[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 65 (Thursday, April 30, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4955-S4956]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO BUDDY AND JULIE MILLER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Marcelle and I have gotten to know Buddy 
and Julie Miller over the years--especially with their friend of ours, 
Emmy Lou Harris. So many times when I have traveled I have listened to 
Buddy and Julie's music on my headphones and one of the great thrills I 
had was when they dedicated a song to Marcelle and me years ago at the 
Birchmere.
  The Wall Street Journal this week wrote an excellent article about 
the ``first couple of Americana.'' I ask unanimous consent that it be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 28, 2009]

Buddy and Julie Miller: First Couple of Americana Sings of Setbacks and 
                                Sorrows

                            (By Barry Mazor)

       Nashville--By virtue of their broad musical 
     accomplishments, Buddy and Julie Miller have essentially 
     reigned since the mid-1990s as the unpretentious but royal 
     couple of Americana music, that lovably motley modern-roots 
     music genre derived from the American music traditions of 
     country, folk, gospel, roots rock and more. Their CDs, 
     whether recorded together or individually, have consistently 
     garnered high praise for both the songs they write for them 
     and for the often touching, sometimes feisty country-soul 
     delivery. Their long-incubating new release, ``Written In 
     Chalk'' (New West Records), is no different in that regard.
       Songs of theirs have been recorded by everyone from country 
     hit makers Lee Ann Womack, Patty Loveless, the Dixie Chicks 
     and Dierks Bentley, to jazz great Jimmy Scott. Mr. Miller was 
     seen bringing his always coveted, tasteful guitar work behind 
     Alison Krauss and Robert Plant on this year's Grammy Awards 
     show, as he did throughout their recent tour of major arenas. 
     (Led Zeppelin veteran Mr. Plant performs a comic duet with 
     Mr. Miller on the

[[Page S4956]]

     new release.) And Mr. Miller has produced records for Solomon 
     Burke, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Allison Moorer.
       Still, Mr. Miller, 56, and the more flamboyant Mrs. Miller, 
     52, are by temperament genuinely modest, and each, during 
     separate recent interviews, remarked on being taken aback by 
     the international outpouring of good wishes and concern that 
     followed Mr. Miller's triple-bypass surgery. He'd felt a 
     heart attack coming on after a Feb. 19 performance with 
     Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin in Baltimore.
       ``The first month was rough; then it got better,'' Mr. 
     Miller noted. ``I feel like I'd been beaten with baseball 
     bats by a couple of the Sopranos, but I'm doing good. I've 
     got a free pass to rest--no dates until June.
       ``You know, after the heart attack and surgery, a side 
     effect was that all my senses were really heightened. For a 
     week or so, I could smell somebody down the hall and my 
     hearing was really heightened. And that kind of beautiful 
     note that John Deaderick plays on keyboards on the record, 
     the kind that really hurts you, would make me start weeping 
     uncontrollably. It was kind of cool; I was hoping I could 
     hold on to part of that--although it wouldn't be so good on 
     stage!''
       Nine of the dozen songs on ``Written In Chalk'' were 
     written by Mrs. Miller, and--some comic change-ups and love 
     songs with attitude aside--most of them concern loss or 
     learning to be reconciled with personal setbacks, as titles 
     such as ``Everytime We Say Goodbye'' and ``Hush, Sorrow'' 
     suggest. As many fans of the Millers are generally aware, 
     Mrs. Miller has not been seen on stage harmonizing with Mr. 
     Miller or engaging in their George Burns-Gracie Allen style 
     badinage for the past five years. She's been sidelined by the 
     severely exhausting, painful condition fibromyalgia and by 
     the sudden loss of her brother, killed when he was struck by 
     lightning. Some of the new songs that seem most to reflect 
     that experience in particular were, in truth, composed before 
     the event.
       ``One of the things that sort of broke me,'' Mrs. Miller 
     recalls, ``was that I went to Texas to be with my mother 
     after my brother died, and when she asked about the record 
     I'd been working on for half a year before that, I couldn't 
     remember one single thing about it, not a note. When I came 
     back to Nashville and found the notebook with those songs in 
     it, they were all so strangely prophetic that it freaked me 
     out.''
       As a practical matter, Mr. Miller's packed schedule and 
     Mrs. Miller's physical restrictions made it difficult to get 
     this record made, delayed it, and inevitably affected the 
     nature of their collaboration on it. There are, for instance, 
     fewer outright duets on the record than on previous joint 
     efforts.
       ``I worked on this so long, starting and stopping in 
     between tours,'' Mr. Miller recalls, ``that it was hard to 
     gain perspective on it. It started out as her record, but she 
     couldn't finish it, and it went back and forth. It's 
     difficult for Julie to start and stop; she kind of gives 
     everything together, everything she's got. So she would just 
     get started sometimes and I'd have to go back on the road, 
     which was really, really difficult for her--and that went on 
     for years.''
       ``It's funny,'' Mrs. Miller says. ``We live just a few 
     blocks from Music Row, where people make appointments to meet 
     and write songs for three hours. But I have to get totally 
     lost in my soul and go oblivious to time and space and 
     surroundings--and Buddy's the only person I can do that with. 
     But he's been so busy and structured, and me so completely 
     not. Unless I'm pressured, it's like I have my own radio 
     station going that I can just tune into for songs; it's like 
     whoever is doing the songwriting in me is playing, and three 
     or four years old. Once you let them know they have to do it, 
     they can't handle it.''
       It's more than a little surprising, but Mrs. Miller has not 
     actually heard the released ``Written In Chalk'' CD. ``Is 
     that ridiculous?'' she asked. ``I never listen to anything 
     I'm on after it's recorded, because I'm always tormented; 
     I'll wish there was something I hadn't done.'' With the 
     record overdue, Mr. Miller finished mixing the recordings in 
     their state-of-the-art home-based studio, as he would most of 
     the time--but to speed getting the job done at last, he did 
     it with headphones on, so Mrs. Miller couldn't hear the sonic 
     calls he was making, a source, they both admit, of some 
     tension.
       Mrs. Miller, however, characterizes her husband as ``one of 
     the all-time great singers in the universe, with a unique 
     sound--strong yet feeling very deeply, and emotionally 
     vulnerable.'' And Mr. Miller says that the songs his wife 
     writes ``are unique, not contrived; they come from such a 
     pure place. She never writes anything that hasn't come from 
     somebody's experience that's affected her. There's a place of 
     innocence and depth at the same time that really gets me.''
       Mr. Miller hopes, he says, that the many songs his wife has 
     backed up and stored will still yield an outright Julie 
     Miller album sometime soon, but that's far from a foregone 
     conclusion. He, meanwhile, is already booked to finish 
     producing a gospel CD for Patty Griffin, to return as musical 
     director of the Fall Americana Music Awards, and then to get 
     to work on a record project with the jazz- and country-
     influenced Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot.
       Whatever (and whenever) the musical outcomes, the Millers 
     can be sure that there's an audience waiting expectantly--
     with considerable love.

                          ____________________