John R Miller & JP Harris, Manchester

John R. Miller biography

John R Miller is a true hyphenate artist: singer-songwriter-picker. Every song on his thrilling upcoming debut solo album, Depreciated, is lush with intricate wordplay and haunting imagery, as well as being backed by a band that is on fire. One of his biggest long-time fans is roots music favorite Tyler Childers, who says he's "a well-travelled wordsmith mapping out the world he's seen, three chords at a time." Miller is somehow able to transport us to a shadowy honkytonk and get existential all in the same line with his tightly written compositions. Miller's own guitar-playing is on fine display here along with vocals that evoke the white-waters of the Potomac River rumbling below the high ridges of his native Shenandoah Valley. As much as the music buoyed him, it also took its toll. "I always prioritized being a touring musician above everything, and my attempts at relationships suffered for it," he says. Miller was also often fighting depression and watching many of his friends "go off the rails on occasion." He says that for a long period he did a lot of self-medicating. "I used to go about it by drinking vodka from morning to night for months on end," he says. "I shouldn't have made it this far. I'm lucky, I think." Ultimately, the music won out and Depreciated is the hard-won result of years of self-education provided by life experiences that included arrests, a drunken knife-throwing incident, relationships both lost and long-term, and learning from the best of the singer-songwriters by listening.

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