Opening for The War and Treaty at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Buddy Miller explained how he came to crash the party and thanked the headliners and support Avery Sunshine for indulging him. Miller had a call from Don Was around ten years ago telling him about a hot new band and as “you always listen to Don Was” he checked them out, loved what he heard, enthused about them to everyone he met and got them a slot in AmericanaFest. Since then, the husband and wife duo (which might be another point of connection for Miller) have gone from strength to strength.
Backed up by a crack band comprising Austin Hope (cello, keys, drums), Steve Fisher (pedal steel), Viktor Krauss (bass) and Regina McCrary (vocals, tambourine), Miller blew up a storm in a manner you rarely get from a third on the bill.
Opening up with his classic Gasoline And Matches, the performance was marked by both intensity and economy as well as a real sense of dynamics. Miller just released his latest, self-titled, album on New West records and he told us we would be hearing songs from that. The first of these was Stop Me, which combines country and gospel with the blending of Miller’s plaintive vocal and McCrary’s soulful tone, eking out the meaning from a tale of redemption.
Next up is As Long As I Have You, which opens the album and the band leans into the blues/ soul content of the tune with Miller and McCrary bringing out the love and emption in the lyric benefitting from the experience of having played together for so long.
Miller tells the audience that his new record features several co-writes with his wife Julie, whose name generates warm applause from the crowd. She has suffered losses of friends and family and had expressed this in a song which, as Miller tells it, he helped her finish off. You Never Really Get Over It is as personal and emotional as you’d expect from that combination and evokes that sense of personal desolation that grief can bring. Miller doubles down on the mood with Julie’s All My Tears, famously covered by Emmylou Harris. There is always a thread of faith running through the Millers’ songs and it shines through in this performance.
Perhaps feeling the audience has been through the emotional wringer enough, Miller tells us that McCrary will be covering Dan Penn’s part on their version of Smokey Robinson and Ronald White’s Don’t Look Back. Originally performed by The Temptations, the song has a positivity enhanced by the band’s joyous performance, which provides a well-received uplift. After introducing the band, Miller closes out the set with a funky rendition of Julie’s Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go, another of their songs that has found favour with other performers. The band’s take punches the song’s rhythms and at its close brings the Ryman to its feet.
It’s only been 30 minutes but feels like a show in its own right.
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