Midnight and Lonesome

Emylou Harris's main musical man , Buddy has a new body of work fresh off the press following the hugely successful Buddy and Julie Miller CD.

The Everly Brothers' "Price of Love" sets the tone and has a rollocking scenario thereafter. Plenty of Buddy's reverberating guitar sound thoughout to please the fans.Highly recommended!
Roger Marbeck

Blending soulful Americana with blues-tinted country and dusty rock and roll, Buddy Miller makes records that defy easy categories. His resume as sideman and songwriter alone spans many genres and provides clues into Miller's inimitable, wide-ranging sound. As a guitarist, his contributions to both Steve Earle's El Corazon tour and Emmylou Harris' Spyboy band were incomparable, as was his sure-handed studio pickwork for everyone from Lucinda Williams and Patty Griffin to Australian rockers Midnight Oil and R&B soul sister, N'dea Davenport. As a producer, his sturdy direction on Jimmie Dale Gilmore's acclaimed One Endless Night, all of wife Julie Miller's solo work, and Athens alt-folkies Vigilantes of Love's Audible Sigh is adventurous and exacting. And, as a songwriter, he has been covered by mainstream artists like Dixie Chicks and Lee Ann Womack, as well as fellow insurgents Jim Lauderdale and Hank Williams III, to name but a few.
It is as an artist in his own right, however, that Miller distills his eclectic bent and in-demand versatility as a singer/writer/stringbender to its essence. Three solo albums, 1995's Your Love and Other Lies, 1997's Poison Love and 1999's Cruel Moon are each superbly rendered song cycles that sound as cohesive in spirit as they are wide-ranging in genre. The tension of so many styles competing for space and time only serves to add to the experience, as it does on the self-explanatory Buddy and Julie Miller record of 2001. Praised by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, and NY Times, Buddy and Julie Miller seemed like a creative high water mark for the intensely collaborative couple. Further indication of this came when the record earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
Now comes Midnight and Lonesome, and Buddy has yet again raised the bar. Opening with the twangy rocker "Price of Love" (a rare Everly Brothers non-smash) which spotlights Julie's honeyed backing vocals, the Millers conjure their familiar close-harmony blend from the get-go. Of course, that high-octane bombast is purposefully undone by the immediate left turn - as it is on any Buddy Miller album - of the very next song. "Wild Card" is a sing-songy shuffle, flecked with Miller's penchant for chicken-wire country bar crooning and the nimble steel guitar of Larry Campbell (Bob Dylan). Also evident on Midnight and Lonesome is Miller's cool and relatively newborn swagger, showcased on both the she-done-left-me waltz of the title track, as well as the nifty lo-fi detour of "When It Comes To You." The latter features Miller on a bizarre, 70's-era sampler prototype called an "Optigan." Mattel (yes, that Mattel) made the rare and hard to find instrument - part optical disc player, part organ - and Miller uses it to great and unusual effect.
The ballads are also standouts, as they once again reveal the lonesome heartbreak that defined Miller's previous efforts. Worth noting in particular are the Julie-penned "I Can't Get Over You," which features a remarkably chilling guest turn by Lee Ann Womack, and "A Showman's Life," with its fragile, cheated lyrics that seem to hit a pained Miller (along with ubiquitous harmonist Emmylou Harris) a little too close to home. Then, towards the end, we find Miller's most direct homage to his true soul roots - Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone To Love." Behind a stately organ backdrop, Miller brings this '50s R&B staple to life with all of its desperation left fully intact.
There is a third element, though, to Midnight and Lonesome, a direct result of the promotion for Buddy and Julie Miller. After its release last September, just one week after the events of 9/11, Buddy suffered a distinct feeling of pointlessness on the road. "I suppose it was somewhat healing for us to be out there playing," recounts Miller. "But a part of me just saw how unimportant it all seemed in the scope of things." Determined to say something meaningful with his next record, Millers renewed sense of purpose created two of the record's emotional highpoints: The broken streets and spirits found on the driving "Water When The Well Is Dry" (co-written with Vigilantes Of Love's Bill Mallonee) and the up-to-the-minute late addition of "Quecreek." Inspired by the thrilling July '02 rescue of nine Quecreek, PA miners, the haunting and hopeful tribute was written and recorded on the last day of mixing - the same day the miners were miraculously recovered. "Quecreek" closes the album.
After a year in which Miller has busied himself (along with Julie) with a track for the upcoming Chieftains guest vocalist album (which also includes fellow Americana stalwarts Alison Krauss, Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt, among others) and as a sideman in Emmylou's Down From The Mountain touring band, Midnight and Lonesome will get its release on HighTone Records this October.
"I tried on this one to take a few different steps in a few different directions," explains Miller. "I hope it worked." Humility aside, Midnight and Lonesome is his best album to date. Recorded, as usual, in three weeks of fits and starts at Dogtown Studio - a cozy space that doubles as the downstairs to the Miller home - the organic country soul weaves its way through every track. "The sound of that record," Miller explains with the smile of a proud parent, "is the sound of my house."