively.\n\n“After the pandemic\,” he con
 tinues\, “we got back on the road and started doing more touring than I'
 d ever done before\, but since then it’s had a strange\, chaotic feel to
  it\, something that’s more hostile to people who do the kind of stuff t
 hat we do. It's taken on an air of menace in some places\, and I think the
  traveling songs carry a little bit of that weight with them.”\n\nSessio
 ns\, which were planned for three days\, went so smoothly (Miller describe
 s the work as “a whirlwind—two or three passes and then clean up\, mov
 e on”) that there was time left at the end to cut some additional\, unpl
 anned material. He decided to use the opportunity to record a few songs wr
 itten by other people.\n\nFirst came two selections by friends that Miller
  credits with giving him “a lot of songwriting inspiration and mentorshi
 p”—Darrin Hacquard’s “A World Away” and William Matheny’s “I
 f You Could Only See Me Now.” Miller played bass on the original session
 s for both songs\; with Hacquard’s composition\, he says that he “had 
 an idea to take it in more of a guitar-heavy\, wall-of-sound direction—I
  didn't know if it was going to work\, but I really enjoyed doing that.”
 \n\nThen he turned his attention to a couple of better-known tracks. He an
 d Meisterhans used to play “Golden Light” by the Georgia Satellites ye
 ars ago in their bar band Prison Book Club (which Miller describes as “e
 xcruciatingly loud alt-country shit”)\, so the choice was “driven a li
 ttle bit by sentimental feelings\, but that Satellites record was pretty f
 ormative for me.” The last song cut for the album was a recasting of the
  1985 Dire Straits hit “Walk of Life\,” slowed down more and more with
  each take.\n\n“We weren’t quite sure where the song was going\, but w
 e were almost there\,” says Miller\, “and then\, like\, two BPM slower
 \, and it was like the lights came on in the room.” It felt right to win
 d things up in Tulsa with a song by J.J. Cale disciple Mark Knopfler.\n\nO
 f course\, the city itself and its music tradition had their own impact on
  The Great Unknowing. Miller and crew visited Leon Russell’s archives in
  the Church\; “I would hesitate to call it a mystical experience\,” he
  says\, “because I’m skeptical of such things\, but it was very meanin
 gful to get to behold so many of these artifacts\, which seem to me mystic
 al in nature.”\n\nThe group also took a field trip to the Bob Dylan Cent
 er the morning of their first session. “That was a really nice energy to
  carry into the studio\,” he says.\n\nBut John R. Miller is quick to emp
 hasize that while Tulsa turned out to be the ideal location to make the al
 bum\, it isn’t the beginning and the end of the story.\n\n“This record
  is pretty varied\,” he says. “We never tried to go too far outside of
  the box\, because the box was the groove. There's a kind of pocket with t
 hose guys that seems almost innate—as soon as Adam and I got into a room
  with them\, I was like\, ‘How do you do that?’\n\n“I didn't want to
  go in and make a Tulsa Sound tribute record\,” he adds\, “and we didn
 't\, which is great. But it was important for me to check my expectations
 \, be able to adapt and trust the other people in the room. It's an act of
  faith\, if nothing else\, and I learned a lot from it.”\n\nBoletos: htt
 ps://dice.fm/event/eo6xo6-john-r-miller-12th-nov-ayurprana-listening-room-
 asheville-tickets
URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/fd75f6fe-9e37-4711-87b7-cbed9a29536
 2
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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