(The following article by Adele Uphaus was posted on the Free Lance-Star website on February 5.)
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — When Scott Miller was 3 years old, he took his first train trip. All he remembers about it is throwing up.
“My mom’s grandfather worked for the railroads, and my mom decided that we needed to know what it’s like to travel on a train,” recalled Miller during a phone interview. “All I remember is [getting sick] on the dining car.”
He will play in Washington’s Union Station and at Iota in Arlington today.
The unpleasant experience didn’t put a damper on the romance of trains for Miller.
“Who doesn’t love a train?” he exclaimed.
It was either that love of trains or a self-professed need to make everything difficult that caused the 35-year-old roots rock musician to decide to tour by rail.
This winter’s Mule Train tour, supporting Miller’s second solo album, “Upside Downside,” will follow the path of the Amtrak Crescent line, which begins in New Orleans and ends in New York City.
Miller and his band, the Commonwealth, are riding the train from the beginning of the route to the end, and will perform in each city where the train stops. That is why some of the shows take place in train stations.
While Miller said that the logistics of carrying out such a scheme have been “a living hell,” the tour is fully supported by Amtrak. And the musician, who is usually on the road, is glad not to be dealing with interstate traffic.
“I’ve got a million books on trains and a deck of cards,” Miller said of how he and the band will spend traveling time. “And of course, we’ll be traveling through everybody’s back yards, so we’ll get a good look.”
Miller’s a folkie who collects old typewriters and loves near-obsolete modes of travel, but he is also the guy who’d like to live in Wisconsin because there are so many bars.
He’s the introspective singer-songwriter who majored in Russian language and literature and the outgoing frontman with a reputation for high-energy live shows.
Miller’s “Amtrak Crescent” on the new album is an old-fashioned ode to the wandering life and to a dying mode of travel. He wrote the song while he was holed up waiting for a tequila-related broken nose to heal.
“I stayed at home for a week and kind of hid,” Miller said. “I was just thinking about traveling and I thought, ‘I’ll write a train song.’ And look what it’s turned into.”
Miller started playing music as a boy growing up in a tiny community nestled in the Shenandoah Valley.
“I always played and I always wrote songs,” he said. “There wasn’t much to do in Swoope, Va. except sit around with a guitar. It’s the middle of nowhere.”
After high school, he didn’t spent too much time there, attending college at William & Mary, then following a sweetheart to Knoxville, Tenn., which he now calls home.
He started to play in venues around the city, then took up a regular Friday-night residence at a bar called Hawkeye’s, a gig he kept for four years. That was followed by a stint as lead singer of the rowdy V-Roys, a popular Knoxville bar band.
After two studio albums, the V-Roys went their separate ways in 2000, and Miller forged ahead as a solo artist. He said the transition was difficult.
“With the V-Roys, that was four guys against the world, and it was like a giant four-way marriage,” he said. “Now all of a sudden it’s all on my shoulders. That was a whole new thing to learn, how to lead people in a rock ‘n’ roll band. The Boy Scouts didn’t train me for that.”
Even so, Miller has done pretty well for himself. His first solo album, “Thus Always to Tyrants,” was well-received by critics, and the new album is generating buzz as well.
He hasn’t achieved main-stream radio success, but Miller isn’t interested in that.
“I have certain friends who are bigger in the industry than I am. They play pro football, and I play college football, and I prefer college football,” he said. “If that analogy works for you.”