John Miller

Raised in rural Pennsylvania near Philadelphia, specifically the Unionville community, John Miller grew up as the son of a classical pianist and thus received an early immersion in music and performance. He began on piano before taking up clarinet at nine and guitar around eleven. Regular visits to Philadelphia with his brother and sister allowed him to absorb folk music in coffeehouses and at festivals, an environment made all the more supportive by the fact that his siblings were themselves musicians. After graduating high school in 1969, he spent a year in Florida before enrolling at Cornell University; finding no music-performance curriculum there, he formed Country Cooking and switched his major to U.S. History. Although he had started writing original songs by then, he contributed little to the band and instead wrote for other musicians, a process he found easier when composing with someone else in mind. Following graduation, his output increased and began to include experimental forms. As Country Cooking shed members, Miller left to record solo for Blue Goose Records, issuing the country-blues album First Degree Blues and the follow-up How About Me, which mixed instrumentals with jazz standards. He also cut the old-time blues record Let's Go Riding for Rounder, later adding Safe Sweet Home and Biding My Time, both consisting largely of standards and jazz numbers. After departing the label he worked on others’ material until disillusionment led him to exit the business in the early ’80s. He subsequently took a post with a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., then relocated to Seattle, where housing-management work occupied him until the mid-’90s. During that time he assembled Wide Awake for recreational purposes—the band never recorded—and appeared at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop while deliberately remaining outside the industry. In the late ’90s he reentered music with Catwalk, performing around Seattle and releasing two albums available only locally.