Patty Griffin did "Chief".\u00c2\u00a0 Shawn Colvin performed "Twilight" at the appropriate hour.\u00c2\u00a0 But the star was Buddy Miller.<\/p>\n
We’ve heard that you can’t make it after thirty, what about after FIFTY?<\/p>\n
Conventional wisdom is you build a star through hits.\u00c2\u00a0 But what if there are no hits, and no stars?\u00c2\u00a0 Welcome to the twenty first century!<\/p>\n
While the media is plastering the faces of barely pubescent "artists" in front of a non-caring public, true musicians are doing what they always have.\u00c2\u00a0 PLAYING!<\/p>\n
What a concept.\u00c2\u00a0 Perfecting your craft until you’re so great people will be infected upon one listen.<\/p>\n
Your parents will applaud your twelve year old warblings.\u00c2\u00a0 You can get a professional to back you with hacks and auto-tune your vocals, you can hire a PR maven to spam everyone in the world, but you can’t make people care, you can’t insure a lasting career.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe you can springboard to the road company of a Broadway show like an "American Idol" loser (or winner!), but you can’t get people to come hear your music, certainly not once the wrecked trains have been cleared from the rails and rubberneckers have moved on.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure what format Buddy Miller’s music belongs on.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, does the target audience listen to anything other than PR?\u00c2\u00a0 He isn’t good-looking enough for a fashion spread in "Vogue", never mind "GQ" or even "Rolling Stone".\u00c2\u00a0 He’s a heart attack survivor, he’s on the downhill slide in the eyes of the machine, but he’s just starting to fly!<\/p>\n
Music is a concoction of sounds that penetrate your brain and body and elate you.\u00c2\u00a0 We can debate all day long what’s good intellectually.\u00c2\u00a0 Then someone starts to play and we’ve got a smile on our face, we can’t stop shimmying.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what happened to me when Buddy Miller started to play last night.\u00c2\u00a0 The way he wrung a complete feeling out of his guitar, of being in a bar way past midnight wanting this evening to last because tomorrow is drudgery.\u00c2\u00a0 Too much of life is drudgery, which is why we’re searching for gems to get us through.\u00c2\u00a0 And when we find one, we tell everybody we know.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t need no stinking machine to spread the word, we are the machine!<\/p>\n
Buddy Miller is fifty six years old.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t give up and go to law school, he didn’t quit and go into his daddy’s business, playing music on the side, spending all his cash to get someone to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead he focused on music.\u00c2\u00a0 Recording it, playing it live.<\/p>\n
The album is no longer the focus.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not even a profit-driver.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just a part of the package.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t hunker down and record an hour’s worth of music to be distributed every three years by an evaporating system.\u00c2\u00a0 Enter the studio when you’re inspired!\u00c2\u00a0 Or sit there for weeks on end until you get out the kinks and lay down something truly great. Three minutes of genius will get you much further than an hour of mediocrity.<\/p>\n
While old men needing to maintain their lifestyles sue customers in the name of rights, musicians who never got rich on royalties are doing what they always have.\u00c2\u00a0 Playing. This nascent fire will become a conflagration.\u00c2\u00a0 The old is over, the new is being born.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s starting to come clear.\u00c2\u00a0 Music will triumph once again.\u00c2\u00a0 Because stardom is passe. You just can’t get enough people to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 That platinum paradigm has been canceled like a bad sitcom.\u00c2\u00a0 Reality has set in.\u00c2\u00a0 But unlike "The Hills" and other manipulated TV shows, the best musical reality is unscripted.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about getting it right once, but doing it over and over again until the maturity attracts droves of fans, who want to grow with you and the music.<\/p>\n
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