John Miller is back in action after a four-month absence to battle tongue cancer.
Miller’s emotional return to the stage came Saturday night when The Travelers played at the Lucketts, Va., community center. If Miller hadn’t talked about his illness from stage, few in the crowd might have known about the long layoff. His voice was strong, his picking was as layered as ever and the band’s harmonies, a hallmark of their performances, were tight.
“I’m thinking a lot about tonight,” Miller told me just before the show. “This matters a lot. You got to prove to yourself that you can still do this.”
Well, yes, he can still do it. That much was clear as the band warmed up before two 45-minute sets. The Travelers had some rust to shake off after the long layoff, but Miller was strong from the start.
“I need to remember the chords. It’s like being in a new band,” bass player Mike Conner said as Miller sang “I Long to See His Face” backstage.
But it wasn’t just rust. Conner said later that he got a little emotional singing and picking with his best friend again. I know the feeling. I got misty-eyed myself as Miller launched into that Rick Lang song, especially as he sang the lines, “And in the hour of my deepest darkness, the Lord shines down His light and I can see.”
It was a full-circle moment. It’s the same song Miller sang the first time I heard him on stage, at IBMA in 2010. That performance came as he was getting back to performing after his first bout with tongue cancer.
In the intervening three years, we’ve become friends and co-writers. It’s great to have him back.
Some of John Miller’s bluegrass friends have started a fund drive to help him deal with the financial costs of fighting cancer and not being able to perform for a while.
The idea grew out of discussions between Mike Conner, who plays with John in The Travelers, Eastman Strings rep Tim Finch, who employs John in the Eastman String Band, and David Morris, John’s songwriting partner and a correspondent for Bluegrass Today.
“John and Mike and John and Tim have a lot more music to play together, and John and I have a lot more songs to write,” Morris said. “The doctors can do great things treating this form of cancer. We just need to help John and his wife, Cathy, pay the bills while he’s undergoing treatment and is unable to perform.”
Checks made out to John Miller can be sent to him in care of:
Carter Bank and Trust
370 Arbor Drive
Christiansburg, VA 24073
Every donor will be entered in a drawing to win an Eastman E10D guitar, the same model John plays on stage and in the studio. Eastman Strings is donating the instrument to honor John, who endorses the company’s guitars, and John will sign the label.
Tim said lining up the guitar donation was the least he could do. “John’s not just a member of our band, he’s a member of our family.”
The drawing for the guitar will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, at the Eastman Strings booth at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass conference and festival in Raleigh, NC, and will be shipped to the winner from there.
As an added feature of the fundraising effort, Tim will cut off Morris’s hair that day – all of it – if at any point during the fund drive an individual donates or raises at least $500 on John’s behalf. “I’m rather attached to my hair, but it’s a small price for me to pay, and a great cause, so I’m actually rooting for this to happen,” Morris said.
John begins chemotherapy and radiation treatments this week for tongue cancer that is also present in some lymph nodes in his neck. “I’m ready for whatever comes,” he said. “I really feel so much care and concern right now from everyone.” John has been involved in benefits for other musicians who have fallen on hard times, but said he never expected to be the one needing help. “It’s something you don’t think about. It’s kind of shocking.”
John is willing to talk to others who are dealing with cancer, and urges anyone with questions or concerns to contact him through his Facebook page.
We have mentioned before the film, Hillsville 1912, a story of murder and mayhem that still divides families and communities in parts of southwestern Virginia.
This story of a courthouse shooting 100 years ago doesn’t have a specific bluegrass connection, though its filmmaker, Rick Bowman, is also at work now on a documentary about the storied life of mandolin legend Herschel Sizemore. The soundtrack, however, is thick with old time and bluegrass music of the sort long associated with the Appalachian mountains where this tragedy occured.
All the music on the soundtrack CD was selected, arranged and performed by Mike Conner and John Miller of The Travelers, who also appear as a band on several cuts. The centerpiece of the film music is The Ballad Of Claude Allen, a song contemporary to the shooting, whose authorship is unknown. It appears throughout the film, in both and instrumental versions, with fiddler Nate Leath guesting with Conner and Miller.
The remainder of the tracks on the CD consist of largely familiar songs chosen to support the dire circumstances detailed in the film, including Bill Monroe’s Rocky Road Blues, Lester and Earl’s Darling Please Don’t Say It’s Too Late Now, and Steve Gillette’s Darcy Farrow.
Here’s a taste of the film…
…which can be rented via online streaming at IndieFlix, or purchased through Amazon.
The CD is available via most online download resellers, and CD Baby.
Editor’s Note: This essay traces a song from the initial idea to the recording and first public performance. We would be interested in similar stories from other songwriters.
On Feb. 19, early in the Herschel Sizemore benefit concert in Roanoke, I was pretty sure I was the most nervous person in the building.
The Travelers were getting ready to play The Tenth Day of September, a song I co-wrote last summer.
Little did I know that my co-writer, John Miller, guitarist for The Travelers, was thinking HE was the most nervous person in the auditorium. John had worked out the guitar introduction just two days before, and the band was performing it live about 36 hours after playing it together for the first time. Adding to the pressure: A California film crew was recording the performance for a short video project.
John nailed the intro and got ready to sing the opening line. This was it. Words that I had written were about to be sung on stage for the first time.
I held my breath…
Tenth Day almost didn’t get written. After Mike Conner, The Travelers bass player, introduced us early in 2011, John arranged a few songs that I wrote or co-wrote with Chris Dockins, and John and I co-wrote two of our own. One of them, River of Tears, grew out of an idea John came up with last summer after jamming at Roanoke’s Fiddle Fest with Paul Williams, Jesse Brock, Sierra Hull and others.
A quick turnaround on that one – scheduled to join The Tenth Day of September on The Travelers album due out later this year on Patuxent Records – emboldened John to throw out another idea.
“Hey, man,” the familiar voice on the other end of the phone said on a mid-August afternoon. “Let’s write a song about Sept. 11.”
My first thought: No way. That dreadful day was too huge to wrestle into a three-minute bluegrass tune. But John and I were in the early stages of our writing relationship, so rather than reject the idea out of hand, I told him I’d chew on it a bit. I figured I’d wait a week or two, tell him I wasn’t getting anywhere and let the idea die.
My reluctance was rooted in my own experience on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the weeks that followed. As the chief White House correspondent for Bloomberg News at the time, I was with President Bush at an elementary school in Sarasota, FL, when the World Trade Center towers were attacked. Later, I traveled with him to visit a Manhattan fire station that had lost many of its firefighters that day, when he sat with elementary school students who discussed some graphic art projects they created after 9/11, and when he attended a memorial service for those who died at the Pentagon. At his first televised news conference a month after the attacks, I questioned him about U.S. efforts to capture Osama bin Laden.
But as much as I didn’t want to write the song, I couldn’t stop thinking about it as the 10th anniversary of one of the country’s darkest days approached. I don’t have children, but I thought how 9/11 forced many moms and dads to raise their kids alone. I thought how a child who was six or seven at the time, would now be driving and dating. Something clicked. I sat down and started writing from the perspective of a man who had lost his wife and was looking back a decade later.
The chorus came first:
Wish I could turn the clock back
To a day we both remember.
In my heart it’s always
The tenth day of September.
The verses fell into place soon after. The songwriting muses are fickle. Sometimes I have to wrestle with words. Sometimes they just come pouring out. This was one of those pouring-out songs.
The day after I started the song, I sent the roughed out lyrics to John. He cried the first time he read them.
John is a talented arranger and a first-rate flat picker. Within a few days, he had worked up a melody and sang it to me over the phone. I cried the first time I heard it.
John shared the lyrics with Norman Wright of The Travelers. Norman has played with the Bluegrass Cardinals, the Country Gentlemen and other bands over the years and is a first-rate songwriter. So when I heard Norman was high on Tenth Day, I felt my dream of getting a song cut was about to come true.
Then I waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
I tried not to get too excited, because I knew it would only take one good song to come along and push Tenth Day to the cutting room floor. Plus I remembered a cautionary tale from my songwriting buddy Cliff Abbott. One of his songs had been recorded by a bluegrass band that everybody knows, but it never made the album because the band landed a deal with a label that required it to go in a different direction.
Finally, on Jan. 19, after what seemed like a decade, I received formal word that The Travelers were, indeed, cutting The Tenth Day of September.
John and Mike had worked together on a soundtrack for a film project by Rick Bowman and Rick was flying in from San Diego for the debut. While he was in Roanoke, he planned to shoot a video project based on the benefit concert for Herschel Sizemore, which Mike was instrumental in putting together. And, at Mike’s request, Rick was also thinking about making a video about the band.
A year ago, I sat in Norman’s living room at one of the band’s first organizational meetings. I hadn’t met Norman or Kevin Church, a terrific banjo picker, before that night but I knew all about their music. I could close my eyes and just about hear Norman’s tenor and Kevin’s baritone singing one of my songs.
One thing led to another. Next thing I knew I was in John’s Christiansburg studio, being a fly on the wall as The Travelers laid down tracks for the song one day and played it live for the first time the next.
The film crew was in the studio, too, and would be at the show the next day. It was fascinating to watch the song come to life, hear Norman and Kevin add powerful harmony parts to John’s lead and watch all four guys work out the final details of the arrangement and lay down tracks. Each layer made the song a bit better. By the end of a long day, The Travelers had made The Tenth Day of September their song.
The next day took just about forever to arrive. But finally, John was introducing the song. Our song! On a stage that would be graced that day by some of the biggest names in bluegrass, who gathered without pay to honor one of their own.
As John sang the opening lines, I don’t think I was breathing.
The rest of it was a blur. Before I knew it, I heard applause.
I felt like I was a small part of the effort to raise money for Herschel Sizemore.
But there was something else, too.
I’ve called myself a songwriter for a couple of years.
This post is a contribution from Amanda Webb, who will be a regular correspondent when Bluegrass Today goes live – soon, I promise!
What do you get when you combine one man’s love for music, a desire to meet a need, and a supportive bluegrass community? You get Pickin’ on Cystic Fibrosis, a bluegrass festival that gives all profits from ticket sales and raffles to Hunt for a Cure. Pickin on Cystic Fibrosis is a three day outdoor festival held at the KC Campground in Milan, Michigan, on September 8-10, 2011.
Five years ago Jimmy Kittle began having indoor benefit concerts in Fremont, Michigan. From those early concerts Pickin’ on Cystic Fibrosis was born. Kittle hopes this festival will not only raise much needed funds for research but will also educate people about the CF. “Most of the money raised for Cystic Fibrosis research is from grass roots efforts. I started this festival in order to do my part,” says Kittle.
Because the festival draws a diverse crowd Jimmy says it is a win win situation. “We get a lot of people [attend the festival] that are connected with CF that don’t know anything about bluegrass. They just want to raise awareness and help promote research efforts. So a lot of new bluegrass fans are made,” he says.
Jimmy has been involved with bluegrass music since the 1970s both as a musician and a sound technician. Those that know Jimmy well know his son has CF and that he has been involved with Hunt for a Cure for the past six years. “Working as a sound tech I stay busy during the summer at festivals which is when Hunt for a Cure has most of their fund raising events. So that’s another reason I started this festival. I wanted to contribute to the cause,” he says.
Many of the bands that perform are just as dedicated to the cause as Jimmy and donate their time and talents. Among this year’s bands are Detour Bluegrass, Jerry Butler & the Blu-J’s, and the recently reformed Travelers.
To get tickets and information and to see the entire band line-up check out Pickin’ on Cystic Fibrosis.
You might also want to check out the other events sponsored by Hunt For a Cure. For camping reservations, pricing, or facility information visit KC Campground. If you want to learn more about or Cystic Fibrosis and the research being done go to the Cystic Fibrosis website.
On Friday night, while Vince Gill was playing a gig in the Washington D.C. suburbs for $110 a ticket, Norman Wright was finishing up a shift at his day job and doing some work on his son’s car before making a long, late-night trip down a lonely stretch of Interstate 81 so he could play a couple of sets and participate in an early morning workshop at FiddleFest in Roanoke, Va.
After his show, Gill was quoted in the Washington Post about why he stepped away from bluegrass when he was a young picker. “If I kept playing,” he said, “I would never own my own home.”
I didn’t see Vince’s show, but I’m sure it was good. I did see Norman’s two performances with The Travelers on Saturday, and I guarantee you he had more fun. During both shows, and in a between-shows rehearsal in a cramped dormitory room at Hollins University, a big smile never left Norman’s face. His love for the music was evident, as was his talent. The former member of the Bluegrass Cardinals and the Country Gentlemen is clearly thrilled to have another chance. You may not know about The Travelers, who are working on a CD that should come out later this year, but you will.
Bluegrass fans are fortunate that the Norman Wrights vastly outnumber the Vince Gills. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who play – and play exceptionally well – more for the love of the music than for the money.
The list of these folks is endless, but I want to mention a few special examples. Claire Lynch, one of the top two or three female vocalists in bluegrass, once turned down a gig with a major talent because she was nursing one of her children at the time, and she took a break from the road for several years because she decided her children were more important than her career. Claire never complains about any of this. She goes out with a great band and, show after show, plays and sings as well as anyone. That’s what a professional does, regardless of the size of the paycheck – or the crowd.
This was driven home to me in early 2010, when I saw Missy Raines and the New Hip play a gig near Columbus, Ohio, for the gate. After the band arrived, a heavy fog rolled in. The band ended up playing for six paying customers, which had to be dispiriting. But it remains one of the best shows I have seen.
The same thing happened a few months ago in Washington, D.C. Mike Conner and John Miller, half of The Travelers, booked a gate gig at a small venue, but before the show date rolled around, the promoter quit. The performance was, unintentionally, a well-kept secret. For about the first hour, my wife and I were the entire paying audience. No matter. They played their hearts out.
It’s a rough business for songwriters, too. Some of the very best write at nights and weekends while working a day job to pay the bills and provide benefits. With many bands printing just 1,000 or 2,000 CDs, and a royalty rate of just over 9 cents per unit, the cost of making a demo and registering a copyright can quickly eat up most of the “profit.”
But don’t feel sorry for those who will never amass a fortune. Be glad they do what they do, support them when and how you can. Buy their music, of course. But even a simple thank you can go a long way.
Saturday at FiddleFest, after a show in 90+-degree heat left the players looking like they showered with their clothes on, one fan stopped by The Travelers table with ice cream. That gesture left everybody smiling.
The Bluegrass Blog posted earlier this year about the reformation of The Travelers, and their upcoming album on Patuxent Records.
The band is based around noted bluegrass sidemen Norman Wright and Kevin Church, who toured with that name in the 1990s. With Wright on mandolin and Church on banjo, the two have teamed up with John Miller on guitar and Mike Conner on bass for a return of The Travelers.
The band is booked at this weekend’s Roanoke Fiddlefest, and visited Roanoke’s WDBJ 7 television studios over the weekend to promote the event. Long time bluegrass fans will recognize those call letters, as WDBJ was once the home of both Reno & Smiley and Flatt & Scruggs at different points in the 1950s.
Here’s a look at The Travelers doing How Could I Love Her So Much, a hit for Johnny Rodriguez in 1983 and which Wright recorded recently as a member of Darren Beachley & Legends of the Potomac.
Everybody in bluegrass and old time music loves a good killing song, right? Throw in a good courthouse shootout, and it’s a sure thing.
Just such an incident took place in 1912 at the Carroll County, VA courthouse, where the locally-celebrated Allen family had it out with the judge, commonwealth’s attorney, sheriff, and a juror in a deadly gun battle inside the courtroom. Folks in Carroll County are still divided over the incident; some say the Allens acted in self defense, others say in defiance of the law and government of the time.
What came to be known as the Carroll County Massacre made news across the world, with sensationalized coverage continuing throughout the Spring and Summer of 1912, particularly the manhunt for Wesley Edwards and Sidna Allen who were captured in Iowa six months after the shootout. Five were killed in the shootout, which also left Floyd Allen, father to Claude and Sidna, wounded.
Now, in preparation for the 100th anniversary of the massacre, filmmaker Rick Bowman is finishing work on a documentary that will examine the many conflicting reports over the episode. Hillsville 1912: A Shooting in the Court is a 70 minute film that will be presented to The History Channel and PBS, and entered in film festivals across the US.
Bowman grew up in Hillsville, VA where the county seat is located, and has nurtured a life-long fascination with this story. Living now in San Diego, he has spent much of the past seven years putting the film project together, and has called on his cousin, southwest Virginia native Mike Conner, to help create the Appalachian-themed score. Working with his musical partner John Miller, the score will be based on Hobart Smith’s 1942 rendition of The Ballad of Claude Allen.
Conner told us that he recalls hearing talk of the Carroll County Massacre when he was growing up.
“I remember the discussions of these events, and how it was spoken of in hushed, quiet tones whenever the subject came up. It was a bit eerie as a young child to hear the adults speak at times in tones bordering on fear about something that happened so long ago.
I contacted John Miller (Conner & Miller, The Travelers, Eastman String Band) first to discuss the project, how we would record it, and his ideas on the different versions of the song we’d do. John has a real talent for arrangements, engineering, and production and since we’ve worked together on so many projects over the past 4 years, I couldn’t imagine working with anyone else on it.”
The song will be presented in a variety of settings throughout the film. There will be a sparse old time version close to the Hobart Smith recording, a number of old time and bluegrass instrumental takes, and a full-on bluegrass treatment by Conner, Miller, and their band mates in the newly-reborn Travelers, Norman Wright and Kevin Church. Nate Leath will provide fiddle for the many different versions, being tracked now at Miller’s studio, The Tone Room.
A trailer for the film can be seen on Bowman’s web site. He is planning for a Summer 2011 release.
He’s been a Bluegrass Cardinal, a Gentleman and a Legend. Now Norman Wright is ready to be a Traveler again.
The Travelers, which Wright and best friend Kevin Church put together in the late mid-1990s, are back together, booking shows and sifting through material for an album on Patuxent Records. “It’s more than being in a good band,” Norman said during a meeting with the band in the living room of his Falls Church, Va., home. “It’s being in a band with people that you like and who will work together.”
Kevin, the son of banjo stalwart Porter Church, was an obvious choice, and the first person Norman approached after Darren Beachley and Legends of the Potomac suddenly disbanded so Beachley could team up with Barry Scott. Kevin and Norman were in the Country Gentlemen together, quitting on the same day in 1991 to form their own band, which in 1996 became The Travelers. Their 1998 release, Ridin’ the Lines (Hay Holler Records) is still sought after for its poignant writing and smooth harmonies.
But that earlier incarnation couldn’t survive a series of departures and inconsistent commitments, so Norman and Kevin moved on. Neither had trouble lining up gigs as sidemen, Norman on the mandolin and Kevin on banjo. But when the Legends dissolved, after one album, Norman was looking for one more shot to reclaim the magic.
Shortly after the first of the year, Norman and Kevin met with guitarist/arranger John Miller and bass player Mike Conner, who toured together as Conner and Miller and as part of Blue Star, an all-star gospel band including Steve Gulley, Jesse Brock and Dale Ann Bradley. All four wanted to see if something clicked. It must have because a week later they were doing a photo shoot and working up arrangements for studio time that had already been booked.
“Within an hour, it was like an old coat. It was just comfortable,” Mike said about the first meeting. They talked and jammed, and Mike remembers not getting home until 5 a.m. The decision for The Travelers to hit the road again was natural.
John explained:
“When the road is calling you, you have to go. We’ve all seen enough failures to be happy when we see the potential for success. I’m here because of the potential to create some really cool music.”
At the second meeting, which I was invited to attend, Norman made clear that The Travelers were four equal partners, not two best friends and two other musicians. “You’re welcome here as long as you want to be here,” he told John and Mike. “We value your opinion just like we do each other’s.”
Kevin said he enjoyed his years with the Country Gentlemen and with the Gentlemen tribute band, but couldn’t pass up another chance to make music with Norman. “For me, it’s the friendship first, the musicianship second, and being able to play the songs that you like. Everything is working out for the best.”
Here are a couple of audio samples from their upcoming Patuxent CD.
When The Judgment Comes (Rick Lang): [http://traffic.libsyn.com/thegrasscast/judgefinalabrev.mp3]
Born with the Blues (Merle Haggard): [http://traffic.libsyn.com/thegrasscast/born_final_abrev.mp3]
