Album Review: Buddy Miller
Although Buddy Miller never went anywhere — he leads the band every year at the Americana Awards, he’s been busy producing and playing on other artists’ albums, and he and long-time friend and collaborator Jim Lauderdale host ‘The Buddy & Jim Show’ weekly on Sirius/XM —it’s good to have him back with a new solo album.
On the eponymous album, his first in fifteen years, he’s invited a number of friends—including Lee Ann Womack, Emmylou Harris, The War & Treaty, Dan Penn, Ashley Monroe, the McCrary Sisters, among others—to join him as he traverses the musical landscapes of country, soul, gospel, and rock and roll.
Swampy guitars lead off the opening track “As Long as I Have You,” a propulsive rocker that charges along a galloping beat fueled by Miller’s searing lead lines and the McCrary Sisters’ spiraling call and response harmonies.
Shawn Colvin joins Miller on the spaciously echoing ballad “You Never Get Over It,” a haunting ode to loss penned by Miller and his wife Julie that reverberates with poignant ache. On the bone-shaking rockabilly “Strange Desire,” Lauderdale and Miller mimic the burning, burning fever of wanting a woman, while Regina McCrary lends her soaring vocals to the slow-burning, gospel-inflected “Ruby Hang On,” written by Julie Miller.
Soul man Dan Penn (“The Dark End of the Street”) shares lead vocals on Miller’s take on Smoky Robinson’s “Don’t Look Back.” Steve Fishell’s lush layers of pedal steel Tim Lauer’s aching pump organ strains, Miller’s crunchy leads, and the McCrarys’ walking call and response harmonies turn the Motown standard into a new country soul classic.
Psychedelic country rocker “Losers’ Celebration,” written with Julie Miller, rides along a grungy groove that conveys the feeling of fiercely embracing the egalitarianism of being downtrodden (“Here you can be a flop/ In here we love the big and the little”). Lee Ann Womack joins Miller on the straight-ahead country crooner “Stop Me,” by Lauderdale and John Leventhal, while The War & Treaty shares vocals with Miller on the tender paean to love and caretaking of the soul on the Jesse Winchester tune “Lay Down the Burden of Your Heart.”
Emmylou Harris, Larry Campbell, and Teresa Williams join Miller on the spare modern spiritual “The Inner Sanctum of God,” by Julie Miller. The album closes with the Millers’ gorgeous ode to the beauty and transience of life, “Masterpiece in the Sand.”
Buddy Miller’s eponymous new album illustrates his abilities to lay bare the soul of every song he plays and sings, making it his own and inviting us into the song’s interplay of harmonies and melodies. Let’s hope it’s not fifteen years before we get another Buddy Miller album.
