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If the best music gives the listener a sense of place, then JC Miller’s should come with an exact grid reference, one that pin-points the far west corner of a disused lot behind a neon-lit diner on the edge of Santa Fe, where the city fades into the dusty scrubland. That’s how specifically his music can paint a picture.
It isn’t just Americana; his songs feel like small vignettes in the everyday lives of ordinary people scraping a hard-fought living out of America’s West. Banjos tumble and turn, guitars lay out short, searing salvo, and the haunted pedal steel sound soaks and washes everything in sonic mystique.
But this time out,“Before Nightfall” isn’t just about a place but it is also a point in history which his music directs us, and as the modern world fades out, it is replaced by the experiences of the early pioneers following the Santa Fe Trails, and specifically a description he found in the diary entries of those early pioneers of a storm brewing on the horizon and of the anticipation and atmosphere of waiting for its arrival.
We always knew that JC Miller could take us to certain points on the map through the power and suggestion of his music; it turns out that he can also use it to instigate sonic time travel. It’s like some sort of magic at work, I tell ya!
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Land of Grace
Ode to the Open Road
