ON HER WAY TO HEAVEN LORETTA MILLER LANDS IN THE RIGHT COUNTRY
- Bernard Zuel
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
IT’S ALWAYS BEST TO WARN interview subjects when things are about to go very right, just as much as you might warn them about things going very wrong. And there is every chance – Lord knows the best chance – for things to go so very right right now, or very soon, but certainly today. For me at the very least.
This call with singer/songwriter Loretta Miller, whose new album is out tomorrow – a date that will become particularly relevant in just a minute – is being conducted on the day that all the portents and prognostications, all the scattered bones and tea leaves, all the ancient runes and modern readings tell us with holy certainty is when the righteous will be called to what we of the righteous few know as Home, an event you may know as The Rapture.
So, yeah, Loretta if I suddenly disappear mid-interview, please know it’s not personal; it’s holy. (And if you are reading this story a week later, it doesn’t mean I didn’t get taken up: I can be a fast writer.)
She takes this news well, possibly buoyed by the realisation that as she has taken my call in Bali, two hours behind me on the east coast of Australia, she has some advantage in that my disappearance may give her a two hour warning to prepare for her own ascension, or disappointment.
Or maybe, she is hoping this may put her out of her misery a week out from release.
“I lost my phone here, in Bali. Honestly, I think apart from something happening to my family or me getting sick or whatever, it is the worst thing that could possibly happen in the lead up to album release,” Miller says. “It’s been a nightmare in my small brain space.
“I can’t get into my social media accounts and all that because you need the two factor stuff, and I’m one of those people who doesn’t know the passwords to anything. So, yeah, a nightmare.”
If you’re wondering, no she has not been writing long letters to her management or label. There is no management or label. Miller’s Loretta, is a wholly independent package by someone who offstage has two jobs, on-stage has made a couple of albums with her large Melbourne group Jazz Party (which does exactly what it says on the tin, and is a “behemoth” for her to wrangle), was part of the world-touring Clairy Browne And The Bangin’ Rockettes (who brought old school soul pizzazz and towering hairstyles back, and were no small operation either), and now is sending out into the world a country-leaning solo album. So everything is on her.
“The universe is either giving me [she flashes a middle finger] or some kind of magical lesson,” she laughs ruefully. “But I like doing a lot of things. I like all music; I don’t want to just do one kind of music. When I was younger, people would introduce me as, this is my friend Loretta she is a country singer and I hated that. Now, people say this is my friend Loretta, she is a jazz singer, and I’m like, what??? I’m just a singer.”
That said, Miller will concede that even setting aside a voice seemingly built for country (think somewhere near Margo Price, another traveller across genres who still is rooted in country) and a name that suggests she was born to the mantle, Loretta is nearer the country end of the spectrum. Though even a casual listener to a song like Gonna Be Lonely would recognise there is a fair contribution from soul and rock. Call it Americana if you will. Call it a bit of everything, if only to soothe Miller. But it’s okay. She’s okay.
“This was something I had always wanted to do. Growing up with my mum and Lisa [that would be Tracey Miller, a Melbourne alt. country stalwart, and Lisa Miller, a wonderful singer/songwriter who has worked across country, pop, soul and rockabilly], I grew up singing with the musicians they introduced me to, and listening to Hank Williams and Patsy Cline in a big way: as a three year old kid Patsy was everything to me.
“But there was also bluegrass and old school banjo picking, and jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll, Nina Simone across the board. Good music is good music.”
Amen to that.
I tell Miller that my favourite line on the album is the plain and blunt “It’s not my job to hold back for you”, only to find out I had misheard what was “it’s not my job to hold that for you”, as in hold your shit. Still, I did get the intent right.
“It’s about knowing what you need to do and talking yourself into getting better. You are taking the steps and may not be quite there yet, but you’re working on it. It’s talking to yourself essentially,” she says. “A lot of the songs are about those kinds of things, and pushing. Pushing.
“I think everything in this record is me pushing the fact that I made a record, is me pushing myself an inch. I’m a slow mover [she laughs], in all aspects. Taking a leap, making the album, I needed to be pushed and needed to push myself. In all ways. That’s why have two jobs, that’s why I’m doing all these things that are scary for me and that I find quite difficult.”
The record does feel like this series of messages to herself or to others, to go a little further, to push a little more, to be.
“At the beginning of the project, it was a matter of I had to do it, I had to do something that was just me, basically. The question I had was can I make a thing that’s mine? And can I write the songs? And direct it more?,” Miller says. “It’s come out not how I pictured it but it’s very much myself.”
Maybe one question she might have asked herself was ‘was it not obvious from her mother and her aunt that this career she has chosen was a stupid one? Making music is a nuts choice. She really should have done something safer for her sanity and more useful to the world like, say, quantity surveying.
“Yes, the answer is yes, it was obvious and it was ill-advised. I was thinking of that Etta James song where she goes [and Miller breaks into some soul power] ‘baby don’t do it, don’t do it’. I always think of that line and I’m like ‘why?’. The answer is, because I had to. I didn’t do well in school, I hated school, I didn’t fit anywhere. I was quite arrogant and I was like, I’m going to do music.
“There have been times when I’ve thought why did I do this to myself? But I know, I am sure, that that’s it for me. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs that I didn’t have passions elsewhere, so it’s very joyful and very heartbreaking at the same time.”
Like the best soul and country. Like waiting for The Rapture.
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Loretta Miller’s Loretta is out October 1.
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