FFWD Weekly
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| Music by Mary-Lynn McEwen The Miller Stain Limit If you gave J. Miller a box of Crayolas, he wouldn’t colour within the lines. Hell, judging by his band, whose moody, introspective songs are laced with chunks of galloping pop rock in a way that would fit comfortably in radio rotation while reminding you of the experimental noodlings of a young Lawrence Gowan, the singer/songwriter/instrumentalist might not even use the crayons to colour with at all. He’d squash them against the wallpaper or spatter them off a freeway bridge, or maybe he’d open up his journal, which is a rudimentary influence on his music, and write out lyrics in 64 shades. Speaking to an elated Miller moments after he finishes a live performance for MuchMusic, the artist doesn’t let the two hours of sleep he’s snagged after a Kingston gig the previous night slow down his thoughts. From the city of his birthplace, Miller reflects on how growing up above a convenience store on Yonge Street, mere blocks away from where he now stands on Queen, began to provide the fodder for what would eventually become The Miller Stain Limit. "There was a lot of information out there, that’s for sure. So it was cool. I’m just used to that, so to me it’s not a foreign thing," he says. Growing up with so rich a panoply of life in constant motion just beneath his window, Miller began to capture reflections of what he saw with words. "All my lyrics, doodles, anecdotes, poetry, ideas and everything, I used to go to a bookstore and buy blank books, and that was my journal. Almost like a diary. And that was everything that was me. I started calling it The Miller Stain Limit; it was my existence. Everybody’s got their own stain limit, it’s like everything that affects you and everything you affect." In fact, so freely and easily did Miller learn to connect and unconnect the dots that bound his existence, that he is hard pressed to tell you whether The Miller Stain Limit is a band, a partnership with co-writer/producer Terry Sawchuk, a solo act, or all these things and more. "I look at it as something very unique, so I hope people can get their head around it, but if they can’t, it’s a very honest thing. It’s not served up as an easily edible thing. "I consider it a band, but most of the songs stem from me. Terry is very important. When we first got together it was like, I was artist, he was producer, so we kind of crossed each other’s lines. Now all of the people who cross my little circle are part of it. It is kind of a band, but it did all stem from me." But no matter how freeform Miller chooses to make his lines, no matter how many shades he piles on top of each other, honesty is the one constant that will remain in his music. "My favourite artists are the kind that when you hear a track, you can tell that they just wanted to say it. The artists had something they needed to get off their chests. Because you’re doing it anyways. Why say you can have this, this and this of me but not that? Just say, ‘Here it is, here we are, and we’re just going to be so honest that you’re gonna love it or hate it.’" |
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