Bill Miller - Biography
By J Poet
Bill Miller is a Mohican singer/songwriter, one of the first Native American artists to gather a mainstream following. Miller’s songs are deeply spiritual and detail the everyday lives of Native people in a manner that all musical tastes and races can enjoy. His list of achievements is distinctive, as he was one of the first Native American artists signed to a major label. In 2004, he won a Grammy for Cedar Dream Songs (2004 Paras), an album that features his flute playing in arrangements that combine Native, rock and new age textures.
Miller was born in 1955 and grew up in a large family, dominated by an alcoholic father—something he would touch on later in his songs. He grew up on the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation in Wisconsin and found solace in music at an early age. He took part in traditional Mohawk ceremonies—Mohawk is an English version of Mahicanuk: People From Where The Waters Are Never Still—and, like most kids his age, listened to AM radio in the ‘60s. Miller was introverted and showed no desire to sing, but he loved the sound of surf music. He picked up guitar when he was 12-years-old, taught himself to play and performed in teen rock cover bands. When he decided to do music full-time, Miller dropped out of college to join a group that played covers of Stones and Zeppelin tunes—two of his favorite bands. He also learned how to play traditional Native flute.
In the ‘70s Miller got more serious about songwriting. He unplugged and started playing folk clubs, spending a decade on the road. During this time he made several self-produced albums that were later released by Vanguard Records on CD in 2000. These titles included The Art of Survival; Loon, Mountain and Moon; and Reservation Road, which was a recorded live set from these days.
After moving to Nashville and co-writing songs with Nanci
Griffith, Peter Rowan and Kim Carnes, Miller was “discovered” by Michael Martin Murphy, who helped Miller get a deal with Warner Western, a short lived logo dedicated to the roots music of the American West. He was the one Indian among the cowboys.
Miller’s three Warner albums—The Red Road (1993 Warner); Raven in the Snow (1995 Reprise); and Native Suite (1996 Warner), a flute-dominated collaboration with Robert Mirabal—brought his music to mainstream audiences and earned critical raves. In 1994, Tori Amos invited Miller to open a string of dates on her Under the Pink tour after falling in love with The Red Road.
When Warner folded its western label, Miller signed with Vanguard and created Ghostdance (1999 Vanguard), a powerful collection of songs that reference the shamanistic dreams of the medicine man Wawoka, who thought the Ghostdance would bring Indians and whites together. The album won five Nammys at the 2000 Native American Music Awards, including Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, and Song of the Year. Vanguard also released a Miller “best of” collection drawn mostly from his earlier works, entitled Spirit Songs (2004 Vanguard).
Miller continues to tour and record in the new century. His most recent albums are A Sacred Gift (2002 Paras) Spirit Rain (2002 Paras) and the Grammy award-winning Cedar Dream Songs (2004 Paras). In 2007, he contributed production and instrumentation to “Everybody’s Brother,” the title track of Billy Joe Shaver’s album for Compadre Records.
