In Conversation: Collin Miller

Released after three years of hard work, Collin Miller & The Brother Nature’s A Lesson in Love channels the early textures of funk, R&B and in a compelling narrative of love, loss and growth. Commensurate with its release, frontman Collin Miller sat down with The Eisenberg Review to discuss the group’s new album, his writing process and offer album recommendations.

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Congratulations on the release of A Lesson in Love. I know this has been a long time coming and this record really has been a labor of love, three years in the making. Talk a little bit about what that process has been like, getting to the release of the record.

Thank you for having me. It’s been a very long time coming. Some of these songs are going on five years old now. W e started recording this record in the winter of 2018 and started writing it long before then. It’s been an uphill battle with it. We had a handful of things slowing down the release and I felt bad saying the words “it’s going to be out soon” over and over and over. It feels really good to finally mean it.

I bet. I hear some of your most developed work yet. I was giving the record yet another listen this morning and the song I’m super taken with is your re-recording of “Everyday Lovers.” I feel like it represents a different sound for the band in terms of approach. That oscillating—I don’t know if it’s synth or piano or what it is in the background—rhythm that accompanies the woozy yet breezy melody to that song. I know based on our prior conversations that there is some material on this record that veers a little bit differently from the stuff that you perform live. Is that one of those cuts?

Yeah, that is definitely one of those. We’ve already recorded a different version of that’s been out for a few years now, but I still wanted to still have it on the record. I wanted to do something different with it and take a different approach because I was really proud of the writing of that tune. I don’t think that the original version of that tune did that a disservice, but I wanted to try and showcase it in a different light. Originally, we had just planned the re-recording being like an acoustic thing, just me and a guitar. We started attempting to record it that way and then just some ideas blossomed by chance and a couple hours by later it turned into what it is now and we’re really grateful that it turned out that way. I’m very happy with that one.

Was that process more of just inspiration in the room or is that a direction you had anticipated that song going?

No, we hadn’t at all. For lack of a better term, yeah, I think it was the vibe in the room that day and something sparked for everybody. We started bouncing ideas back and forth and, especially in the moment, it was very new feeling to me. I’ll be honest, up until that day that we recorded it I was completely against drum machines. *laughs*

Why?

Man, I don’t know. I think there’s very few things, very few things like a great drummer.

That is certainly true.

Absolutely. I don’t know, for a while I was kind of in the old man camp, [thinking] everything’s got to be a human. I don’t believe that anymore. I think drum machine can be just as musical as anybody playing if you use it the right way. That was our engineer Jamie (Riotto)’s idea. He was very adamant about it and I was super hesitant at first. I’m glad I listened to him.

Anytime I’m in a situation like that, I always go back to Fresh, that Sly & The Family Stone record and just listen to “In Time,” the first track on that record. That really is one of the first records—at least that I remember hearing from that time period—where you kind of get a mixture of both live drums and drum machine and you’re like “oh, okay, this can work.” It’s just [that] so often its relied on as a crutch and not an accompanying instrument, so I get where that reticence is coming from, especially when you have a guy as talented as Dan Fernandez who drums in your band. But it is just like with anything. You shouldn’t limit the arrangement just because.

I kinda wanted to take the conversation in the direction of inspiration because there are a lot of acts that do, for lack of a better term, “soul revival,” and that draw on the sounds of Motown and soul music from the ‘60s forward. I’ve always heard something a little bit different in the music that you write, both for yourself and The Brother Nature. You are drawing on sounds that aren’t always soul and Motown-adjacent in the way that a lot of other soul acts of this era are. It’s not exactly Daptone like stuff. That’s a very decided sound. You are almost drawing from, I hear, an almost more traditional, I hear, American singer-songwriter perspective. There’s some shades of James Taylor that I hear, shades of Carole King that I hear. Is that inspiration intentional?

You’re definitely correct there. James Taylor specifically played a huge role in my development as a writer and just my taste in general. I don’t know that it’s intentional. I feel like really I just get sparks of luck. Those things kind of come out in the writing and I’m really grateful for that. There’s definitely choices made within the process that are intentional where I am trying to draw on something, but I think a lot of the time I’m lucky that it happens to come through for me.

That is kind of how music progresses, at least that’s always how I’ve viewed it. We’re all influenced by the stuff that we love and if you’re doing it right, you’re picking it up, you are interpolating it through your own perspective and lived experience and you’re carrying it forward and that’s how music advances. It’s a beautiful thing.

Creative process-wise, how does stuff typically unfold? Is it you hashing stuff out on a guitar first and the bringing it to the group, or is it group members coming with different parts and then songs getting written around those?

Typically, the way that things work for us is it’ll start with me just banging around on a guitar, and most of the time I’ll be able to mostly finish a tune enough where its got a structure and a melody and lyrics and then I’ll bring it to the band. Then the pieces get filled in from there. That’s definitely not always the case. For instance, “Come On In” was very much a collaborative effort. That was a little bit of everybody just in the room together one day. Actually, Patrick McCafferty, our bass player, he had been tinkering around with that bass line the few days prior to the rehearsal we had and told me later that he had just planned to play it as a joke for me because he thought it was the type of thing I’d like it.

Turns out he was right.

*laughs* There’s a couple of tunes on the album that were very much a collaborative effort between me and Patrick. Me and him kind of have a history of writing tunes together and it seems like we tend to fill in the blanks of one another’s sensibilities. That’s how the song “A Lesson in Love” came together and “White Train” as well. Most of the time its the bones of the song, just starting with me, or me and Patrick, and maybe one other person and then we all kind of come together.

Those two closing cuts in specific that you mentioned get to the crux of what the record is about, which is exploring one of the more ephemeral and incomprehensible, yet strongest, emotions that we feel as people and exploring the boundaries that don’t exist in certain contexts and trying to nail down our relationships with people. If you had to distill the overall theme of the record, A Lesson in Love is what exactly? What are you looking to communicate with that title? What are you looking to tease out?

I think the theme of the record, or at least the idea of it, is that its really a relationship story from its very beginning stages to the end of the relationship and then figuring out what life looks like afterwards. The way the songs are track listed follows the path a relationship. I know at the time of writing the tunes that I felt like I was in a was in a really good headspace musically and I drew so much inspiration [from it]. Love has been the theme of most of my material up to this point and I’m sure it will be for a long time to come. It’s just like you said, the most incomprehensible, but pure, raw emotions that we can possibly feel. Songs almost kind of write themselves in that sense. I don’t try and fight it. There are a lot of love songs, but there’s still a good reason for that.

Damn skippy. I always feel that way. There are so many songs about love because it is one of the most important things. It reflects that and that art is the medium through which oftentimes to best understand that because it’s so hard to put into words. We’ll close with always our final question: what are three records you’d recommend to the audience and why?

Donny Hathaway Live. I think it’s a perfect record. Donny has my favorite voice ever. He sounds incredible, always. His songs are fantastic. The performances are great.

Number two, The Royal Scam by Steely Dan. Another one I think that’s just as flawless. Incredible arrangements. Very cynical and sarcastic lyrics that I think everyone can have fun with.

Certainly at this day and age.

Oh yeah. I think their music is probably more prevalent now than it ever was, to be quite honest.

Three, Voodoo by D’Angelo. It’s the blueprint for all things good in music in my opinion.