Half a Boy and Half a Man

Bar-band whippersnappers the V-Roys take a turn toward grown-up music

by Grant Alden

Candy is dandy
but liquor is quicker

– Ogden Nash

There stands the glass. Half full or half empty, doesn’t matter so long as there’s enough folding money in the pocket to remedy the situation. Not quite a drunkard’s prayer, this, but a matter of some interest and extended contemplation for the V-Roys, whose second album was finally released in early October.

Ah, just leave the bottle; this is drinkin’ music, and a long story.

Begin with this: Some nights lost is the best place to be found, swaying in the dim light of a close room, locked into some kinda sound and holding onto some vestige of truth in the singer’s voice. Being a bar band’s a bad thing in some circles, but it didn’t hurt the art of Ernest Tubb, Buck Owens, or Merle Haggard. (Mind you, it also destroyed a whole bunch of singers we never heard of, and some that we have.)

Well. Just Add Ice (1996) marked the Knoxville-based V-Roys as a formidable bar band – two singers, two songwriters, a solid rhythm section, handsome gents in black suits, jaunty songs about failed love and the next morning. All About Town suggests songwriters Scott Miller and Mike Harrison (he’s spelling his first name "Mic" on the new album) may be capable of leaving a more permanent and sophisticated record.

Not just a snapshot of the young band at work, All About Town is a more patient, studied, consciously crafted work. The music is more layered (read: overdubs), and the musical textures are more elaborate. Ah, but it still rocks, they still hang out in bars, they still dress nicely onstage.

But getting back on tour meant waiting for the folks who wear suits during the daytime. After finishing All About Town, the V-Roys spent eight months waiting, wondering and scratching up rent while E-Squared and Warner Bros. negotiated. "The record was like a damn carrot," Miller said in late September, his voice betraying resignation, not rancor. "First it was supposed to come out in March, then it was June, then it was August. And then it was canceled again. And now it’s now."

Back in March the V-Roys were in line to become the first E-Squared signing (not counting the boss) to move up to Warner Bros. And then, "we didn’t sense the same enthusiasm from them [Warner Bros.] that we ourselves had for the record," says Jack Emerson, Steve Earle’s partner in E-Squared.

Come summer, E-Squared and Warner Bros. were busy re-examining their business relationship. "I don’t think the V-Roys are the crux of the dissolution of the Warner/E-Squared situation. They’re a byproduct of it," says Warner Bros. spokesperson Bob Merlis. As to the label’s support of the record, "Some of us did and some of us didn’t, I suppose," he says. "It wasn’t a function of their musical worth, it was a function of, ‘Is this deal working for both parties?’"

In the end, the two labels managed what is described as an amicable divorce. Warner Bros. retains the rights to its three Steve Earle titles; the rest of the E-Squared catalog remains on that label, and will continue to be distributed through ADA.

"When we started, everything seemed to be falling into place," Miller says wryly. "I’m of such a pessimistic nature I always wait for some other shoe to drop. It turned out to be a bunch of giant boots."

And in the meantime, "Damn," Miller says wryly. "I don’t remember much, so it’s pretty much gettin’ drunk, sittin’ around waiting.… [Bassist] Paxton [Sellers] got a landscaping job, Mike and I have been…we’ve all been getting drunk pretty much. We needed something to focus on. Human beings are not meant to sit idle." Questioned further, Miller is also able to remember writing a pile of new songs ("I’m hitting a real good creative spurt right now"), starring in a local production of the Hume Cronyn play Foxfire, writing the script for a movie based on some old songs, playing solo dates, and rehearsing with his band.

The glass emptied more easily late last March. Miller and Harrison settled into a Nashville bar full of hope and pride, knowing they had done good work and confident they would do more. Ready to drink life up.

Their first album, Just Add Ice, was a quick sketch of the V-Roys-as-bar-band. The production is simple enough, doesn’t add any frills they couldn’t manage on-stage, just catches the songs and sets them loose. "I hadn’t even played live with you guys but a handful of times before that record came out," Harrison says. This time Steve Earle (who produces with Ray Kennedy as The Twangtrust) took a far more active hand as mentor to the two songwriters. And this time Miller and Harrison more readily conceived themselves to be songwriters.

"We learned a lot on this last one," Harrison says. "He gave us some fuel."

"He pulled no punches," Miller nods. "We’re better writers for it. I like songs that are from point A to point B, with a very strong emotion. It’s got a twist on it, you can understand and you can follow. There’s certain ways you can tweak that. If you’re trying to communicate something, this is pop music. That’s called memory. And he knows you can tweak the structure of a song, tremendously.

"The structure of a song is so subtle, but when it’s done right you don’t even realize it. Starting a song off with your lead lick or something like that, or…there’s so many different songs, and so many different ways to do it. Like he’d say, ‘There are no rules, but y’all might do it that way.’" Miller and Harrison laugh.

"There’s a fine line in writing," finishes Miller. "But it is a craft, and you do put your heart and soul into it. To put those together is the hard thing."

"The main thing I learned was to communicate a little bit better," Harrison says. "Maybe this line means something to me, but it might not mean shit to anybody else. I learned two big lessons on this record, I don’t remember what the other one was." He stops, sips, puffs at a cigarette, chuckles. "Oh, I remember what it was: Don’t bring in a half-assed song, or it won’t be on the CD."

Twenty minutes later, Harrison recalls another lesson. "I had music in the front of my mind, and the words were almost an afterthought. But that’s the other thing I learned from Steve doing this. You gotta have some damn meat, and the music’s just the gravy goin’ over it. If it’s good."

Earle’s insistence that Miller and Harrison were writers has much to do with the fact that songs are no longer credited to the entire band. That and the fact that he shares credit with Harrison and Miller on the opening "The Window Song", and with Miller on "Arianne" and "Sorry Sue".

"I never saw myself as a writer, before," Miller says. "And he tried to lecture me on this – he did on the first record – ‘Man, you’re a writer. You’re a good writer, you need to write.’ I never saw myself as a writer."

What did you see yourself as?

"As an entertainer. Sammy Davis Jr."

"You should see some of his solo stuff," Harrison cackles. "He was an entertainer, definitely."

Therein lies the balance of pop music. "I don’t know that we’ve got it figured out either," Miller says. "We got a little bit closer, but it’s tough. It’s real tough. The guy that did it right was Roger Miller. ‘The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me’ is about as bumpersticker as you want to get, and yet if that song doesn’t touch you, you ain’t got a heart."

Scott Miller’s heart bleeds through the finest song on All About Town. Though "Fade Away" resonates elegantly as an ode to the evaporation of love ("I feel you fading away/And with your heart goes a part of mine"), its sadder subject is revealed in the album’s dedication to Holly Miller (1958-1996), and in the about-to-break quality of Miller’s vocals.

"I actually wrote that one when we were still doing the first record," says Miller. "She died before it came out [of cancer]. She was my big sister. She was…everything. I never played it for her. Never would. Because it’s got a finality to it."

The V-Roys (née Viceroys, but both a reggae band and an old Northwest instrumental ensemble were using that name) formed in Knoxville five years ago. "That’s when I started drinking," Miller notes. "I was 25, 24. Yeah. I’m 29. Four or five years ago."

Virginia-bred, William & Mary-educated, Scott Miller spent his post-college years working as a solo act. "I made a living at it, but it wasn’t pretty," he laughs. "I had my little circle and I worked it pretty hard, in my little blue van. I went to Texas [where he opened a string of dates for Joe Ely], did South By Southwest, opened for a lot of folks. But I wasn’t writing good songs, I wasn’t happy. It wasn’t pretty.

"Before the V-Roys happened, I quit the solo thing. I got a part-time job in this law office, and I thought, ‘Jesus, I gotta figure something out.’ I didn’t know whether I was going to go back to school, if I was going to go back to Virginia, or what. And Jeff [Sills], the drummer, and I, we’d known each other forever, listened to a lot of the same music, got into rockabilly at the same time, got this band together."

The original lineup included Miller, Sills, Sellers, and John Paul. A talented songwriter in his own right, John Paul left before the band signed to E-Squared and formed the Nevers. "I wanted to do some different stuff," John Paul explained, "But they wanted to keep it in more of a roots direction." The Nevers (including the rhythm section from the late Judybats) moved to Nashville and have evolved into a tight, mod-’60s power-pop ensemble; their debut on Sire is tentatively scheduled for release this winter.

When John Paul left, Mike Harrison was running a one-man sawmill in a small town 80 miles outside Memphis in West Tennessee, the same area Jeff Sills came from. "Making sawdust," he laughs. "And I was settin’ in my room writing, pretending like I had an audience in front of me. But that’s about it."

The Viceroys had come to the attention of Jack Emerson during his final days with Praxis, the label that was once home to Jason & the Scorchers and Billy Joe Shaver. Steve Earle drove to Knoxville to see the band a few times, concurred with Emerson, and signed them. Simple as that.

The V-Roys and the Nevers continue to show up at each other’s gigs. Indeed, the semi-bonus track at the end of Just Add Ice, "Cold Beer Hello", was recorded by Nevers drummer Dave Jenkins in his home studio.

"It was a little magical studio moment," Miller says. "See, these cool things don’t come through. But it was fun when it went down. I knew you were going to ask me about that today, and here’s what I came up with: You know how Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? I mean, you can take songs, and songwriting, as seriously as you want to, but sometimes a song is just a song. It’s just fun."

And sometimes, in the wrong hands, a cigar is a hot poker.

For all the weight of the business, and the death of Miller’s older sister, All About Town remains the kind of album that can only emerge from the South, can only be the work of songwriters who revere Lynyrd Skynyrd and Roger Miller…well, not quite equally, but revere, nevertheless.

It is also painted with a broader musical palette than the band explored on Just Add Ice, notably Jim Hoke’s baritone saxophone in "Amy 88". "Virginia Way/Shenandoah Breakdown" takes a riskier leap, segueing from Scott Miller’s song to the Del McCoury Band’s workout of the Bill Monroe classic. It makes perfect sense on disc, but they’ll never pull it off live.

Put simply, they’re growing up.

"We got up early in the morning in San Francisco," Miller begins, recalling their last West Coast tour opening for Earle. "Steve and I went to City Lights bookstore, both spent a tremendous amount of money; we’re both voracious readers. And we were talking about radio. He leaned over the table as we were having breakfast, and said, ‘If you want to forget you ever heard Roger Miller and write about teenage angst, well go ahead and do it. If you want to make grown-up music, then let’s do that.’

"And I think that’s what I want to make. I want to write good songs and make good music. You can make a living doing that. I’ve seen Joe Ely do it, I’ve seen Steve Earle do it. It can be done."

ND co-editor Grant Alden shares Scott Miller’s conviction that the University of Tennessee will never win a national championship with Phil Fulmer as head coach.