Openness to new possibilities and change in his professional life are mirrored by the way Miller conducts himself in private. He's careful to ensure that his busy touring itinerary doesn't interfere with time off for the family, and he's proud of the fact that the doors to his work space at home are kept open.
"I have 15 guitars upstairs and all these gadgets, four-tracks, and my sons want to learn. I tell them they can't mess around, but they can play them if they take care of them. And it's become a room of sharing. As a parent, I feel like I should open my creative life and my working life to my children. It draws us somewhere closer together. And every child notched my writing up. Now my oldest is 20 -- we jam together, we sing together, and we enjoy each other's company as musicians. My 15-year-old son was into Limp Bizkit and now he's listening to Dylan, realizing my old Beatles records are pretty cool. In the same sense, I listen to him, too, because he'll turn me on to a Foo Fighters song that I get into: 'Ah, that's a cool chord . . . !' So I guess we gotta sit down at the fire together and exchange things and share the things that we know, the wisdom.
Bill Miller: Using music to mend broken hearts and homes.
Details
Scheduled to perform on Tuesday, November 14. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.
Cactus Shadows Fine Arts Center in Cave Creek
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"We also have two adopted kids, and that's incredible, too. Because if I can love a stranger, if I can kiss on another little boy and girl until I die, feed them and clothe them and need them, that proves to me that I can get out of my own shell and love the neighbor across the street."
Despite a daunting career/family balancing act, Miller keeps his eye on the real prize: the human spirit. He urges others to do so as well.
"If you think about the things in medicine that have been beaten -- smallpox, for example -- or the work on cancer cures, it's not the doctors who just sit on their golf carts. No, it's because people in the medical field were searching for excellence to cure somebody. And musicians, I hope, are still out there looking for the next cure for a broken heart, or mending a broken home. We need our tools in our search for excellence, instead of just programs or politicians who tell us this or that is going to change. I hope I leave my children with the tools, with the will and the hope instead of despair and a bunch of money. Like in my song 'Listen to Me' [from Raven in the Snow], I ask if you give someone a blanket, will they necessarily be warm? No. In the last verse I said, 'I give you the seed' -- that is, I give you the tools -- 'dig your roots in the land.' It's that you've got to show people how to work within this world. We need to leave our generations with the tools, and the treasures, and the hope."
Putting his money where his mouth is, Miller notes that in addition to his upcoming concert at Cave Creek's Cactus Shadows High School, he'll be giving a private show "just for the students. It'll also be a couple-day residency where I work within the classrooms and talk to the kids -- a musical workshop.
"And you know what? It's great to have that opportunity when I'm on the road so much doing lots of one-night stands -- to have the opportunity to be able to get on with the real things."
For every child that follows the dream
With ten thousand angels they'll fly
No one will force them to run
They will stand up and fight
'Til the battle is won.
-- Bill Miller, "Every Mountain I Climb"
