Americana Artist John R. Miller Does the Work to Make Music Sound Easy

John R. Miller, by Thomas Crabtree

The Nashville-based singer will play The Saturn Bar on Wednesday night.

“When sleep don’t come I just get up / sit out at the table,” John R. Miller sings, and it’s probably true. If it isn’t, it sure sounds like it is when the Americana artist performs “Insomnia Blues” on his 2023 album Heat Comes Down. His plainspoken songs make many of the lyrics sound like things he’d say if he didn’t have a guitar to help him turn them into music.

Miller will perform at the Saturn Bar on Wednesday night when he’ll open for The Lostines.

Miller is West Virginia-born and Nashville-based, which translates to a lot of music that sounds honest from a city that knows how to present it. The ease in his music makes the lovely moments like “Harpers Ferry Moon” seem lovelier, and as a whole Miller’s body of work feels like it reflects a value structure and not simply a collection of songs. He makes a case for tradition, but more in how he lives in the world than how the world ought to be.

His isn’t simply the side of a mountain, though. “Conspiracies, Cults & UFOs” is the product of listening to “Coast 2 Coast AM with Art Bell,” the after-hours radio show that sounds like a crowd-sourced X-Files.

“It was a late-night road companion for quite a few years, especially early in my touring days with bands,” Miller says in an email interview.

We “talked” via email about songwriting, The Deslondes, and how his Fireside Sessions fit into his body of work. Those EPs feature him playing his songs on his own or with a guest, and they likely foreshadow what we’ll see Wednesday.

Heat Comes Down was produced by Andrija Tokic and The Deslondes’ John James Tourville. Was Tourville involved as a result of your relationship with The Deslondes, or did your connection to The Deslondes come as a result of the album?

I’d been a fan of the Deslondes since their first record, and I had worked with Andrija and John James individually before on separate projects. Had met a couple of the Deslondes guys through various mutual friends over the years.

I knew John James and Andrija worked a lot together and loved their taste and production approach, so I called up JJ to see how he’d feel about doing the album together and fortunately they were both down.

I admire the effortless quality of your songs. There’s nothing showy about them, but they seem complete and individual anyway. How much work does it take to get a song to sound that easy?

Every song kind of takes its own course; some come together pretty quick and complete, but most of the time after initially dumping a bunch of words on paper I tend to have a decent amount of editing to do. It’s always the act of trying to be the most effective at whatever the song’s trying to convey, with the least amount of wording or exposition getting in the way.

Do you think at all about how your music fits into the moment we live in?

Not really… I’ve never really been able to fit into any moment, and thinking too much about it is probably an unnecessary distraction. I just try to make sure I actually believe what I’m saying, and that (hopefully) it’s worth saying it. And that the music is interesting to me. Those are the ideals, anyway.

How do the Fireside Sessions fit in with the rest of your body of work?

They’re just kind of intended to be companion pieces to the last two records, and the chance to take a different approach to some songs, include some covers and some friends.

What are you working on now?

There’s a new full-length record tracked, and that should be released sometime in 2026. Right now I’m working on the groundwork for the one after that in my little home studio, as well as some side-road musical experimenting. Playing drums a lot too, and trying to explore new approaches to making stuff. It’s been a lot of fun lately!