"Making a future out of the past"   by Michael Hale

  “Now, it’s a point of pride. I just find something I want  to do, and find a way to get it done.” (miller)
 
Mikel Miller chose his path in life early, and he is sticking to it. He may not be traveling the easiest road, and it may not be the prettiest route, but it’s his road, and he’ll take it over any other. Music is a big part of that journey for Miller, and five albums into his career, he isn’t showing any signs of letting up.All Roads, his latest effort, was released in August, and he plans to embark on a tour in the spring. Talking over the bustle of the crowded Whitehorse coffee shop earlier this week, he struggled to explain what fuels his desire to spend thousands of dollars of his own money to record and produce CDs. “It’s not an ego thing,” Miller said, stirring his hot chocolate. “I don’t expect to make money. It’s more the fun of doing it. “I just put something down, feel good about it and move on.” “Moving on” usually entails long car rides between folk festivals, scraping by and trying to hawk enough albums to break even.
It isn’t what some would term an ideal life, but it suits Miller just fine. Besides, if he wasn’t touring, he’d still be on the road. Travelling has been an addiction of his since he “jumped his first freight at the age of 14,” he explained. Whatever fever or rush sunk into his skin that day, as the miles rumbled past, is still with him. Only now, he passes his wanderlust off as a necessary part of his job. He had planned to set out on a tour this fall, but money — or the lack thereof — put a crimp in those plans. So, he decided to hunker down for the winter and wait for spring. Money is a constant struggle for him, as it is with most musicians, and this year has been particularly tough. But a slim wallet is just another chance to find a story worth telling. “I’ll give you an example of the irony I run into all the time,” he says.
Last spring, his chev died. Midway through the album with plans to tour, a busted ride is a hell of blow. So, he placed an ad in a local paper — “Musician looking for a good ride at the right price.” It had to be able to carry lots of gear and serve as a hotel in a pinch. A couple of weeks later, he got a call from a man looking to get rid of car (got to get it out of the wife's strawberry patch!) that had been in his yard for a couple of years. When the singer saw the car, he fell in love, but he knew it was out of his league. It was a white 1985 Cadillac Fleetwood. Miller was thinking in the hundreds of dollars and this car was obviously worth $3,000 or $4,000. Still, he had to hear it go, just for fun. So, he and the owner threw a battery in it, cranked it up and listened to it rumble. It was a beautiful thing, which just made Miller’s ache worse. So, he bit the bullet and asked, ‘How much?’
“Fifty bucks gets it out of the driveway, and a couple hundred buck payments down the road,” the man said. So, an hour after arriving and $50 poorer, the musician drove the Cadillac home. “So, here I am in the worst financial shape I’ve been in in years, and now I own a Cadillac!” Those are the kind of things that happen to Miller. Every time it gets bad, it gets good. That sense of resigned optimism runs throughout All Roads. The new album is an acoustic affair, and only two songs are his. The rest of the tracks are covers he has played for years in his live shows, but which never made it on an album. There are a few tracks from longtime friend, Norm Hacking, four Townes Van Zandt songs and a Fred Eaglesmith original. It’s a tribute album, of sorts, that takes Miller back to his beginnings. “I picked artists who don’t make a lot of money from their music,” said Miller. “I was also influenced by guys like Jimmy Buffet, but he makes lots of money. “So, I sat back and said, ‘Let’s take broke singer-songwriters, by a broke singer-songwriter, and do a thank-you album.”
This CD is the least expensive he’s ever made, in part because it’s acoustic, but also because he is getting more experienced. The first full-length CD, The Key, took about two years to make, including 180 hours of studio time. Rounders’ Road took three weeks altogether, with about 62 hours of studio time. All Roads was hammered together with only 42 hours of studio time. If not for funding glitches, it could have been put together in a matter of days. After Rounders’ Road, which had six musicians and significant production, Miller wanted to pare down. All Roads is a straightforward country folk album. Lost love, drinking problems and gamblers all make appearances on the CD. But there’s no hint of cliché when the words have filtered through the singer’s whisky-timbered vocals. It’s an album that will stick with the listener hours after the last song is over. Putting the whole thing together was simple, by the musician’s own admission. He walked into a Toronto studio one day, sat down for three hours, and hammered out over 20 one-offs. A few months later, he did the same thing back in Whitehorse. He added some bass and some backing vocals and cobbled All Roads together.
For all its simplicity, though, the album is as modern as it gets, in some ways. Sales, touring dates and connections with fans are all dependent on the internet. Even much of his airtime comes from internet radio stations that stream more obscure tunes 24 hours a day. Miller doesn’t make any money off those streamed stations, but he figures every time his song is heard it’s a chance to sell a record. So, he sells his music online, where he gets requests from all over Canada and Europe. He’s even has fans in the Ukraine. How those people heard his music he’ll never know, but there it was on one of those “four-dollar royalty cheques” he gets every few months. A station in Ukraine played one of his songs, and he was being paid for the exposure. Still, he isn’t expecting to get rich. Breaking even would be nice, though.
To help things along, Miller is packaging his CDs for the Christmas season: any one title for $15, two for $20 and three for $25. All of his recording are available online at http://mikelmiller.polarcom.com, or in all the local record stores. Sales are steady and getting exposure down south is getting easier, he said. All the press about bands and artists like the Undertakin’ Daddies and Kim Barlow is opening doors in markets Yukon artists never had access to before. There is even a Yukoner on the board of FACTOR, a Canadian grant source for recording musicians. The singer credits the work of RAIYA and its director, Mark Smith, for helping local artists find a niche in the rest of Canada. That exposure helps when it comes to applying for grants or looking for gigs, said Miller, who has never received a grant, and doubts he ever will. For years, he tried to jump through all the hoops, but after a couple albums, he just stopped trying. “Now, it’s a point of pride. I just find something I want to do, and find a way to get it done.” The lack of funding isn’t deterring the artist from setting his sights high for the next project. “I want to do a real double-live album. People don’t do those anymore. I want to leave all the stories in, all the talking between songs.” He hopes to record a bunch of his shows on the spring tour and use those for the project. After that, who knows?
One thing is for sure, though, Miller doesn’t intend to give up on the music business anytime soon. “If I quit, I’d have to get a job, wouldn’t I?”
And any job that doesn’t include travelling, singing and a guitar just can’t be found along the roads Miller travels.