by Erling Friis-Baastad

On the cover of Mikel Miller’s new CD, Rounders’ Road, we see the Yukon
songwriter/singer strolling away from us down an empty stretch of some wilderness
road, guitar in hand.  Obviously, someone had to have passed his way before, if only to build the road, but the album cover suggests Miller now has this particular thoroughfare all to himself.And that suits him just fine. The last time Miller did anything because the crowd was doing it was way back in high school, when he picked up a guitar because his friends were beginning to pick and strum.  He’s pretty much taken the other road ever since and that has made all the difference.
He’s not rich or famous, but his soul must be in pretty good shape because he can laugh, a lot.“I never liked the Beatles. I never liked rock and roll. I went down a different path. I listened to the Beatles and I tried to listen to the Rolling Stones, but I got sidetracked by John Coltrane and Charlie Parker…“My dad was a jazz freak so I grew up with old Fats Waller stuff, Ella Fitzgerald…“Somewhere in the ‘60s were Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, and I gravitated toward Phil Ochs because he had a darker side to his writing. Dylan could be vague.  Ochs would point a finger and say, ‘This guy did it.’”  How appropriate. Dylan became a celebrity, earned big bucks for his record company. Ochs died young, a suicide — angry, uncompromising and a legend.Ochs was never just politically correct.  He was truly engaged, furious with the war-mongering and profit-addled establishment, and just as livid about those who thrived off the status quo, while paying lip-service to left-wing virtues.Miller recalls providing the opening act for Phil Ochs at Scarborough College back during the FLQ crisis. “I think most of the audience was RCMP,” he laughs.
As Miller reminisces, the names of the mentors he mentions become gradually and
steadily less familiar. Beside the last of them, even Phil Ochs appears like well-hyped Elton John.“In 1964, I saw Rambling Jack Elliot,” says Miller, drawing his hero’s name out for emphasis. “And I was just totally blown away by his freeness on stage. “In his set, he would do a Ray Charles tune. He would do a Billie Holiday tune.  And he would do an old Woody Guthrie,and you would think, ‘Where’s the link?  “He is still the link.”   Jerry Jeff Walker came next. “I was hitch-hiking through the ‘60s,” says Miller. Somewhere in Connecticut, he encountered Walker who had just written Mr. Bojangles.  Miller was staggered by Walker’s music, wildness and the outrageous stories.  “The stories were 100 per cent true,” he marvels.  Miller hitched on and a few years later was busking on some Denver street corner beside a bar when singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt walked up to him.  “He asked if he could play my guitar and sing me a song. So I said, ‘Sure.’  “And then I sang a song and then he said, ‘Let’s go for a beer.’ You know how things worked back then.  “And that’s what it was: It was three days of learning and listening to a man who wrote great songs. “You can listen to his lyrics of I’ll Be Here In The Morning that’s on (Rounders’ Road). The words are really simple. The arrangement’s simple, but the words sure are pretty.  “He can paint pictures. I like people who can paint pictures with their words.”Van Zandt, who died of complications from hip surgery at the age of 52, is one of the reasons Miller wound up in the Yukon.  Raised in Ontario, in a town he prefers not to even think about, and later based in Montreal, Miller had wandered west to attend the Vancouver Folk Festival in 1979. Van Zandt was there, as was Utah Phillips whom cowboy-hatted Miller recalls having said, “Never wear a hat that’s got more character than you.”  Festival over, Miller decided to visit a musician friend who was playing up north at some bar called the Kopper King.   He caught a ride heading to Dawson Creek, but his benefactor’s car blew up in Lytton. So he hitched to Williams Lake and caught a freight through to Fort Nelson.  “No one told me that the trains didn’t go to the Yukon. I just assumed they would.”  At Fort Nelson, he was greeted by the police, informed of the illegality of his mode of travel, and jailed overnight. The next day he hitched on to Whitehorse.   All the delays en route meant Miller’s friend had gone from the K.K. by the time the singer arrived, but the now-broke Miller got lucky:  There was an ad posted in the manpower office. They were looking for a musician to play at the newly renovated Edgewater.  Over the next couple years, he was in
and out of the Yukon. He played his first Frostbite in 1980.  By 1981, it became obvious that he would be foolish to resist the territory’s blandishments any longer and Miller hung his hat in the North.  So here he is, middle aged, balding, and the least-known of the string of dedicated, honest singer/songwriters whom he respects.   And the gap between the rich and Miller is getting wider all the time; he’ll be lucky to make expenses on Rounders’ Road, his third album and best yet — his paean to going one’s own way.  If he could do it all over again, would he do anything differently? “I have misgivings, but I don’t have regrets. I’d just find a new way to make the same mistakes,” he laughs. From wherever they are, Van Zandt and Ochs are surely cheering him on.