With five “solo” country albums between them, Buddy and Julie Miller have put together a solid debut effort as a duo. Buddy & Julie Miller is a showcase of the couple’s deep and wide acquaintance with American vernacular music.
The Millers are a hard-country act of the kind that today’s “country” radio stations won’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Both sing with a twang so thick you could cut it with a knife and eat it with your grits for breakfast. They’re also supremely talented as writers, performers and producers of their own recordings (and Buddy is in demand as a guitarist and producer), as this CD attests.
Julie wrote most of the 11 songs on the album, co-writing one with Buddy. Covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips and Richard Thompson are further evidence of their good taste and good music sense.
Thompson’s “Keep Your Distance” works very well as a duet and as an opening track, although the Millers’ respectful cover doesn’t really come to full life until they cut loose on the final chorus. Certainly more than a handful of Thompson’s songs have potential as country songs, and “Keep Your Distance,” with its broken-heart-on-the-sleeve theme and uncomplicated melody, is a compelling candidate for alt-country treatment. Miller wisely refrains from any guitar workouts here, giving the instrumental break to Phil Madeira on the B-3 organ.
The other two covers are more likely bits of Americana. Dylan’s semi-obscure “Wallflower,” a loose-limbed hoedown waltz, is best known for the version His Bobness cut with Doug Sahm back in the ’70s. The Millers, as the kind of folks you just know were misfits in their teens, give it extra poignancy without overloading it with sentiment. Utah Phillips’ mountain-folk style “Rock Salt and Nails” is a priceless song that deserves to be discovered by each new generation of listeners. Buddy and Julie’s high-lonesome vocal interpretation is perfect.
The hillbilly feel of “Rock Salt” fits perfectly with a couple of Julie’s songs: “Forever Has Come to an End” is a dead-on replica of a Carter Family song, with Emmylou Harris adding the third voice; and “Little Darlin’,” an electrified bluegrass number, could have been written by the Stanley Brothers. It also wouldn’t be out of place on a ’60s record by George Jones and Tammy Wynette or Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton.
A couple of acoustic ballads, “That’s Just How She Cries” and “Holding Up the Sky,” are the kind of songs that Julie is best known for. Don’t be surprised to see one of these covered by the likes of an Emmylou or a Mary Chapin Carpenter. “Rachel,” Julie’s tribute to one of the victims of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, is unexpectedly set to a mid-tempo country shuffle, which keeps it from descending into maudlin territory.
The album is rounded out by three blustery Southern-style rockers, “The River’s Gonna Run,” “You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast” and “Dirty Water.” They’re great vehicles for Buddy’s guitar-playing skills. “River” is quite effective in its vocal arrangement, with the two singing around and over each other in something between a duet and counterpoint. Both “River” and “Heart Beat” feature NRBQ’s Joey Spampinato on bass and Spyboy’s Brady Blade on drums, a powerful combination.
Buddy & Julie is an impressive showcase of the couple’s grasp of all kinds of country and country-rock, surely one of the best alternative-country recordings of the year by two impressive and honest musical talents.
(HighTone, 2001)
