Buddy & Julie Miller on Their Musical Reconciliation
The Millers weren't planning to make a record, just music. But then out came Breakdown on 20th Ave South, their first new album in a decade
Photo by Kate York
Buddy and Julie Miller both like to laugh. A lot.
Usually, it’s with each other (or, occasionally, at each other). But even when I speak with both halves of the Americana power couple individually, it’s like someone uncorked a canister of nitrous oxide. Julie’s giggles are unceasing. Buddy’s output is more of a quiet chuckle.
“We’ve had plenty of troubles and arguments and fights,” Julie says during a recent call. “But we always know that we are supposed to be together, and we laugh at each other every day. We’re just made for each other.”
Nearing the four-decade mark of their marriage, the Millers remain devoted life partners. But they’ve walked an often rocky road when it comes to their working relationship, which in the ’90s was sort of a precursor to couples like Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires—a country/roots husband/wife duo who most always appear on each other’s albums—but has been stalled for the last decade. Julie’s health problems and Buddy’s busy work schedule prevented the couple—she, a Christian-country soloist turned songwriter and one of Americana’s most singular voices, and he, an in-demand producer, guitar legend and perpetual studio rat—from making music together. Until now: Breakdown on 20th Ave South, their first record since 2009’s Written in Chalk, is out now on New West. And it’s something of a miracle album.
Julie wasn’t exaggerating when she said they’ve weathered their share of struggles. She lost her brother to a freakish lightning accident, and a friend to suicide not long after. Just before Written in Chalk, Buddy had triple bypass surgery. And around the same time, Julie finally put a name to her long-persisting symptoms of pain and fatigue when she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a disorder that often prevents her from performing and working. But thanks to Buddy, it wasn’t as much of an issue this time around.
“There’s probably a lot of home studios in Nashville, but this one—everybody seems to love it,” Buddy says during a separate phone call later that day. “But Julie didn’t really want to work with me in it because of everything else I’ve done down here, and it kind of represented the last 10 years of us not doing anything. So she started writing a bunch of songs, and I realized it might be best if we just went upstairs and documented them up there.”
So “up there,” in a tiny upstairs bedroom, surrounded by a few dogs and maybe a cat or two, the Millers built up their Breakdown. Buddy hauled all the equipment up the stairs and set up shop next to the closet, which often meant microphones on the bed and wagging tails in the periphery. Julie says you can even hear “barking and crying” on the recordings (my ear couldn’t trace it). In her words, Buddy was “determined” to make a record once they got going.
“It was just really funny, but it made it possible because I really was too exhausted a lot of the time to even go downstairs and it was all right here, and I could just be as spontaneous as I needed to be, and he was so sweet,” Julie says, emphasizing “sweet” with an adoring volume boost. “I just can’t believe [he] would do something like that. I mean it really was about as nice a thing anybody can do for somebody.”
Buddy did all the production and most of the instrumentation himself, and they recorded the songs Julie wrote whenever she felt up to it (“But that wasn’t very often,” Buddy says). Julie had written upwards of 30 or 40 songs—tunes like the humorous take on marital discourse “Everything is Your Fault,” the empathetic ache for child soldiers on “War Child” and the feisty longing for love on “Spittin’ on Fire”—some of which spoke directly to Julie’s life, pain and her relationship with Buddy, others of which follow no discernible path. As one of Julie’s songwriting friends recently reminded her, she tells me, “They’re just songs, Julie!”
“But we didn’t go into this trying to make a record,” Buddy says. “We were just trying to mend fences and see if we could get along fine between us. That’s kind of how we do it.”
Breakdown on 20th Ave South may be the Millers’ first joint effort in more than 10 years, but it’s been even longer since they’ve actually worked together. Written in Chalk, which won almost every title for which it was nominated at the Americana Awards in 2009, was a collection of older demos “cobbled together” by Buddy. In the years since, Buddy has taken on most any project that came his way. He worked as an executive producer on the TV show Nashville, a job that amounted to essentially producing an album a week, and he produced records both away and at home in that beloved studio for both newer artists like The War and Treaty and contemporaries like Steve Earle and Patty Griffin. Grieving her brother and friend and dealing with physical pain, Julie “withdrew from music, withdrew from everything.” So, really, Breakdown was an act of love more than anything—The Millers were just trying music together again.