A Kennesaw singer-songwriter who played his first show in Ellijay to good response last year will soon return to the George Link Jr. Gilmer Arts Playhouse with a new CD in tow.
Mark Miller and Band perform at the playhouse Saturday, Sept 10, at 7 p.m.
“I try to write songs based on my own life,” said Miller. “I call it Americana, which crosses country, bluegrass, soul and roots music. Classic country is where I grew up, and I always have some flavors of that throughout the show.”
Miller’s new album, “Standing On Shoulders,” is a collection of story songs, many of which are drawn from real-life happenings he learned of through family stories and mementoes. The songs started coming together after the sudden passing of his father, Herman Miller, who was once a traveling gospel singer, and are largely drawn from stories Miller heard about ancestors on his dad’s side of the family.
“My father was sort of the family historian, and he passed away pretty quickly. He contracted COVID, and, within a month, was gone. He was in great health, but it just took him down,” Miller said. “I kept finding all these things like pictures, letters, Civil War documents and discharge papers. It started me on a quest to sort of piece together as much as I could.”
Tragedy was a constant in the tales of “Civil War battles, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, murder, suicide, drownings, victory and defeat,” Miller learned. The songwriter was fortunate to have a direct link to an older generation in two of his dad’s second cousins, both of whom are now in their 80s.
“They knew quite a bit (of details) and helped me put some stuff together,” he said. “I was very close to my dad. I did this as a way to process through the grief and loss and maybe make, in some form, a record for my children and their children.”
The song “Rebel Blue” is built around the service of Miller’s 3x-great-grandfather and other family members in the Civil War. Miller’s family has been rooted in Henry County since the early 1800s, and, between his father’s and mother’s sides, a total of seven ancestors fought in the war.
“I’m rebel blue and confused. What have I done what have I lived through? My hands to the plow, I’m forgetting the rest. But I can’t get the beating drums out of my chest,” Miller sings about a soldier who survived the carnage, but can’t leave the memories of what he lived through behind.
The album’s title track looks at the hard life of Miller’s great-grandfather, a blacksmith who “never did read and could barely write his name, but there wasn’t a horse around he could not tame.”
“He was kind of a legendary figure, but he died about eight years before I was born,” Miller said. “(Aside from being) a blacksmith, he also had a cotton gin, a gristmill and a sawmill. From stories I’ve heard, he was a larger than life kind of guy — really gruff, but a tender-hearted person.”
Miller closes the album with a spare, peaceful rendition of Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents.” That song, which proudly states that “everything is done in a Southern accent, where I come from,” has long been a favorite and just sat well with the others, he noted.
“It’s one that I’ve done for a long time, and I do it a little bit differently. I’ve always had good feedback on it, and always felt connected to it,” Miller said. “It sort of served as the appropriate tie-up for what I was saying — ‘this is where I come from.’”
Miller recorded the new album in Ellijay at the Blue Betty Studio run by Robin Salmon, of roots rock group Surrender Hill. Salmon produced the album, and he and Miller wrote several of its tracks together.
“Robin is the one that approached me and said, ‘You need to make a record out of all this,’ because he kind of knew what I was doing as far as the writing process,” Miller said. “We just jumped on it, and everything took about six months from start to finish.”
Miller and his band will perform two sets at the upcoming playhouse show. The singer and guitarist will be joined by bandmates David Ellis (mandolin, banjo, dobro), Drew Lawson (upright bass) and Jeff Taylor (keyboards, organ, accordion). Taylor will travel from Nashville, Tenn., where he’s a member of the Time Jumpers and has performed with such artists as Bob Dylan, Vince Gill, and Ricky Skaggs.
“It’s going to be a pretty smoking band,” Miller said.
Miller played to sold-out rooms at both the CD prerelease and release shows at MadLife Stage and Studio in Woodstock and Eddie’s Attic, the venerable Decatur club known for hosting regionally and nationally known singer/songwriters.
“This show will be kind of our North Georgia mountains release,” Miller said.