BUDDY MILLER : BUDDY MILLER

1. As Long As I Have You
2. You Never Really Get Over It (with Shawn Colvin)
3. Strange Desire (with Jim Lauderdale)
4. Ruby Hang On (with Regina McCrary)
5. Don't Look Back (with Dan Penn)
6. Not Enough Time To Change
7. Losers' Celebration
8. Lay Down The Burden Of Your Heart (with The War And Treaty)
9. Stop Me (with Lee Ann Womack)
10. Till The Wheels Come Off (with Ashley Monroe & Elizabeth Cook)
11. The Inner Sanctum Of God (with Emmylou Harris, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams)
12. Masterpiece In The Sand

Label : New West Records

Length : 42:16

Release Date : September 11, 2026

Review (Written In Music) : Voor Buddy Miller keer ik even terug naar de jaren negentig, in de concertzaal van het AB in Brussel werd de laatste fase ingezet van jarenlange verbouwingwerken. Er werd destijds uitgeweken naar het Lunatheater, voor de interessantste intimistische concerten moest je in de AB Bellevueclub zijn. De bescheiden gelagzaal van de Geuze brouwerij met nauwelijks plaats voor een podium. In de periode tussen 1992 en 1995 beleefden we er concerten van Iain Matthews, Vince Bell, Larry McNally, Butch Hancock. In 1995 was het de beurt aan Buddy Miller, op een novemberavond enkele dagen na de passage van Townes Van Zandt waren we samen met een handvol fans getuige van de gitarist troubadour die er samen met Julie Miller zijn solodebuut voorstelde. Your Love and Other Lies gevuld met songs van Julie, Buddy’s vrouw met wie hij beginjaren ’80 vanuit Ohio naar New York verhuisden, en samen gecomponeerd werk. Een samenwerking die nog verderloopt in solo – en duo-projecten met Julie zoals Breakdown on 20th Avenue en het recente In The Throes. Vorig jaar bracht Emmylou Harris nog Spyboy uit, een uit ’98 daterende, naar haar begeleidingsband met Miller vernoemde liveregistratie. Het laatste solowerk Buddy Miller’s Magestic Silver Strings is ondertussen vijftien jaar oud. In de lente begon Miller plaats te maken in The Kitchen, zijn huisstudio in Nashville, naast muzikanten als Vickor Krauss, pedalsteel man Steve Fishell en Fats Kaplan (fiddle) die de gitaarspinsels, met die markante tremolo, van Miller begeleiden, duiken bevriende gastmuzikanten op. Vanuit As Long As I Have You welt donkere twang op, geschraagd door een solide backbeat, een stevige opener met verscheurend gitaarpartijen. De tedere ballade You Never Get Over It is één van de vier songs die de Millers samen aanleverden en we herkennen de stem van Shawn Colvin met wie Miller in de jaren zeventig al samenwerkte. Een andere oude vriend, Jim Lauderdale, is van de partij in Strange Desire. Met hulp van Regina McCrary verzeilen we in Miller’s vertrouwde, slepende countrysoul balladestijl met het door een treurige cello gedragen Ruby Hang On. We blijven in dat treurige stegje met het van The Temptations geleende Don’t Look Back,Dan Penn die andere illustere blanke soulman zingt samen met The Mc Crary Sisters even mee. Penn wordt overigens als co-auteur vermeld van de prachtige verstilde pianoballade Not Enough Time To Change met subtiel blazerswerk op de achtergrond. Losers Celebration is een oudere song van Julie, op die verscheurende gitaarriff heeft het iets onheilspellend. Lay Down The Burden of Your Hart stamt uit de eerste langspeler van Jesse Winchester, met de gospel inbreng van het duo The War & Treaty een hoogtepunt. Als Miller in duet gaat met Lee Ann Womack resulteert dat met Lauderdale’s Stop Me in een hartverscheurende passage met in country gedrenkte soul op. Het samen met Ashley Monroe en Elisabeth Cook gedebiteerde Till The Wheels Come Off is evenmin te versmaden. Als in The Inner Sanctum Of God niet alleen Emmylou Harris opduikt maar ook Teresa Williams en haar man Larry Campbell, levert dat een intens moment op. Het afscheid, Masterpiece In The Sand, een sobere pianoballade met weerom melancholische celloklanken, sluit in verstilde pracht het album af.

Review (Folk Alley) : Although Buddy Miller never went anywhere — he leads the band every year at the Americana Awards, he’s been busy producing and playing on other artists’ albums, and he and long-time friend and collaborator Jim Lauderdale host ‘The Buddy & Jim Show’ weekly on Sirius/XM —it’s good to have him back with a new solo album. On the eponymous album, his first in fifteen years, he’s invited a number of friends—including Lee Ann Womack, Emmylou Harris, The War & Treaty, Dan Penn, Ashley Monroe, the McCrary Sisters, among others—to join him as he traverses the musical landscapes of country, soul, gospel, and rock and roll. Swampy guitars lead off the opening track “As Long as I Have You,” a propulsive rocker that charges along a galloping beat fueled by Miller’s searing lead lines and the McCrary Sisters’ spiraling call and response harmonies. Shawn Colvin joins Miller on the spaciously echoing ballad “You Never Get Over It,” a haunting ode to loss penned by Miller and his wife Julie that reverberates with poignant ache. On the bone-shaking rockabilly “Strange Desire,” Lauderdale and Miller mimic the burning, burning fever of wanting a woman, while Regina McCrary lends her soaring vocals to the slow-burning, gospel-inflected “Ruby Hang On,” written by Julie Miller. Soul man Dan Penn (“The Dark End of the Street”) shares lead vocals on Miller’s take on Smoky Robinson’s “Don’t Look Back.” Steve Fishell’s lush layers of pedal steel Tim Lauer’s aching pump organ strains, Miller’s crunchy leads, and the McCrarys’ walking call and response harmonies turn the Motown standard into a new country soul classic. Psychedelic country rocker “Losers’ Celebration,” written with Julie Miller, rides along a grungy groove that conveys the feeling of fiercely embracing the egalitarianism of being downtrodden (“Here you can be a flop/ In here we love the big and the little”). Lee Ann Womack joins Miller on the straight-ahead country crooner “Stop Me,” by Lauderdale and John Leventhal, while The War & Treaty shares vocals with Miller on the tender paean to love and caretaking of the soul on the Jesse Winchester tune “Lay Down the Burden of Your Heart.” Emmylou Harris, Larry Campbell, and Teresa Williams join Miller on the spare modern spiritual “The Inner Sanctum of God,” by Julie Miller. The album closes with the Millers’ gorgeous ode to the beauty and transience of life, “Masterpiece in the Sand.” Buddy Miller’s eponymous new album illustrates his abilities to lay bare the soul of every song he plays and sings, making it his own and inviting us into the song’s interplay of harmonies and melodies. Let’s hope it’s not fifteen years before we get another Buddy Miller album.

Review (13th Floor) : There is something fitting about Buddy Miller returning with his first solo album in fifteen years and simply calling it Buddy Miller. Across twelve songs he gathers together much of what has defined a remarkable life in music: country, soul and gospel, a circle of long-standing collaborators, the songs of his wife Julie Miller, and questions about what we do with the time available to us, who we share it with, and what we create along the way. Miller has spent decades as guitarist, producer, songwriter and bandleader, working alongside artists including Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant and Solomon Burke. His musical and personal partnership with Julie has run through much of that career. They have recorded together and separately, Buddy repeatedly returning to Julie’s songs and giving their spiritual and deeply human imagery a distinctive country-soul setting. Five of the songs here are hers or co-writes, providing much of Buddy Miller’s emotional centre. The album began with Miller thinking he would make a country-soul record, and that remains its musical foundation. Fred Eltringham’s drums and Viktor Krauss’ bass provide a persistent sense of motion while guitar, pedal steel, fiddle, keyboards and brass continually create the atmosphere around them. Individual notes ring out, instruments combine, separate and recombine, and the rhythm section repeatedly finds another way to carry the songs forward. That movement sits alongside songs about loss that stays with us, choices already made and the ways experience becomes part of a life. On You Never Really Get Over It, Miller sounds regretful but clear-eyed. “Sorry if I’ve been sad for too long” gives way to the recognition that sometimes loss simply remains, pedal steel and fiddle carrying the sadness around his voice. Not Enough Time to Change approaches the same territory from further along the road. Spare keyboard notes and stately brass surround Miller’s restrained, deep vocal as the title lands as an acknowledgement of choices made and time already spent. Elsewhere, that continuing movement becomes celebratory. As Long as I Have You rings and rumbles into life, drums accelerating beneath Miller’s declaration that “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. Losers’ Celebration begins with snapping drums and gradually gathers guitar and fiddle until it becomes the celebration promised by its title. Till the Wheels Come Off carries that energy through a country shuffle and a full band driving forward. Who makes that journey with us becomes just as important. The collaborators represent relationships accumulated across Miller’s career. Shawn Colvin and Jim Lauderdale reach back decades, while Dan Penn connects directly to the Southern soul tradition that has long informed Miller’s music. Singers including Lee Ann Womack and The McCrary Sisters add further voices to a record built around musical and personal connection. Those relationships also echo through the songs themselves. Ruby Hang On unfolds somewhere between advice, incantation and prayer, a slow guitar pulse gradually joined by cello and brass. Don’t Look Back, written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White, turns its familiar words into an instruction to face what hurts and put your hand in somebody else’s. On Lay Down the Burden of Your Heart, Miller’s voice enters over sparse guitar before the arrangement expands around him, the title landing like a hymn and its offer of forgiveness strengthened as more voices and instruments join. Faith becomes increasingly explicit. The Inner Sanctum of God seeks refuge from “this world of trouble and tears”, acoustic guitar and blended voices carrying the directness of Christian folk while cello, fiddle and pedal steel add unease and depth. Harris’s Stumble Into Grace comes to mind, another album in which grief, mortality and spiritual consolation occupy the same space, although Miller’s Christianity here is more overt and his musical setting rooted firmly in country soul and gospel. At the album close Masterpiece in the Sand brings these ideas together. Gentle keyboard notes rise beneath Miller as he considers what time eventually does to everything people create. He turns that thought towards songwriting itself: a person can spend a lifetime making songs, even great ones, and these will be washed away too. Pedal steel picks out the sadness while the bass continues underneath, carrying a sense of continuity through a song about everything time eventually takes away. That combination is what makes Buddy Miller such a life-affirming album. Its songs accept loss, failure, ageing and mortality while continuing to ask what can still be done with the time we have. The band is alive to every rhythmic shift and instrumental detail. Friends and voices accumulated across decades give the record warmth and depth, while Julie Miller’s songs provide much of its emotional and spiritual pull. By the end, making music, sharing burdens, sustaining faith and continuing alongside other people seem valuable precisely because our time to do them is finite.