John R. Miller's Acid Americana Arcade: Songwriting, Nashville, & the Unknown | CONTRARY WESTERN

This day-in-the-life in Nashville follows the singer-songwriter John R. Miller through town as he prepares to tour his new record “Heat Comes Down” with his partner Chloe Edmonstone and his live band.

It’s a solo stop at a record store bar in East Nashville. Waxing existential about ASTEROIDS at a bowling alley arcade, sharing psychedelic insights on life and time from his workshop-garage just north of Nashville. It’s John talking songwriting, beginner mind, and the meaning we find in trying to fix things we can’t always fix. It’s a day that winds down with John warming up for an AmericanaFest showcase, playing a stripped-down version of “Basements” and living room takes of “Ditcher” and “Smokestacks On The Skyline” with Chloe on fiddle and singing harmony vocals.

Heading south toward Nashville to drop off and autograph copies of his latest album at Vinyl Tap, John reflects on two decades of making music and songwriting—how every time trying to write a song is like the first time. How no matter when or where he is—whether West Virginia as a kid and twenty-something or now, here in Nashville as a thirty-something—he finds himself alone in another basement trying to write songs.

“There’s a pretty funny line in the last Jerry Jeff Walker record ["It’s About Time"], where he’s talking about making a life writing songs,” John says and continues citing the songwriter who was part of the 1970s country music scene that included Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Michael Martin Murphey, and others who found creative freedom in Texas. “‘It’s not very hard. It’s like putting roller skates on a bear.’ That’s the analogy he gives us,” John tells us.

Over the years John has shared stages with country and Americana poet-songwriters like Robert Earl Keen, Tyler Childers, and Sierra Ferrell, to name a few. Childers, who’s covered and recorded John’s song “Coming Down,” called his buddy “a well-traveled wordsmith.” But regardless of tour credits or shoutouts from other country, contrary, or Americana musicians, it’s John’s dedication to daily process, songwriting, and picking that makes this hang and others with John effortless and memorable—and ultimately inspiring. Lately, he’s been devoting more and more time to the fiddle and it shows, as he and Chloe trade tunes like “Possum on a Rail” in their living room before hitting The Vinyl Lounge to play songs from “Heat Comes Down,” “Depreciated,” and “The Trouble You Follow.”

Lost but finding his way through Inglewood and East Nashville, John finishes recalling the Jerry Jeff Walker line. “You just do it and do it and do it, and soon the bear skates away. Seems like this completely impossible act. I basically have to relearn how to do it every f★★king time I sit down.”

Driving along the Spring Hill Cemetery, John reminds us of some of the country and bluegrass legends buried where Nashville-proper shifts into Madison, Tennessee. “Jimmy Martin’s in there. John Hartford is all the way in the back. It’s really wild to me that so many of the people that I’ve spent so much time listening to in my life—that’s where they spend their time now,” he says of folks who likely also spent their time trying to relearn how to do the thing every single time they sat down—in basements or otherwise.

“Kitty Wells is in there somewhere, but I haven‘t found hers,” John says as he pulls into Eastside Bowl to kill some time in the arcade, showing us how much life can be lived and shared in a single day.

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DIRECTED & PRODUCED BY CONTRARY WESTERN

Director of Photography: Kip Kubin
Gaffer and Photographer: Noah Cordell
Colorist: Austin Lott
Designer: Arlie Birket
Audio Engineer: Josh Owen