News/Thoughts

New York’s Peter Miller

Despite growing up about an hour away from New York, Pete Miller has been drawn away from the bright lights and big city toward a rural existence and an authentic way of being a “blue collar” singer-songwriter.

Bob Dylan was a big influence in high school and set him on the songwriter road early on, although he kept his creativity to himself for awhile. Despite recently landing in the top 100 on the Euro Indie Music Chart (with his first released song, “A Light Out There”), when asked when his music career got serious, Pete answers, with characteristic wry wit, “People ask me that, but I don’t know if it’s ever really become serious…I guess it would become serious if I got a check…” (The other songs—all originals—on his debut album, Live on Record, are now available on Spotify.)

Pete credits his English teachers with instilling in him a love of reading and writing stories, something that continues to inform his approach to songwriting. He tries to look at the world from different perspectives, just as literature provides the viewpoints of a variety of characters.

His country/folk style grew out of simply being a solo artist without a band. “I guess it’s easiest if you just have an acoustic guitar…Some of the best songs are adaptable to any genre.”

While following his music dream, Pete works at the blue collar jobs he sings about in his “everyman songs,” working in warehouses, lumber yards, and construction, while studying mechanics part-time. He says, “I am 29 years of age, but my knees feel much older.”

Writing on Mesmerized.io, Gabriel Mazza says, “It is from this down-to-earth perspective that Miller’s music emerges. But make no mistake: his songwriting is the furthest thing from ‘simple.’ Crafting folk gems, the American talent is putting himself on the map as one of the most authentic authors in the genre.”

By Dan Walsh

Follow Pete; www.facebook.com/petemillersingersongwriter. Here full interview here.