Buddy Miller Announces First Solo Album In 15 Years, Out September 11
by That Eric Alper
Buddy Miller (artwork)
Buddy Miller is releasing his self-titled album ‘Buddy Miller’ on September 11, his first solo record in fifteen years, out via New West Records.
The 12-track set follows ‘In the Throes,’ his acclaimed 2023 collaboration with his wife Julie Miller, and brings together an extraordinary lineup of guests, Emmylou Harris, The War & Treaty, Lee Ann Womack, Shawn Colvin, Ashley Monroe, Elizabeth Cook, Jim Lauderdale, Dan Penn, and Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams. Miller produced the record himself, with Mike Poole recording and Miller and Alasdair MacKenzie handling the mix. His core band includes Fred Eltringham on drums, Viktor Krauss on bass, Tim Lauer on keyboards, and Steve Fishell on pedal steel, with frequent appearances from The McCrary Sisters woven throughout.
Relix Magazine premiered the album’s lead single, “As Long As I Have You,” which features The McCrary Sisters, a collaboration with real roots for Miller. “I first heard them in 2002 at the Belcourt Theater, where they were singing behind Isaac Freeman, the late, great bass voice of the Fairfield Four, with Mike Henderson on guitar,” Miller says. “A year later, when I started writing Universal United House of Prayer, singing with the McCrary’s became the goal.”
Glide Magazine previously premiered the standout track “Don’t Look Back,” which features Dan Penn, the legendary co-writer of “The Dark End of the Street,” “I’m Your Puppet,” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.” Glide praised the record, noting that few artists command the respect Miller has earned over the last four decades, crediting his career-long foundation of taste, humility, and an uncanny ability to elevate every song he touches.
Miller says the album started as an attempt at a straightforward country soul record, but the direction shifted as he kept returning to songs his wife Julie had written that he wanted to include. He worked through roughly fifty possible songs before narrowing them down to the final twelve, a selection that includes an early Temptations hit, a Jesse Winchester track, and the standout “Till the Wheels Come Off,” written about Buddy and Julie themselves by Ashley Monroe, Elizabeth Cook, Angaleena Presley, and Meg McRee.
Miller is Americana Music royalty and a Grammy Award winner, named “Artist of the Decade” by No Depression and “Instrumentalist of the Year” multiple times by the Americana Music Association. As a producer and guitarist, he’s worked with Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, John Fogerty, Solomon Burke, Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin, Frank Black of the Pixies, and Steve Earle, among many others. He also served on the musical team for ABC’s “Nashville” alongside T Bone Burnett, later becoming the show’s Executive Music Producer after Burnett’s departure, and he co-hosts “The Buddy & Jim Show” on SiriusXM with longtime friend Jim Lauderdale.
‘Buddy Miller’ Track Listing:
As Long as I Have You You Never Really Get Over It (with Shawn Colvin) Strange Desire (with Jim Lauderdale) Ruby Hang On (with Regina McCrary) Don’t Look Back (with Dan Penn) Not Enough Time to Change Losers’ Celebration Lay Down the Burden of Your Heart (with The War & Treaty) Stop Me (with Lee Ann Womack) Till the Wheels Come Off (with Ashley Monroe and Elizabeth Cook) The Inner Sanctum of God (with Emmylou Harris and Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams) Masterpiece in the Sand
