John R. Miller — live event on Nov 12, 2026

John R. Miller

John R. Miller live at AyurPrana Listening Room, Asheville on Thu, Nov 12, 7:00 PM. Free entry. Lineup, start time and tickets on Ckord.

APLR Presents: **John R. Miller** Thursday, November 12th, 2026 AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806 Doors 6PM || Event 7PM **John R. Miller** As John R. Miller started making plans to record his fifth album, his thoughts turned to challenging himself not just musically, but geographically. “I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, go somewhere less familiar to me and try a new approach,” he says. Born in the Washington, DC area and raised in West Virginia, Miller is a studious and acclaimed representative of the sound usually categorized as alt-country or Americana, but his work is rooted in sources from the punk he grew up around to more unconventional paths in rock history. So when the idea of heading to Tulsa and working at Leon Russell’s legendary, recently reopened Church Studio came up, Miller took notice. “Immediately the gears started turning,” he says. “Tulsa is one of the great legacy-bearing cities of American music—J.J. Cale is one of my all-time favorites, and Shelter Records was based there. So much of what I love in music history happened right around that block.” The result is The Great Unknowing—an ambitious, sprawling project that extends the sound and scope of Miller’s previous releases, 2021’s Depreciated and the 2023 follow-up Heat Comes Down. Those albums earned him praise from outlets including Spin and American Songwriter; Tyler Childers called him “a well-traveled wordsmith mapping out the world he’s seen, three chords at a time.” But the singer-songwriter wasn’t content to just keep his direction and his momentum, chugging along in the same lane. In addition to changing location, he wanted his new music to explore new sounds and approaches, even if that meant rolling the dice on different players and processes. “My goal was to get into a room with a bunch of people that I didn't already have a rapport with and track the record live,” he says. “I wanted to go into a new situation and hopefully strike up some new creative ideas as we were doing it.” With his longtime friend and collaborator Adam Meisterhans as co-producer and guitarist, Miller approached Tulsa-based drummer Paddy Ryan to help enlist the band, a line-up which came to include Grammy-nominated John Fullbright on keyboards. Feeling both apprehensive and excited, Miller was thrilled by how quickly things fell into place. Other Tulsa-based players in the band included Aaron Boehler on bass, and Muskrat Jones on pedal steel. The album was engineered by both Gary Laney (Don Williams, Merle Haggard, The Marshall Tucker Band) and Mike Prado (Ziggy Marley, Sara Bareilles, Matt Kearney). A longtime Nashville engineer, Laney brought decades of experience into the room along with a deep and varied resume that quietly underscored the caliber of the team Miller had assembled. “Once we got in there, we realized that these were all guys that were cut from the same cloth,” he says. “As soon as we started playing through the songs, it sounded like a band. These guys are so adept and intuitive, and we found a lot of common ground to mine, connecting not just on Tulsa music, but psych, heavy metal and all sorts of stuff. Having Adam there was key, too. He has a deeper knowledge of music and guitar than I do, and was a major part of the session’s connective tissue, both interpersonally and musically.” There’s a buzzing, fuzzy ambience that permeates songs like the opening “Far from the Station” and “Don’t Bet on Me,” creating a distinctive sense of space and mystery. Miller asserts that the easy lope of “Cornbread and Pinto Beans” helped define the feel of The Great Unknowing, and he even pulled off something he’s attempted before, writing “Static and White Noise” the day before sessions started and actually seeing it through to the finished album. “I never feel like I am bringing in enough songs, but I had the idea to write that one on the way to the studio,” he says. “Which usually doesn't work. I was also worried about adding too much gravitas to that song, because I never want to over-dramatize something with production. I was pleasantly surprised at how understated it turned out, but also very lush.” Miller notes that his history in West Virginia—where he grew up in the Shenandoah Valley playing in high school garage bands before discovering traditional fiddle music and touring as a member of an old-time string band, working his way up to performing alongside some of Americana music’s heavy hitters—remains present in “Cornbread” and “Steering Wheel Drums,” with lyrics that offer sketches of some old friends. “Those songs are, if not explicitly, to me about folks who really taught me a lot about how to live well,” he says. “Not being in West Virginia as much these days, I feel kind of wistful about it, but sometimes I like to hold on to that instead of seeing things change.” Indeed, images of travel and motion recur throughout The Great Unknowing; maybe song titles like “Tollbooth” and “Steering Wheel Drums” g

Starts: Thu, Nov 12, 7:00 PM

Ends: Thu, Nov 12, 11:00 PM

Where: 312 Haywood Road, Asheville, North Carolina 28806, United States

Price: $0.0

Lineup

Venue: AyurPrana Listening Room

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