Biography
Miles Miller first drew national country attention by serving as drummer in Sturgill Simpson’s band, appearing on the Americana songwriter’s breakthrough 2014 album Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Nearly a decade later he stepped out on his own with the 2023 Simpson-produced release Solid Gold, which added a roots inflection to the mellow textures associated with the late 1970s. The record sustained an inviting warmth as Miller alternated sensitive ballads with relaxed grooves, a combination that stood apart in early-2020s Americana.
Raised in a musical household in Versailles, Kentucky, where his father acted as musical director at the family church, Miles Miller took up drumming seriously in high school, performing with the symphonic, jazz, and marching bands at Woodford County High School. Outside school hours he presented his own songs at local venues. After graduation he enrolled at Belmont University in Nashville to study Commercial Music. Two years into those studies he accepted a drumming post at the Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado. When that engagement concluded, producer Dave Cobb brought him into Sturgill Simpson’s circle; the maverick Americana artist had just finished his debut High Top Mountain and, coincidentally, had attended the same high school fourteen years earlier.
Miller performed on the two albums that cemented Simpson’s reputation—2014’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music and 2016’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth—and remained a core member until 2021, when the singer paused his career after a vocal-cord hemorrhage. During Simpson’s bluegrass side projects, the 2020 Cuttin’ Grass albums and 2021’s The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, Miller contributed percussion. In periods away from Simpson he appeared on Tyler Childers’ Purgatory and Country Squire, both co-produced by Simpson, and toured with Childers in 2018. He also served as touring drummer for the progressive bluegrass band Town Mountain.
Simpson’s enforced time away from the road allowed Miller to finish songs he had been developing for years. Once the material was ready, Simpson produced Solid Gold, which Thirty Tigers released in July 2023.
Raised in a musical household in Versailles, Kentucky, where his father acted as musical director at the family church, Miles Miller took up drumming seriously in high school, performing with the symphonic, jazz, and marching bands at Woodford County High School. Outside school hours he presented his own songs at local venues. After graduation he enrolled at Belmont University in Nashville to study Commercial Music. Two years into those studies he accepted a drumming post at the Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado. When that engagement concluded, producer Dave Cobb brought him into Sturgill Simpson’s circle; the maverick Americana artist had just finished his debut High Top Mountain and, coincidentally, had attended the same high school fourteen years earlier.
Miller performed on the two albums that cemented Simpson’s reputation—2014’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music and 2016’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth—and remained a core member until 2021, when the singer paused his career after a vocal-cord hemorrhage. During Simpson’s bluegrass side projects, the 2020 Cuttin’ Grass albums and 2021’s The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, Miller contributed percussion. In periods away from Simpson he appeared on Tyler Childers’ Purgatory and Country Squire, both co-produced by Simpson, and toured with Childers in 2018. He also served as touring drummer for the progressive bluegrass band Town Mountain.
Simpson’s enforced time away from the road allowed Miller to finish songs he had been developing for years. Once the material was ready, Simpson produced Solid Gold, which Thirty Tigers released in July 2023.
Albums
Singles
